Century At Newlands, 1864-1964: A History of the Western Province Cricket Club by S.E.L. West
Century at Newlands, 1864–1964: A History of the Western Province Cricket Club (Collectible South African First Edition)
An Authoritative Centennial Chronicle of Africa’s Most Beautiful Cricket Ground and Its Founding Club
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Century at Newlands, 1864–1964: A History of the Western Province Cricket Club
- Author: S.E.L. West (Compiler) & W.J. Luker (Editor)
- Publisher: Western Province Cricket Club, Cape Town
- Publication Date: 1965
- ISBN: None Issued (Pre-ISBN Era / Privately Printed)
- Edition Details: First Edition, Standard Hardcover Release. Privately printed for the club.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium green cloth-covered boards with gilt-stamped title typography to the spine and club crest emblem to the front cover.
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), approximately 159 pages. Extensively illustrated with historical monochrome photographic plates, statistical match scores, and archival appendices.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good (VG)
- Exterior / Boards: The original green cloth boards remain flat, firm, and structurally sound. Gilt lettering and crest tooling are clear and well-preserved. Minor age-appropriate shelf rub along the bottom edges and faint bumping at the spine extremes, entirely normal for a vintage athletic club history of this era.
- Interior: The text block is robustly bound, completely intact, square, and tight. Internal pages are clean, crisp, and completely free of any text underlining, owner signatures, dealer pencil annotations, or library markings. Faint, natural age-toning to the endpapers, otherwise an uncommonly clean text block.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good (VG)
- Condition Details: The original paper dust jacket is complete and shows some signs of age-related wear and tear along the sides and spine edges. It exhibits light chipping at the corner tips and spine extremities, with minor surface rubbing commensurate with age. Now housed and beautifully preserved within an archival, removable cellophane protective sleeve to halt any further edge-wear.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the Western Province Cricket Club (WPCC), Century at Newlands is the definitive historical record of one of global cricket's most iconic institutions. Compiled from private club archives by S.E.L. West, this scarce monograph charts the club’s development from its humble 1864 origins through to its transformation into a cornerstone of South African sport.
Crucially, the book documents the foundational construction and architecture of the Newlands Cricket Ground—world-renowned for its scenic situation beneath the sheer faces of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak. Within these pages, cricket bibliophiles will find comprehensive profiles of early legendary players, match accounts of touring international squads (including historic English tours dating back to 1889), and rare insights into colonial and provincial sporting culture in the Cape. It stands as an essential piece of South African sports history and an invaluable reference for any specialized cricket library.
Author Profile: S.E.L. West & W.J. Luker
S.E.L. West was an esteemed cricket archivist, administrator, and club historian deeply embedded within the sporting framework of the Western Cape. Serving as compiler, West spent years synthesizing a century’s worth of minutes, local match reports, and personal memoirs. He was capably aided by editor W.J. Luker, a meticulous sports journalist and writer whose structural oversight ensured the book achieved a polished balance between dry statistical record and compelling social narrative. Their collaborative effort remains the benchmark reference source cited by modern cricket historians covering early South African Test matches.
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