Cricket - the Philadelphia story . . . Plum Warner's XI of 1897

The year 1897 was a huge step forward for Philadelphian cricket. The city of Philadelphia had been playing first-class cricket since 1878. In those 19 years they had played a total of just 25 first-class games, all of them at home. In 1897, over a time period of just four months, they played an additional 17 first-class games. This included a tour of England where they played the first-class counties, Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the M. C. C., 15 matches in total.

During the tour of the UK a friendship had resulted between the future England captain Plum Warner and the Philadelphia captain George Stuart Patterson. As a result Warner agreed to organise an English XI to visit America two months after the Americans had returned from their tour of England. This book considers that tour which concluded with two first-class matches against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia, in what was to prove to be an exciting conclusion to that historic year.