What is the greatest cricket book?

You're listening to the TMS Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. 2026 is the National Year of Reading, the biggest campaign in a generation designed to help more people to discover or rediscover the joy of reading. The theme is to go all in on your passions and interests, and when it comes to a tradition of writing about a sport, cricket has a rich and varied history, from the iconic Beyond the Boundary by C.L.R. James to Harry Thompson's Penguin Stop play about amateur cricketers and their crazy travails, from Duncan Hamilton's biography of the great Harold Larwood, around— from around these parts, to the groundbreaking autobiography of Marcus Trescothick, Coming Back to Me. It made talking about mental health in cricket, I suppose, possible in a way that it hadn't been before. We've been asking you, what is your favorite book? But what makes a good cricket book? I'm very delighted to say I'm joined by Simon Wilde, who's one numerous awards for books like The Tour, the story of the England cricket team, England: The Biography, which I thought was a terrific title, and Chasing Jessop, the mystery of England cricket's oldest record, which is a truly fabulous book, came out last year. Annie Chavers alongside us as well, the author of Cricket Changed My Life, which is a sort of compendium of 11 people's views on how cricket has changed their lives. It's an absolutely beautiful book. She's also Cricket Writers Club Book of the Year judge and has been for the last 2 years. And also I've got alongside me freelance cricket writer, a voracious reader of cricket books, and also a one-time housemate of mine for all of 10 days in Brisbane. Oh, what a time! What a time that was to be alive. Jim Wallace. Now before, before I come to you, we've had so many responses, I want to get— just name a few. The first one I got here, and I've forgotten this book, but it's Brilliant is Another Bloody Tour by Frances Edmonds, Phil Edmonds' wife, about touring the West Indies. That's a great read. I've got The Ladybird Book of Cricket. That was probably the very first book that I got when I was about 6, which in its brief length and pocketable format provides the most perfect and simple explanation of the game for neophytes of any age, says Richard Guy from Woolwich. Ian from Sudbury: Mike Brearley's The Art of Captaincy is both a great book, a wonderful book about leadership, And also Alan Ross's account of the '54-'55 Tour of Australia he loves, as well as Simon Jones's Lotter Hard Yakka, which he says is both a great piece of writing and opened up the realities of the county game. That was by Simon Hughes, of course. Uh, there's been a few books on the '54-'55 Tour. We had one last year from Richard Whitehead, which was brilliant and won awards. Um, let's start with Simon, because Simon, you have written You told me 13 books. Does it feel like more? Because you've been doing it pretty much every year for 2 or 3 decades.

Yes, I don't know why do I, why have I written so many books? I think I, I mean, I grew up in a household full of books because my father was an English teacher in Leeds. He loved cricket and he loved books and he had a lot of cricket books. So I think when I was absorbing cricket as a youngster, the writing or the reading of it about it was always part of the process. Really, it wasn't just about watching it and playing it, it was reading about it as well. So I think he instilled my love of books, really.

So did you ever— did you, did you have favorite readers or favorite topics? Because before we did this, uh, segment, I was thinking about how you might describe cricket literature because it's so wide-ranging, you know. And you yourself have written books that are the macro— England: The Biography— and then the micro— Chasing Jezza— which is all about one innings. And we've got all points in between. So are you in— obviously you're enthused by the lot, but was it writers that sucked you in, or was it topics and ideas?

Yeah, I think it was writers, really. I used to— I mean, I read Cardiff's books, my father, a lot of Cardiff's books.

A.

A. Thompson, you don't hear about him very much. He wrote a lot of lovely books really about cricket and cricketers, Yorkshire, northern cricketers particularly. Um, so yeah, it was, it was, it was the books really. That got me into cricket as much as anything.

Last thing for the moment, do you have a favorite? I mean, they're all your children. What, 18 books? Oh, of your own, of your own. Which is the one that you've most enjoyed putting together, do you think?

I think the Jessop one, actually, because it wasn't a book— I think I've probably spoke to you about this before— I wasn't intending to write a book about him. It was only when I sort of found this newspaper cutting that showed that maybe it wasn't 76 balls as we understood that I got lured in, and then I ended up writing this book quite quickly, not ever intending to do it really. So I sort of have an affection for that. But no, I think the England, the Biography, because it was such a big subject and I wasn't sure I could ever sort of wrestle it to the ground really, as a topic was so big. So that was pleasing to do, and it's sort of what, you know, I've done for the last 30 years, following the England team around the world. So that book was a sort of bringing all those strands together, I suppose.

Jim, we often say in cricket that cricket is this wonderful fertile ground for literature. We sort of just accept it as a fact, you know, because we can reel off the names of people like C.L.R. James, Derek Burleigh, Neville Cardus, you know, Duncan Hamilton, and they all trip off the tongue. And we take it as read that actually cricket is the sport that has got the richest literature. Is it true? And if so, why do you think it's cricket that's done this?

