"'Wherever we played we could hear machine-guns firing and we witnessed a torchlight procession down Unter den Linden which was both alarming and eerie'; and 'the same night that Mussolini was due to arrive...the streets were packed with troops and we were lucky and glad to get to the station'.

Playing cricket in Germany in the 1930s was not always as...fraught. But it certainly had its 'moments'. 'German Cricket', the second monograph in the James D. Coldham Series, covers the fraught, the arcane and the frankly bizarre aspects of the history of the game in Germany drawing on a wealth of research.

First published privately in 1983 in a limited edition of 125 copies (of which only 100 were intended for sale), 'German Cricket' was at the time the distillation of my father's researches into the subject. [Editor: James Philip].

It crams everything he had to hand about the history of German Cricket into its pages. It probably remains 'the' reference document for anybody interested in this particular 'niche' of the summer game.

My father was a researcher and cricket historian par excellence, and the amount, and the quality of the information in this monograph is his 'fingerprint'.

Several articles have been added to the monograph; pieces published since 1983, or correspondence for which there was no space in the original.

For some years the original monograph has only been available at a premium as and when copies have come on the market.

The Editor is the proud owner of copy number 90, signed by my father!

In republishing 'German Cricket' I am doing what my father would have done back in 1983, had he lived in our marvellously inter-connected age – making it available to the widest possible audience.

It is the editor's hope that the publication of 'German Cricket' will be of assistance to researchers and fellow 'cricketing history' aficionados everywhere.