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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > Cricket
‘Highly readable and packed with fascinating historical detail, this is
the compelling story of a ripsnorting South African cricketer whose
career was smothered by the shameless colour prejudice of Cecil John
Rhodes and his snobbish cronies. By turns formidable, sad, enlivening
and enormously informative, this book pays Hendricks the honour that
has long been his due.’ – Bill Nasson
From the start of his glittering career in 1992, to his official retirement from all formats of the game in 2013, Shane Warne has long desired to tell his incredible story without compromise. No Spin is that very story. It will offer a compelling intimate voice, true insight and a pitch-side seat to one of cricket’s finest eras, making this one of the ultimate must-have sports autobiographies. Shane is not only one of the greatest living cricket legends: he is as close as the game has had since Botham to a maverick genius on the field and a true rebel spirit off it, who always gives audiences what they want. Despite being the talismanic thorn in England’s side for nearly two decades of regular Ashes defeats, he was also much loved in the UK where he played cricket for Hampshire. He’s also a much-admired figure in India and South Africa. Alongside his mesmerising genius as a bowler, Shane has often been a controversial figure, and in this book he's talk with brutal honesty about some of the most challenging times in his life as a player. Honest, thoughtful, fearless and loved by millions, Shane is always his own man and this book is a testament to his brilliant career.
We all know South Africa has problems; we read about them in the newspapers, we see them on the streets and many people experience them in their daily lives. Fortunately, many of these problems can be solved using innovation and science. Innovation takes a look at inventions - developed in South Africa by South Africans - to address issues in the areas of healthcare, energy, environment and industry. Some of these inventions, such as a tea bag created to filter water for communities in rural areas, can save lives; others, such as a unique way to beneficiate titanium, could spell a new era of industry in the country. The book is broken down into sections on environment, health, energy, industry and education, and in each of those parts are examples of South African innovations, from a satellite system to map fires to the concept of sterilising mosquitoes to stop the spread of malaria. These have been developed by numerous organisations and institutions and showcase South Africa's excellence.
Jazbaa Definition: spirit, feeling, passion, desire, sentiment, emotion In 1996, Shaiza Khan led a Pakistan team on a tour of New Zealand and Australia. While the tour was a failure on the cricketing front, the singular act of eleven women wearing flannels and battling for victory in the faraway antipodes was a significant achievement. These women had - individually and collectively - worked to throw off the shackles of social and cultural decrees that had conspired to keep Pakistani women away from sport for years. Even more importantly, these players were harbingers of change who became heroic role models for women back home and all around the world. Unveiling Jazbaa tells the story of Pakistan's women's cricket, detailing the extraordinary journey the players have been on to bring about change both in their country and in the sport itself. This is a tale told through the lens of society and politics, of personal battles and triumphs against the odds, of friendships and rivalries, of favours and revenge. Above all else, it is story of bravery and unerring will and a moving testimony to power of the human spirit. Foreword by Kamila Shamsie 'Compelling, ambitious, beautifully written and about so much more than cricket' - Tim Wigmore, The Telegraph and author of the multiple award-winning Cricket 2.0
Sultan is the official biography of Wasim Akram, the "sultan of swing", one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of cricket. For twenty years, Wasim Akram let his cricket do the talking - his electrifying left-arm pace, his explosive left-handed striking, his leadership and his inspiration. For another twenty years he kept his own counsel about those days, full of drama, controversy and even mystery, in a country, Pakistan, that to outsiders is a constant enigma. Until now. Sultan tells the story of cricket's greatest left-arm bowler, and one of its greatest survivors, who was chosen from the streets of Lahore and groomed by Imran Khan to become champion of the world - man of the match in the final of the 1992 World Cup. Along the way were unforgettable rivalries with the greatest of his time, from Viv Richards and Ian Botham to Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne. Along the way, too, a backdrop of conspiracy and intrigue over ball tampering and match fixing about which Wasim finally sets the story straight. But there's more: Sultan goes frankly into the crumbling and rebuilding of Wasim's private life, marred by the tragedy of his first wife's death and the torment of addiction. The result is an unprecedented insight into the life of a cricketer who revolutionised the game with his speed and swing, and a patriot buoyed and burdened by the expectation of one of the game's most fanatical publics.
