Harry Pearson guests at SPIN Magazine Club at The Warrington on August 5

The SPIN Magazine Cricket Club welcomes Harry Pearson of The Guardian as our special guest on Thursday August 5.

Harry will be talking about his career and his new book, Slipless in Settle, in conversation with SPIN editor Duncan Steer. He will also be taking questions from the floor and signing books.

The kick-off time is 7 for 7.30. Entry is FREE but advance booking is advised. To book your place, please email: spincc@spincricket.com.

The Warrington is at 93 Warrington Crescent, London W9 1EH. Nearest tube: Warwick Avenue (Bakerloo)

Harry’s new book Slipless in Settle, published by Little, Brown, is an account of a summer spent watching league cricket in Yorkshire. It has all the eye for grim-up-north colour and telling/ridiculous detail that has won Harry’s previous books (and Saturday Guardian sports columns) so many fans.

There is an extract from Slipless in Settle in the current issue of SPIN. There’s more info on the book here: http://tinyurl.com/Slipless

Harry has previously written acclaimed books on, variously, football (‘The Far Corner – a mazy dribble through north-east football’), Belgians (‘A Tall Man in a Low Land’) and the secret (ish) world of North country fairs (‘Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows’). 

As ever, as well as the cricket chat, it’s a chance to enjoy some free Gordon Ramsay food and mingle with cricket movers and shakers. Plus there’s a free prize quiz to win dinner for two at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant, upstairs at the Warrington. 

The SPIN Magazine Cricket Club is held once a month at The Warrington and features players and authors as guests within an informal pub quiz/chat show atmosphere. 

To be kept in touch with future events, please write to spincc@spincricket.com.

And if you join the SPIN Cricket Club, you get 10 issues of SPIN PLUS 10 per cent discount off dining at the Warrington for a year. http://www.tinyurl/SPINCCRamsay.

Duncan Hamilton guests at SPIN Cricket Club, July 14

Round 3 of the SPIN Cricket Club at Gordon Ramsay’s rather nice pub near Lord’s, The Warrington sees us host Britain’s No 1 sports writer for a special evening to launch his new book. The event is free and there will, as ever, be some free Ramsay food.

To put your name down, please email us at spincc@spincricket.com.

If you sign up to become a member of the SPIN CC at the Warrington, you get 10 per cent of Ramsay dining for 12 months AND 10 issues of the best cricket magazine going. (www.tinyurl.com/SPINCCRamsay)

No 1 sports writer? Well, Duncan Hamilton has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award twice in the last three years, so you do the math’s’. Firstly, in 2007, with Provided You Don’t Kiss Me: 20 years With Brian Clough, Duncan’s account of life as the journalist who knew Clough best during his glory years. The book sold over 100,000 copies.

Then, last year, Duncan won the award again with his acclaimed biography of Harold Larwood, which brought a whole era back to life, brilliantly.

Duncan’s new book, A Last English Summer, is a journey through English cricket taking a series of games in the summer of 2009 as a starting-point to talk about the history and character of the game and of Englishness itself.

The book is inspired by Duncan’s lifelong love of cricket and by JB Priestley’s English Journey.

Duncan will be talking about this new book and his career in general, with SPIN editor Duncan Steer. As usual, we will have a prize cricket quiz to win dinner for two at the rather splendid Ramsay restaurant upstairs at the Warrington.

Entry is FREE, kick-off is at 7 for 7.30, there will be a free Ramsay buffet and a chance to meet and mingle with cricket movers and shakers.

The Warrington is at 93 Warrington Crescent, London W9, nearest tube Warwick Avenue or Maida Vale.

And don’t forget, if you sign up to become a member of the SPIN CC at the Warrington, you get 10 per cent of Ramsay dining for 12 months AND 10 issues of the best cricket magazine going. (www.tinyurl.com/SPINCCRamsay)

Sport Beefy: Spin reviews Botham’s Christmas offering

My Sporting Heroes
By Ian Botham (Mainstream, £18.99)

England’s greatest cricketer of the modern age is also one of our most prolific authors: three autobiographies, an illustrated memoir, ‘The Botham Report’ (a 1997 blueprint for the English game), various tour diaries and bedside miscellanies, two books about fishing and ‘Botham’s Century’ – his 100 greatest cricketers. Not to mention writing the foreword to Robin Askwith’s autobiography… 

Targeted like a bullet at the Dad gift market, ‘My Sporting Heroes’ is Botham’s hardback assessment of 50 British and Irish greats of the modern era – most of whom are at the very least acquaintances of the great man: he played football against George Best and golf with Padraig Harington; dined with Sir Alex Ferguson, and has been drunk under the table against all expectations – including his own – by Jason Leonard.

Turning out books as he does, you might expect this one to be tossed off, but there are no cracks here: Botham is the ultimate Sport Billy, keeping up with English football from hotels on cricket tours around the world and comparing notes with Nigel Mansell at charity dinners. Owning race horses in the ’80s took him into another sporting world (Willie Carson and John Francome are included here); and then there’s the rugby, for which he developed a  passion in his late teens, later developed by following his son Liam’s career. 

Inevitably, the talk of focus, determination and overcoming failure gets repetitive in places but this is a genuinely absorbing read: his appraisals of Geoff Boycott and Graham Gooch are especially intriguing. Botham actually blames Gooch’s fitness regime for making the team too tired to win the 1992 World Cup final, one of many revealing details. 

The inclusion of Allan Lamb may bring a rolling of the eyes, as the Beef acknowledges: “His position here does stem a little from how well I got to know him as a bloke as well as a player,” he concedes, before writing about Lamby’s bravery (and six centuries) against the fearsome attack of the 1980s West Indies.

But the only real gripe a Beefy fan might have is at the selection of ‘Lord Sebastian Coe’ here ahead of the Bothamesque Steve Ovett. Why, Beefy, why?