Press Release, 22nd August, 2025
The Cricket Society and British Society of Sports History Honour Neil Robinson
Neil Robinson has today been announced as the winner of the 2025 Howard Milton Award for Cricket Scholarship.
Neil is the Head of Heritage & Collections at the Marylebone Cricket Club, and one of the world’s leading experts in cricket history, heritage and curation. He has worked at the club for almost two decades and in that time has been instrumental in preserving, interpreting, and promoting the rich history of cricket.
Under Neil’s leadership, the MCC Museum’s collections have grown significantly, and he now oversees one of the world’s greatest collections of sporting artefacts, memorabilia, journals and books. He has helped guide the club into the modern era, devising the Museum’s first Digital Strategy, and initiating the proposal for the new Heyhoe Flint Gate at Lord’s in 2022.
Neil’s work is distinguished by his commitment to making cricket’s history relevant and engaging to contemporary fans. He has curated acclaimed exhibitions that explore cricket’s intersections with empire, gender, race, and society – most notably the recent No Foreign Field: MCC and the Empire of Cricket exhibition, which tells the story of cricket’s global development from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.
In addition to his curatorial work, Neil is a respected author and speaker. He has published widely and is the author of Long Shot Summer (2015), which documents the chaos of the 1988 “summer of four captains”.
Cricket Society Chair Peter Hardy said: ‘I’m delighted that The Cricket Society and the British Society for Sports History are recognising Neil Robinson in this way. His long track record as a cricket historian, archivist and curator is immensely impressive, and makes him the worthy winner of the Howard Milton award for 2025.’
Commenting on the Award, Neil Robinson said: ‘I’m thrilled and honoured to receive this award. Much of my work at Lord’s has been about building partnerships, so in accepting it I must also thank the many colleagues at MCC and beyond who have brought ideas and energy to so many worthwhile projects.’
The award was announced during the annual conference of the British Society of Sports History (BSSH), which is being held at the University of Ulster from 20 to 22 August. The award will be presented to Neil in person at a special event at Lord’s on 6 October.
The Howard Milton Award, a collaboration between The Cricket Society and the British Society of Sports History, is awarded annually to a person or persons who have made an outstanding and/or unsung contribution to cricket scholarship. The award seeks to recognise good cricket writing and research whether of an ‘academic’ or ‘popular’ nature. Winners are decided on the recommendations of a panel drawn from officers of both organisations.
It is named after Howard Milton, the eminent cricket historian and statistician and Honorary Librarian at The Cricket Society for over 40 years. Previous winners include the Association of Cricket Statisticians & Historians, the Sussex Cricket Museum, John Goulstone, and Ramachandra Guha.
Notes for editors:
BSSH Trustee and Cricket Society Vice-Chair Raf Nicholson can be contacted for more details – see below.
About The Cricket Society
The Cricket Society – www.cricketsociety.com and X @CricketSociety – was established in 1945. It encourages a love of cricket through playing, watching, reading and listening. It supports young cricketers, makes annual awards, holds regular meetings, publishes an acclaimed Journal twice a year and its Bulletin six times a year and has its own cricket team.
It is a national organisation with 1,700 members across the UK and beyond. It also has branches based in Bath, Birmingham and Durham.
About The British Society of Sports History
The British Society of Sports History – www.sportinhistory.org - was set up in 1982 to promote the study of sport – both in Britain and in the rest of the world. Our work includes activities as diverse as the encouragement of research within and beyond academic settings, support for the preservation of the sporting record, collaboration with the museum and heritage sector, promotion of the study of the history of sport in higher and further education as well as by those in secondary school, and engagement with the broader public media.
We have members across the world, both academic and non-academic, and we welcome anyone with an interest in the history of sport.
Raf Nicholson
Organiser
[email protected]
