About

If you want the short version, it’s this: Spin is the magazine for all real cricket fans. The most in-depth analysis; star columnists; original photography; Hawkeye; Graham Thorpe and a reader-friendly style of presentation that allows both new fans and diehards to enjoy the magazine equally.

Last year, we were delighted that the ECB recognised the quality of our work in sprucing up cricket coverage and invited us to produce the official programme for the showpiece of the domestic season, the Twenty20 Cup finals day.

This season, we were invited to produce Kent Cricket, the new monthly progazine – yep, progazine - for Kent CCC.

We also produced the official programme for the recent Rajasthan Royals versus Middlesex Panthers game at Lord’s, in aid of the British Asian Trust.

This October sees the publication of the first SPIN Annual, a Christmas book that will include the best of the material from our first 50 issues as well as exclusive material from the Ashes.

The longer version?

We always thought a lot of the cricket media felt a bit like being called into the headmaster’s study. A lot of talk about things you should be interested in, by people who had forgotten that the game is a passion and an entertainment, rather than a museum. A lot of churning over old old ground.

We realised that a baby born the day after Botham’s heroics at Headingley in 1981 would now be nearly 28.

We wondered whether we could produce a magazine that felt more like going to a cricket match - or at least slumping on the sofa at home, watching one.

So we launched SPIN magazine in February 2005. The first issue had 40 pages on the upcoming India-Pakistan series and a very-good-value interview with Phil Tufnell.

It had the first-ever use of Hawkeye graphics in print - we’re still the only publication in the world to regularly use the as-seen-on-TV data to explain recent games - and a small item where we measure whether Slow-Death Bucknor was really any slower than Slow-Death Rudi Koertzen in raising the finger of doom. (He wasn’t)

The main thing was this: no nostalgia and no essays.

Instead of chin-stroking over whether Twenty20 would end civilisation as we knew it, SPIN would explain the tactics and techniques of the newest form of the game. We’d talk to players at length and produce Sunday supplement-style colour pieces on big games, complete with documentary photography. We’d ask all the questions we personally wanted answered.

We wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that, to be serious, you had to be dreary.

We would have offer readers the views of current players and coaches rather than journalists thinking out loud.

So, if you’ve loved cricket for 10 minutes or 50 years; if you prefer Test cricket or T20; or if you’re a player looking to perfect their game or a big old unit unable to move from the sofa in front of Sky, we think you’ll get a kick our of our magazine.