What is it like to follow the sun as a T20 gun for hire? Dan Christian is one of the world's most sought after cricketers, not only a star for the Sydney Sixers but having been part of teams in premier leagues from India and Pakistan to South Africa and the Caribbean. In The All-Rounder, he takes us on a globe-trotting tour from Karachi to Cardiff, from the billion-dollar Indian Premier League, where he played for Virat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bangalore, to the inaugural season of England's new franchise competition The Hundred, where he led Manchester Originals. It was a never-ending summer like no other, shadowed by COVID-19, encased in bio-secure bubbles, in which Dan also reflected on his indigenous heritage and grappled with imminent fatherhood, all the while concentrating on a fast-evolving, high-stakes game in which you're a champion one day, a chump the next.
Every cricket lover, for better or worse, has their year. The year it all fell into place or all fell apart. A year of triumph or disaster; of tragedy or comedy. This being cricket, there's normally a bit of everything. Covering 50 different seasons, from 1934 right up to the weird summer of 2020, a series of journalists, poets, musicians, comedians, and ex-players - plus the odd England captain - have come together to produce a collection of personal essays, using the game of cricket as the backdrop to tell the story of their own Golden Summers. 50 voices for 50 years: each one delving into the year that means the most to them. This is Golden Summers.
The remarkable story of three Yorkshire cricketers from the Golden Age - George Hirst, Wilfred Rhodes and Schofield Haigh - who transformed their county's fortunes, inspired a generation of cricketers and left a unique legacy on the game. Between them, Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh scored over 77,000 runs and took almost 9000 wickets in a combined 2500 appearances, helping Yorkshire to seven County Championship triumphs. The records they set will never be beaten, yet the three men - known throughout England as The Triumvirate - were born in two small villages just outside Huddersfield, in Last of the Summer Wine country. Hirst pioneered and perfected the art of swing and seam bowling, Rhodes took more first-class wickets than anyone else in history, while the genial Haigh's achievements as a bowler at Yorkshire have been surpassed only by his two close friends; their influence would extend far beyond England, as they all went to India to coach, laying the foundations of cricket in the subcontinent. Pearson, whose biography of Learie Constantine, Connie, won the MCC Book of the Year Award, brings the characters and the age vividly to life, showing how these cricketing stars came to symbolise the essence of Yorkshire. This was a time when the gritty northern professionals from the White Rose county took on some of the most glittering amateurs of the age, including W.G.Grace, C.B.Fry, Prince Ranji and Gilbert Jessop, and when writers such as Neville Cardus and J.M.Kilburn were on hand to bring their achievements to a wider audience. The First of the Summer Wine is a celebration of a vanished age, but also reveals how the efforts of Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh helped create the modern era, too.
This history of Grimsby Cricket Club and Cleethorpes Cricket Club began as a book on cricket in Lincolnshire, but both clubs sent a great deal of information about their history and I decided to combine their history in one book. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!
When the first lockdown came, finding himself without cricket for the first time in his life, Geoffrey Boycott sat down and began to write a retrospective warts-and-all diary of each of his Test match appearances. It is illuminating and unsparing, characterised by Boycott’s astonishing memory, famous forthrightness and unvarnished, sometimes lacerating, honesty. That 100,000 word document forms the basis for Being Geoffrey Boycott, a device that takes the reader inside Geoffrey’s head and back through cricket history, presenting a unique portrait of the internal and external forces that compelled him from a pit village in Yorkshire to the pinnacle of the world game. Now 81 and still one of the most recognisable cricketers England has ever produced, Boycott has teamed up with award-winning author Jon Hotten in this catalogue of his tumultuous time with the national side. Dropped for scoring a slow double hundred, making himself unavailable to play for England for several years, captain for eight seasons of a group of strong, stroppy and extremely talented players at Yorkshire, bringing up his hundredth hundred at Headingley against the Old Enemy, seeing David Gower and Ian Botham emerge as future greats, playing under Mike Brearley in the 1981 Ashes, in this enlightening book Boycott reveals a host of never-before-heard details regarding his peers and his playing days.
'excellent . . . covers every aspect of wicket keeping clearly and accurately' - Callum Morin, wicketkeeper at Hadleigh Cricket Club Whether a player or a coach, this is the ultimate guide to developing the skills required to make it as a top-level wicket keeper. In the most comprehensive book on wicket keeping on the market, James Knott and Andrew O'Connor provide detailed and easy-to-understand insights into all aspects of wicket keeping, whether you are a player or coach, and no matter your level. With contributions from some of the game's great players and coaches, including Alan Knott, Jack Russell, Peter Moores and David Ripley, this invaluable guide includes over 65 training drills, a unique 'training on your own' section, and provides clear guidance for coaches who aren't wicket keepers themselves. Clear, insightful and easy to follow, this is an essential guide for improving your game or your coaching methods.
