I’ve just read what could well be the most impressive club history ever produced: A Famous Old Club, celebrating 175 years of the Brighton Cricket Club (1842-2017) by David King.

Consisting of almost 600 pages, it is a magnificent hardback  a magnum opus of club histories befitting one of Melbourne’s oldest and most successful cricket clubs, which among 11 internationals old and new numbers a young Shane Warne, mystery spinner Jack Iverson  and now 90-year-old CC ‘Colin’ McDonald.

Rather than being a dry, stats-based history, this is full of interview and anecdote and while heavy at 2.6 kg, it is easily cradled and guaranteed to inform and delight.

The stories abound from how a teenage Warne was advised to concentrate on his batting through to McDonald and the Hon EW ‘Bill’ Gillard QC chasing and apprehending a thief trying to escape down South Road.

The statistics are exceptional and the stories even better.

Iverson had arrived in the spring of 1946, telling everyone how he hadn’t played competitively since schooldays at Geelong, 154 years earlier, so he was selected in the thirds. After 27 wickets in three matches, average 5.74, he bypassed the seconds — the captain Bill Easton was apparently satisfied with the spinners he already had — and played with the first XI.

Coming on at fourth change, ‘big Jake’ as he became known took four wickets in four overs to wrap up Elsternwick’s innings. He improved with every outing and by round 10 when he took nine for 33 against Kew, he was the talk of the town.

Brighton won the sub-district premiership and an illustrious (fleeting) career in District, first-class and Test cricket awaited.

You will love this book. It is simply stunning.

It is $100 posted anywhere in Australia. Just 400 have been produced.