Pack Your Bags, Brother

Mark Alleyne was one of the most successful captains in the history of county cricket, leading the little-fancied Gloucestershire to seven trophies in six years. Now he has returned to Gloucestershire as Head Coach, the county winning a further trophy in his first year back.

Here in Pack your Bags, Brother he talks about his life and shares the story of those successes: from his formative years in Barbados and the ground-breaking Haringey Cricket College to becoming Gloucestershire's youngest centurion and leading the county in those golden years.

Along the way we learn of the onerous duties of a twelfth man servicing the eccentric Jack Russell's needs, the shock of a prison sentence in Kenya, the experience of captaining an England 'A' tour in the Caribbean and the emotions of scoring a century in the first Cup triumph at Lord's.

Then, as his career moves into coaching, we get a parent's account of his son Max's progress from Coalpit Heath Under-7s to England's Under-21 football team.

A deep thinker, interested in sports psychology, he reflects on his life story, the characters he has known, the nature of successful teamwork and the way the game has changed in the forty years since his county debut: the growing role of the coach and the impact of franchise cricket.

It is an uplifting and a thought-provoking story, rich with the humanity and wisdom of a special and most popular cricketer.

Stephen Chalke was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in 1948 and now lives in Bristol.

In 1996 he left full-time employment in adult education to become a writer and publisher of cricket books. His work has been primarily that of an oral historian, capturing the memories of past generations and placing them in the context of the surrounding social history.

He has won six national Book of the Year awards: for At the Heart of English Cricket, his collaboration with the administrator Geoffrey Howard, No Coward Soul, with Bob Appleyard, The Flame Still Burns, with Tom Cartwright, The Way It Was, a collection of pieces about post-war English cricket, Summer's Crown, a history of the County Championship, and One Hell of a Life, a biography of Brian Close.

In 2019 the Cricket Writers' Club honoured him with the prestigious Peter Smith Award for his 'outstanding contribution to the presentation of cricket to the public'.