Congratulations go out to Pitch authors Tim Wigmore and Stuart Rayner (pictured), recent winners at the ECB’s fifth County Cricket Journalism Awards, which recognise coverage of the domestic game.

Tim Wigmore, co-author of the critically acclaimed Second XI: Cricket in its Outposts was named as the Christopher Martin-Jenkins Young Journalist of the Year, for his coverage of county cricket for ESPN Cricinfo and the Daily Telegraph.

And Stuart Rayner, author of the forthcoming The War of the White Roses: Yorkshire Cricket’s Civil War, 1968–1986, collected the award for Regional Newspaper of the Year on behalf the Journal/Sunday Sun, marking their coverage of Durham and county cricket in general.

Click here for more information, or to read a free sample from Second XI: Cricket in its Outposts, by Tim Wigmore and Peter Miller.

• "A timely and excellent history of cricket's new frontiers." --Mike Atherton, The Times
•  "THE BEST SPORTS BOOKS OF 2015. WG Grace would have been delighted to see his game spread to new territories, but would have been as baffled as Tim Wigmore and Peter Miller, authors of Second XI: Cricket in its Outposts, by the indifference, at best, of the game's rulers to such growth." --The Guardian
•  "Highly recommended." --Martin Chandler, Cricketweb
• "Should certainly be required reading by the administrators of the ICC” ----Roy Morgan, The Cricket Statistician
• "English cricket has suffered as a result of being absent from terrestrial television. Reading this book will, however, rekindle a love for what many are missing." --SportsBookoftheMonth.com
   

Due for publication in February 2016, Stuart Rayner’s The War of the White Roses: Yorkshire Cricket’s Civil War, 1968–1986 covers a previously uncovered chapter in Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s history.

• In 1968 Yorkshire County Cricket Club was the dominant force in English cricket, yet by 1986 it had slid to become one of the game’s also-rans. The War of the White Roses tells the story in full from a completely neutral perspective for the first time. With insight from inside the dressing room, committee room, and from the terraces, it tells how two decades of fierce infighting caused so much damage it took almost 30 years to recapture those past glories. The period from 1968 to 1986 was scarred by bitterness, pettiness and jealousy as civil war broke out with one of the county’s greatest-ever players, the brilliant but divisive Geoffrey Boycott, at the centre of the story. He is just one of the many interviewees to contribute from both sides of the divide, looking at the personal feuds and political machinations of the period, and examining just how they contributed to the team’s fall from grace.