A Thing of Beauty: The Founding of the Sydney Cricket Ground

A Thing of Beauty: The Founding of the Sydney Cricket Ground is an exquisite two-volume work that tells the remarkable story of how a small group of men transformed land that was once a mix of sand and swamp into the finest cricket ground in the world.

Both volumes are published in association with Venues NSW and the SCG and are written by Geoff Armstrong, who has been described as 'Australia's pre-eminent sports historian'.

In Volume 1, Armstrong reveals how the men who developed the ground quickly learned that maintaining, let alone improving, a major sports arena is an expensive business. They needed entertainment that brought money through the gate, which meant that from the start of the 1880s, sports such as cycling and football, as well as events like school carnivals and fireworks displays, took place alongside cricket.

Some aspects of the story told in Volume 1 are familiar to SCG stalwarts, such as the ongoing battles with the NSW Cricket Association and the building of the iconic Members Stand. Other parts, such as the great cricket riot of 1879, Managing Trustee Philip Sheridan's crucial role in the birth of the Ashes, and how rugby union and cycling rose to prominence in the 1880s, are not.