Cricket comedy. No, wait!

What I love about cricket
 Sandy Balfour (Ebury, £10.99) I have a terrible fear that the SPIN office bookshelves will not be able to bear the weight of too many more tomes explaining cricket in a semi-’humorous’ fashion to the uninitiated. This is not just – SPIN podcast devotees, please note– a comment on the [...]

Hooray for medium pace

If cricket is a village, hapless club skipper Roger Dervish may well be the idiot. SPIN enjoys cricket’s greatest (and, possibly, only) sitcom.

The demands of genius

  Brian Lara: cricket’s troubled genius By Brian Scovell. Stadia, £18.99 From SPIN October 2007 ‘Please, be lenient with me,’ Brian Lara reportedly pleaded with a West Indies official in 1995, “Cricket has ruined my life.”  Global fame and its attendant pressures attached themselves quickly to the man who twice broke the Test scoring record [...]

SPIN’s books of the year 2008

1 Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket (New Holland) Woolmer’s posthumously published Bible of cricket was a lifetime in the learning and 13 years in the writing. At its heart is a coaching manual, but it comes with so many anecdotes, debates and tangential enthusiasms that even the determinedly armchair fan will continue to [...]

Soldiers of misfortune

Barmy Army account of 2006 Ashes fiasco has familiar banter but is amiable nonetheless Ashes to dust: the nightmare before Christmas By Graham Cookson (Know The Score books, £8.99) Justin Langer is quite short; Adam Gilchrist has quite large ears; Andrew Symonds is English, really, because he was born in Birmingham; Glenn McGrath is quite old; [...]

A very English journey

Penguins stopped play: 11 village cricketers take on the world by Harry Thompson (John Murray, £12.99) Reviewed in SPIN, December 2007 Oxbridge graduate writes semi-autobiographical book about a useless cricket team and its world tour. Don’t all rush. readers. But this is not the usual fare. Harry Thompson, who died in 2005, was one of [...]

True-life dramas

From 0898 cricket lines to getting 11 for Sunday, actor Michael Simkins’ cricket memoir rings funny, poignant and true Fatty batter: how cricket saved my life then ruined it by Michael Simkins Random House, £10.99 What a great book. Michael Simkins’ 40 years as a cricket obsessive drive his brilliantly observed memoir. It’s funny, it rings [...]

Silent Assassin Speaks

Monty Panesar is a decent Test spin bowler. But has he anything much to tell us? Well – what do you think? Monty’s turn: taking my chances By Monty Panesar Hodder, £18.99 Reviewed in SPIN, December 2007 The Libertines were recently slated for releasing a ‘Best Of’ collection after two albums, but at least they’d actually [...]

All Beef and no bull

Sir Ian Botham’s no-nonsense take on his crazily packed life gets the best out of some already familiar tales Head on: the autobiography by Ian Botham Ebury Press, £18.99 Reviewed in SPIN, December 2007 It’s a fact: Steve Harmison has won six more Tests in an England shirt than Sir Ian Botham ever did – [...]

Sympathy but no tea

India’s first foreign coach loved his job. But, he says in his excellent memoir, banning beverages from training was the least of his worries John Wright’s Indian Summers by John Wright, with Sharda Ugra and Paul Thomas. Souvenir Press, £18.99 Reviewed in SPIN, August 2007 In the spring of 1997, the ex-New Zealand Test opener [...]

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