From one of India's finest writers, thinkers and commentators, a memoir of a love affair with cricket. As a fan, player, writer, scholar, controversialist and administrator, Ram Guha has spent a life with cricket. In this book, Guha offers both a brilliantly charming memoir and a charter of the life of cricket in India. He traces the game across every level at which it is played: school, college, club, state and country. He offers vivid portraits of local heroes, provincial icons and international stars. Following the narrative of his life intertwined and in love with the sport, Guha captures the magic of bat and ball that has ensnared billions.
An England cricket tour is a unique phenomenon, with its own pressures, challenges and remarkable highlights. It presents its participants - shorn of the usual support networks they enjoy at home - with a prolonged test of skill, physical stamina and mental resilience. Now Simon Wilde, author of the acclaimed England: The Biography, examines in The Tour the delicate chemistry that makes for a successful tour and why others disintegrate so badly. Since the 19th century, England has been sending its cricket teams around the world to take on their rivals. Initially, these trips were undertaken by boat, meaning players could be away for many months, often in alien conditions. With air travel reducing journey time and facilities much improved, the challenges still remain: homesickness, isolation, hostile crowds - not to mention an opposition determined to win at all costs. For some, the experience can be too much, while others thrive in the heat and dust of battle. The Tour looks at all aspects of the history of England's cricketers abroad, including the burden placed on the captain, who is expected to combine on-field acumen with the deft touch of an ambassador off it. There have been diplomatic incidents aplenty, from Douglas Jardine's Bodyline tactics to Len Hutton's tour of the Caribbean, as well as the special pressures of playing in countries such as India and Pakistan during periods of unrest. Touring has never lost its romance. There have been serious scrapes, from court cases to car crashes, but also much fun, whether joining in with the Barmy Army or David Gower famously taking a Tiger Moth for a spin. Wilde explains how this seemingly anachronistic activity has been adapted from an instrument of imperial soft power to a relentless cricket circus that never ends. Simon Wilde has once again created a masterpiece of insight, information and entertainment, an aspect of cricketing life that few will ever forget: the tour.
Lifting the Covers is the inside story of South African cricket's journey to reinvent itself after years in the international wilderness. Using key figures, Hansie Cronje, Makhaya Ntini, Ray White and Ali Bacher, the book tells the story of South Africa's national summer game from an insider's perspective. It looks at the debates, the administrative crises and the Cronje affair as key episodes in the unfolding history of game that has struggled in post-apartheid South Africa to keep its traditional constituency on the one hand while embracing a new constituency on the other. The onfield activities during this era are also discussed, with particular attention being paid to South Africa's 1999 World Cup campaign, the tour by England in the summer of 1999/2000 and South Africa's subsequent tour of India, the tour which led to Cronje's fall from grace. The author argues that while the UCBSA (United Cricket Board of South Africa) have had no alternative but to transform the game over which they preside, their noble initiative has sometimes met with disastrous results-the Hansie Cronje affair being the most notable example. Finally, the debate to transform cricket is in many ways also the story of contemporary South Africa, a country that is struggling to transform itself into an enlightened, workable democracy. The lessons learnt by cricket are lessons pertinent to the country as a whole.
'It was a harsh intrusion into the peaceful setting of a village cricket match. In the countryside gunshots are not unusual. Farmers are not averse to potting rabbits or scaring birds off their crops. In those circumstances more than one shot would be expected. It might have been a car backfiring. It was the fact that some people thought they had a heard a scream that tended to rule out these explanations.' Fatally Cricket portrays the world of village cricket at its most murderous.
Geoffrey Boycott is undoubtedly one of England's greatest ever batsmen. Playing 108 Test matches between 1964 and 1982, the hugely controversial opener scored a then record 8,114 runs at 47.72 - the highest completed average of any English player since 1970 - against some of the greatest bowlers the world has ever seen. When the first lockdown came, finding himself without cricket for the first time in his life, Geoffrey Boycott sat down and began to write a retrospective warts-and-all diary of each of his Test match appearances. It is illuminating and unsparing, characterised by Boycott's astonishing memory, famous forthrightness and unvarnished, sometimes lacerating, honesty. That 100,000 word document forms the basis for Being Geoffrey Boycott, a device that takes the reader inside Geoffrey's head and back through cricket history, presenting a unique portrait of the internal and external forces that compelled him from a pit village in Yorkshire to the pinnacle of the world game. Now 81 and still one of the most recognisable cricketers England has ever produced, Boycott has teamed up with award-winning author Jon Hotten in this catalogue of his tumultuous time with the national side. Dropped for scoring a slow double hundred, making himself unavailable to play for England for several years, captain for eight seasons of a group of strong, stroppy and extremely talented players at Yorkshire, bringing up his hundredth hundred at Headingley against the Old Enemy, seeing David Gower and Ian Botham emerge as future greats, playing under Mike Brearley in the 1981 Ashes, in this enlightening book Boycott reveals a host of never-before-heard details regarding his peers and his playing days.
