A Thing of Beauty 

Archie Mac | 7:54am GMT 15 March 2026

Published: 2025
Pages: 417
Author: Armstrong, Geoff
Publisher: Stoke Hill Press
Rating: 4.5 stars

A Thing of Beauty, is a two volume set that tells the story of the founding of the Sydney Cricket Ground. Under review today is volume one which deals with the period from 1851 to 1890. The latter date is considered by many as the commencement of the Golden Age of cricket which saw the game dominated by some of the greatest names in its history. It is unclear if this delineation was deliberately chosen by author Geoff Armstrong, however, as he clearly knows his cricket history, I suspect it may have been intentional.

 As Thomas Edison once said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work”. This could well apply to the establishment of what would eventually be called the SCG. Although it is not referred to as such in the first volume, I will do so throughout this review to make the story easier to follow. Two of the biggest issues in establishing the ground were caused by a proclamation that Moore Park, where the ground was situated, was a public reserve and as such could not be fenced or spectators charged a fee. This issue was to plague all the early attempts by cricket lovers to establish a centrepiece ground in Sydney.

While the issue of fences was overcome once trustees were appointed, the issue of charging spectators money and where that revenue would go once collected would be an ongoing problem for the trustees for many years.

Perhaps we should backtrack, as the SCG story really starts once the three trustees are appointed by an Act of Parliament in 1875. The fact that Tom Garrett Snr, the father of Tom Jnr who would play in the inaugural Test match, was the Secretary of Lands that made the trustees’ appointments adds a nice symmetry to the story. Richard Driver was one of the three trustees and becomes an early focus of the book until his untimely death aged just 50 in 1880.

After Driver’s death, the main narrative of the book changes focus to fellow inaugural trustee Philip Sheridan, a man that deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest cricket administrators in the history of the Australian game. When you consider the mountain of work he did for the game, and then realise it was all unpaid, you can appreciate why a stand was named after him in 1912.

We find Sheridan, his fellow trustees, and their appointed Ground Committee constantly under attack. The attackers come from the NSW cricket association, unhappy the money from ticket sales from the SCG were not going to the cricket clubs of Sydney; the Albert Ground, which was a private ground that almost convinced parliament the SCG was breaking the law by charging the public to watch cricket on public land; even a member of parliament who attacked the trustees and in particular Sheridan for what amounted to allegations of fraud. None of these distractions, and many others besides could stop the SCG becoming one of the most envied sporting grounds in the world.

All the above issues were compounded by the cricketing tours from England happening like clockwork every other year, including the ill fated Lord Harris tour where his Lordship was assaulted after a pitch invasion. The fallout from this tour damaged the SCG’s reputation for many years to come. So numerous were the English private tours that in the season of 1887-88 not one but two separate England teams arrived in Australia. Not surprisingly, everyone lost money and the surfeit of cricket saw the game drop in popularity.

This is where we finish up with the first volume, with cricket, and by association the SCG, in a precarious position. The good news is a rich Lord by the name of Sheffield was organising a team led by the greatest cricketer of all: W.G. Grace.

I will jump straight into perusing the second volume as the first is a riveting read, beautifully written and incomparably researched. Geoff Armstrong is to be commended on both fronts, and especially like all quality books you will find the devil is in the detail.

In an example of this detail: we learn about Test cricketer Ned Gregory, the first groundsman of the SCG, and the birth, in a cottage on the SCG, of his son Syd Gregory, who would go on to captain Australia. On all scorecards Syd is listed as S.E. Gregory, but his birth certificate lists his name as Edward Sydney Gregory. Its little things like this that make the cricket aficionado salivate.

There are so many of these little gems that I started to list them so I could commit them to memory. Don’t miss the story of the SCG, it’s a fantastic journey and, in the hands of Geoff Armstrong, lovingly crafted.

The two volume set can be bought as a package for $100.00 or a single volume for $60.00, and the books are available from stokehillpress.com.