I was born and brought up in south-west London, but have lived in Devon since the early 1990s, for many years in Exeter and more recently near Sidmouth, in East Devon.

I have spent large parts of my life watching sport at places such as Lord’s, Twickenham, Cardiff Arms Park, the Millennium Stadium, Parc des Princes, the Stade de France, Fenway Park, Lansdowne Road, Murrayfield, Kingsholm, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the San Siro, Newlands, Wimbledon and Wembley.  These days, depending on the time of year, I can usually be found on the Fortfield at Sidmouth, at the County Ground in Taunton, at Cheltenham College, at Lord’s, or at Sandy Park, home of the Exeter Chiefs.

My cricket writing has appeared in The Cricket Statistician, The Journal of the Cricket Society, The Cricketer International, Cricket Lore, The Nightwatchman, and in a range of specialist historical journals, as well as on ESPN Cricinfo.  In 2012 I was the inaugural winner of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack cricket writing competition, and my winning piece, South African Time, appeared in the 2013 edition of the Almanack.  Since 2015 I have been writing the annual review of cricket blogs for Wisden.

Since 2006 I have been writing the cricket blog Different Shades of Green.  My favourite pieces from it are reproduced here, along with some other writings from a range of  periods in my life.

For their encouragement, assistance, friendship, inspiration and dialogue via Twitter over the years, special thanks are due to many people, including Lawrence Booth,  Annie Chave, Richard Hill, Peter Hoare, Jon Hotten, Gerry Hunt, Patrick Kidd, Bill le Breton, Will Luke, Alan Price, Andrew Riley, Nick Slough, Chris Smith and Martin Weiler.

Brian Carpenter