A one-time Southampton policeman and BBC literary producer working with such writers as E.M. Forster, John Betjeman and Dylan Thomas, who became a close friend, John Arlott has always considered himself lucky. From his first ten-minute summaries of the 1946 Indian cricket tour until his retirement in 1980 he commentated on every Test match England ever played. This autobiography looks at his schooldays, about great cricketers he has known or watched and about his standing for the Liberals in the 1955 General Election.
Cricket is a summer game, intended to be played on green fields under blue skies and warm sun. But, for the first time, a book explores the mesmerising beauty of cricket grounds in winter, carpeted with snow, through remarkable colour photographs depicting grounds from Lord's to the smallest village pitch in Lancashire, and internationally from New Zealand to the Indian Himalayas. For this aspect alone, Snow Stopped Play will be seized upon as the perfect gift for the cricket fan even by those utterly uninterested in the sport. But Snow Stopped Play is also a fascinatingly eccentric and charming disquisition, in the best tradition of cricket classics like Carr's Dictionary of Extra-Ordinary Cricketers, on the game of cricket itself, through its hitherto unexamined relationship with snow. Did John Arlott really find a snowflake on his sleeve at Lord's in June? Why did a Derbyshire batsman have to take his false teeth out after a snowfall at Buxton in 1975? And has the Sussex fast bowler and poet John Snow ever written a poem about snow?
Surprisingly, perhaps, cricket is a game rich in international history, sporting characters and, on occasions, controversy. Over his long career as a cricket commentator and journalist Ralph Dellor has met some of the greatest exponents of the "summer" game. In the 1990s he conducted a series of face-to-face taped interviews with famous cricketers past and present. Along with Stephen Lamb, his fellow sports journalist and business partner, he has edited and annotated the interviews so they are put into context of time and place. Each chapter is a classic piece of cricketing history and insight into the legends and lore of the game. Featuring such names as Denis Compton, Brian Statham and Cyril Washbrook.
This book is aimed at players and coaches (male & female) of all levels. James Knott and Andrew O'Connor have created a comprehensive and up to date guide to batting for coaches, players and parents featuring photographs and diagrams along with sixty accessible drills. This is an essential guide to the intricate skills required to become a successful batter for both players and coaches. With input from a wide range of elite players and coaches, past and present, this is an invaluable guide to developing batting skills for young and old alike.
The remarkable story of three Yorkshire cricketers from the Golden Age - George Hirst, Wilfred Rhodes and Schofield Haigh - who transformed their county's fortunes, inspired a generation of cricketers and left a unique legacy on the game. Between them, Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh scored over 77,000 runs and took almost 9000 wickets in a combined 2500 appearances, helping Yorkshire to seven County Championship triumphs. The records they set will never be beaten, yet the three men - known throughout England as The Triumvirate - were born in two small villages just outside Huddersfield, in Last of the Summer Wine country. Hirst pioneered and perfected the art of swing and seam bowling, Rhodes took more first-class wickets than anyone else in history, while the genial Haigh's achievements as a bowler at Yorkshire have been surpassed only by his two close friends; their influence would extend far beyond England, as they all went to India to coach, laying the foundations of cricket in the subcontinent. Pearson, whose biography of Learie Constantine, Connie, won the MCC Book of the Year Award, brings the characters and the age vividly to life, showing how these cricketing stars came to symbolise the essence of Yorkshire. This was a time when the gritty northern professionals from the White Rose county took on some of the most glittering amateurs of the age, including W.G.Grace, C.B.Fry, Prince Ranji and Gilbert Jessop, and when writers such as Neville Cardus and J.M.Kilburn were on hand to bring their achievements to a wider audience. The First of the Summer Wine is a celebration of a vanished age, but also reveals how the efforts of Hirst, Rhodes and Haigh helped create the modern era, too. |
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