The Writers of Wales Database

LEWIS, TONY

Tony Lewis was born in Swansea, 1938, and educated at Neath Grammar School for Boys. He made his Glamorgan playing debut, aged 17. At Christ’s College, Cambridge, reading history under Dr. J. H. Plumb, he won a Freshman double Blue in rugby and cricket (captain of cricket in 1962). His chosen career was writing and broadcasting, alongside cricket in the summers. Tony completed eleven years contracted to HTV for programmes on sport and the arts. During his six year tenure of Glamorgan’s captaincy, he led his club to the County Championship in 1969. He then became, and still is, the only Glamorgan player to captain England in Test cricket, on MCC’s tour of India, Ceylon and Pakistan in 1972-73.

Thereafter he wrote and broadcast on many subjects, becoming cricket correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, a member of the Test Match Special radio team, and presenter of BBC TV Test match coverage until 1998.

Meanwhile, Tony chaired the Wales Tourist Board, Glamorgan Cricket Club, and for two years was the Millennium President of MCC. He chaired the successful Welsh bid for the Ryder Cup 2010, and also Welsh National Opera as it moved to the Millennium Centre: he was also High Sheriff of Mid Glamorgan. Tony is now Chairman of MCC’s World Cricket Committee and has been a consultant to Newport University assisting in the move to a City Centre Campus, in its Communications within and without the university, and also in the setting up of a private-public sector funded international Golf Academy at Celtic Manor Resort.

He is retired and has decided to write!

Selected Publications:
A Summer of Cricket (Telham Books, 1976)
Double Century (the official history of the MCC to mark its bi-centenary) (Hodder, 1987)
Cricket in Many Lands (Hodder, 1991)

Autobiography
Playing Days (autobiography of his early years) (Stanley Paul & Co, 1985)
Taking Fresh Guard (autobiography of his later years) (Headline, 2003)