Good Days is widely regarded as one of the finest works of cricket literature ever written. Authored by Neville Cardus, the book represents Cardus at the height of his powers — lyrical, reflective, and deeply attuned to the emotional and aesthetic dimensions of the game.
 
Originally published in 1934 and reissued here in the 1948 Rupert Hart-Davis edition, Good Days is not a conventional cricket history or match chronicle. Instead, it is a collection of essays and reminiscences that capture cricket as lived experience: the moods of grounds, the personalities of players, the rhythms of summer afternoons, and the quiet drama that unfolds beyond the scorebook.
 
Cardus writes with a novelist’s sensitivity and a poet’s ear. Famous players, club cricketers, and fleeting moments are rendered with equal care. Matches dissolve into memories; individual strokes and spells of bowling become metaphors for character, temperament, and time itself. Cricket, in Cardus’ hands, becomes an art form — expressive, fragile, and inseparable from the culture that produced it.
 
The book is also deeply nostalgic. Written between the wars and republished shortly after the Second World War, Good Days reflects a longing for continuity and tradition. Cricket is presented as a civilising force — a repository of values, manners, and shared memory — and Cardus’ prose captures a world that already felt threatened by modernity and change.
 
This edition is dedicated to C. P. Scott, the legendary editor of The Manchester Guardian, whose influence on Cardus’ journalistic voice was profound. The dedication underscores the book’s literary stature and its place not merely in sports writing, but in English letters more broadly.
 
More than ninety years after its first appearance, Good Days remains a benchmark against which all cricket writing is judged — frequently cited as the book that elevated cricket journalism into literature.