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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Ball games > Cricket
Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential sports
books of all time, C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary is-among
other things-a pioneering study of popular culture, an analysis of
resistance to empire and racism, and a personal reflection on the
history of colonialism and its effects in the Caribbean. More than
fifty years after the publication of James's classic text, the
contributors to Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket investigate
Beyond a Boundary's production and reception and its implication
for debates about sports, gender, aesthetics, race, popular
culture, politics, imperialism, and English and Caribbean identity.
Including a previously unseen first draft of Beyond a Boundary's
conclusion alongside contributions from James's key collaborator
Selma James and from Michael Brearley, former captain of the
English Test cricket team, Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket
provides a thorough and nuanced examination of James's
groundbreaking work and its lasting impact. Contributors. Anima
Adjepong, David Austin, Hilary McD. Beckles, Michael Brearley,
Selwyn R. Cudjoe, David Featherstone, Christopher Gair, Paget
Henry, Christian Hogsbjerg, C. L. R. James, Selma James, Roy
McCree, Minkah Makalani, Clem Seecharan, Andrew Smith, Neil
Washbourne, Claire Westall
The great Sir Donald Bradman's test-match batting average of
99.94 is an achievement matching that of any other sporting great.
Now, you can achieve greatness as well with "Cricket: 99.94 Tips to
Improve Your Game."
In this one-of-a-kind collection, the world's top players and
coaches share their secrets, guidance and advice on every aspect of
the game. From batting to bowling and fielding to coaching,
"Cricket: 99.94 Tips to Improve Your Game" covers it all.
With contributions from Merv Hughes, Brad Hodge, Cameron White,
David Hussey, Belinda Clark and a host of others, you will learn
something new on every page. Best of all, you'll learn to develop
the special skills and qualities to achieve greatness in today's
game.
Whether you're still learning the game, polishing your skills
or coaching your team to another championship, "Cricket: 99.94"
"Tips to Improve Your Game" is the practical guide you should not
be without.
The Wisden Book of Test Cricket, first published in 1979, is well
established as an invaluable and unique source of reference
essential to any cricket library. This new volume includes full
scorecards and match reports from 1977 to 2000. Originally edited
by Bill Frindall, this new volume brings collectors' libraries up
to date, ensuring they have a complete and accurate record -
essential for any truly self-respecting cricket enthusiast.
If someone were to say 'it's not tennis', or 'not football' of
shabby behaviour in any walk of life, he or she would not be
understood. If they said 'it's not cricket', they probably would be
(though less reliably than a century ago). Is there some special
spirit of cricket? The laws of cricket, like the laws of the land,
aim at a sort of justice or balancing between different factions.
The purpose behind cricket's laws, and behind changes in them, is
often to calibrate the balance in the game between batsmen and
bowlers, between attack and defence, between safety and risk.
Cricketing lawmakers are interested in the overall appeal of the
game to players and spectators alike. In Spirit of Cricket, Mike
Brearley alternates between issues and examples within the game -
from 'Mankading' and the 'Sandpaper' affair to sledging, mental
disintegration and racism - as well as broader issues such as the
spirit and letter of the law. Brearley examines the issue of how
far what purports to be justice (in law or in spirit) may or may
not be the expression of the powerful within the activity or within
society. He also contrasts cheating and corruption, and reflects on
the nature of penalties in regard to each. He discusses the
significance of the notion of the spirit of the game for umpires,
groundsmen, administrators, media and spectators - and, of course,
for players. Intelligent and insightful, Spirit of Cricket points
to qualities in cricket that enhance our development as people -
including a sense of fair play, the embracing of striving both for
our team and for ourselves and the important values of playfulness
in life and professional sport.
THE DOTS WILL NOT BE JOINED is both a rich, sentimental memoir and
a racy 'Compendium of Ideas'. It's about sport (mainly football and
cricket) but it carries wise, sometimes cheeky diversions -
snapshots into what makes us and what liberates us. The *stories*
and the challenges range. Rick Walton is a coach and a writer with
a fearless, impossibly positive streak coursing through him. He
recounts scary or electrifying visits to football and those
wonderfully daft adventures so many of us have had in village
teams. Combs forgotten in boots; lacerating North Sea gales; chunks
of orange and blissfully sweet tea; 'team talks'. But we also have
Proper Coaching - notions around how to approach and nourish and
support players. There is the contention, too, that sport really
can be 'good'; that how we play can matter. All this in a matrix of
arty or philosophical hunches which unashamedly (but also humbly)
celebrate the raw, The Human, the ridiculous, the unknowable, the
'unweighted'. Walton's book is a one-off, daring to chase a zillion
narratives so as to capture something actually rather profound
about how activity works, in a world where the 'Social' and
Corporate kaleidoscopes are blurring, bending and maybe even
crushing our will.
Cricket is a very old game in Scotland - far older than football, a
sport which sometimes exercises a baleful, obsessive and
deleterious effect on the national psyche. Cricket goes back at
least as far as the Jacobite rebellions and their sometimes vicious
aftermaths. It is often felt that Scottish cricket underplays
itself. It has been portrayed as in some ways an English sport, a
"softies" sport, and a sport that has a very limited interest among
the general population of Scotland. This is emphatically not true,
and this book is in part an attempt to prove that this is a
misconception. Sixty-one games (it was going to be just 60, but one
turned up at the last minute!) have been chosen from the past 250
years to show that cricket does indeed influence a substantial part
of the nation. The matches have been selected at all levels, from
Scotland against visiting Australian teams all the way down to a
Fife school fixture. These naturally reflect the life, experience
and geographical whereabouts of the author. The games are quirky
sometimes, (and quirkily chosen) with an emphasis on important
events in the broader history of this country, notably the
imminence of wars and resumptions at the end of these conflicts.
But the important thing is that every single cricket contest does
mean an awful lot to some people.
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