I mean, I think it definitely is true. I'm obviously biased, but I've read more cricket books than I have about other sports. But, you know, tennis has this great sort of literary heritage. If you speak to a lot of tennis writers, they would probably say that tennis is— I actually read a tennis book called Levels of the Game, which is a famous tennis book which takes a match between Arthur Ashe and another tennis player I can't remember, but it's almost point by point, and then it goes off into their autobiographies and their stories and how they reached the point to come to this match. And I thought that was actually a great idea for a cricket book. You take an innings, say Joe Root when he takes on Sachin Tendulkar or whatever, and it's his innings but you weave in his story. And obviously there's the literary heritage and then there's the autobiographies, the sort of, you know, the straight-up player ones when they finish. But I think because cricket is— it has that tradition of— it goes right back, so it takes in, it spans a whole lot of eras of, you know, of social history as much as anything. It takes in the wars and you can look learn so much about life from cricket. So, you know, there's so many parallels. Yeah, it's a game of failure. So, you know, someone like me who sort of leans onto that melancholy side of things, you know, a cricket book is always good to dip into because it sort of teaches you about life, I think.

One of the great books I've read recently is by David Woodhouse about the 1953-54 tour of the West Indies. And you think to yourself, is this going to be a bit dry? Well, not a bit of it. So you've got riots going on, you've got countries seeking independence, you've got the England team wandering around completely naively having no idea really how to behave, you've got perceived insults left, right, and center, and in the midst of it all you've got this gripping series which finishes 2-2. And so when you're reading it, it's like a multi-stranded whodunit really, because you're not— it's like I wasn't totally familiar with the '53-'54 tour, so It's like a gripping story that you don't really know the end of, and yet you're transported, a bit like reading a bit of Agatha Christie, you know, you're sent right back in time to the '30s and '40s. I mean, with that in mind, what's the one that really gets you? What are the ones about older tours? Because that's a sort of category of book, isn't it?

Well, as you know, Daniel, we lived together in Australia for a little bit this winter, and I was certainly reading Richard Whitehead's 50— what were they? Victory in Australia.

Victory in Australia, yeah.

The Typhoon Tyson and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, well, we needed a Typhoon Tyson in the most recent Ashes tour. So I mean, I thought that, I actually messaged him, and it won a lot of awards this year, and said, you know, this is such a fantastic document of that period. And I remember flying over from Shark, over Shark Island and looking down and thinking of a couple of passages from that book because he mentions, you know, that first test at the Gabba and how febrile it is, and there's people sat on oil canisters and the heat and the scorched earth and the sky is bluer than he's ever seen before and stuff like that. So it's, yeah, it was, it's, are really sort of those books that put you in, in that place. It's quite a hard thing to do, but David Woodhouse's book certainly does that too. And yeah, I think they are, because you can often look at the footage and think, oh, this is, you know, so gentlemanly and, you know, a bit, a bit sort of, um, uh, a bit sort of passé or whatever. But those books really sort of have a visceral quality to them.

Um, also, you know, cricket writing encourages books about amateurs. You know, we're talking here about cricket and professional cricket. But some of the books that really took off were books like Rain Men, for example, and Penguin Stop Play, which sort of feel a little bit to me like almost like the fever pitch of cricket books. And, and what, what is it about that? I mean, why does everybody— I mean, and I love those books, but you get really into finding out about people that are not famous, you're never going to know. I suppose they resemble you a bit in their general incompetence and the way that they're obsessed with their own cricket and take it so seriously, but That there's a sort of category of cricket book that's like that, isn't there, Simon? Which is always really kind of charming and lovely.

Well, I just think, I just think cricket's got, because of the tempo of the game, you know, it takes, you know, a Test match takes several days, a county match takes several days, okay, recreational cricket's an afternoon, but there is sort of space for normal life to intrude and, and the, and your character is, is expressed in the game. And perhaps again, football or rugby, it's so much more condensed and so much more action-packed in a way that there isn't time for character to express itself. So I think that's why literature is so— well, cricket is so well suited to literature because of the tempo, I think, and the time for character to express itself. And that is the case in recreational cricket, village cricket, as much as it is in professional cricket.

There's a lovely book called Knot Out First Ball by Roger Morgan Grenfell, which is about his team, the White Rhinos, I think they are. And the idea is that they play games and you can't be out first ball, you know, they're that bad. And, um, his wicketkeeper is called the Human Sieve. And so he sort of becomes this wonderful character throughout the book, the Human Sieve. It's just going to go straight through him. And you're just, you know, transported into teams that you have yourself been in.

Yeah, there's Glory Gardens as well.

Shout out.

Oh yeah, Glory Gardens, which I just remembered on the way up the stairs, which are sort of teenage fiction about a teenage cricket player.

But I love those, I read them, I'm desperate for them to win every time.

Exactly, yeah, but they're a sort of, remember the Renford Rejects, they're sort of, they're not very good and you know there's squabbles and there's you know there's fights for jockeying for position and all that stuff, but as a sort of gateway fiction book into cricket they're a really good series.

I'm going to talk more about fiction shortly but Daniel Goldberg's been in touch, he loves The Greatest Test of All by Jack Fingleton who is a superb writer and player of course for Australia before the Second World War. It's about the tied test at the Gabba during the '60-'61 Australia tour. Benno versus Worrell, two captains with incredible attitude towards cricket, legendary players from history— Gary Sobers, Wes Hall, Bobby Simpson, Neil Harvey, and so forth. This series revived cricket, which was dying a slow, painful death. And that's, that's another theme that comes through in so many cricket books, isn't it? Is cricket's on the verge of death always, and it needs to be revived somehow. I mean, it's been on the verge of death since it started, from what I can gather. Um, David Griffiths' favorite is Australian Summer, the Test matches of '36-'37 by Neville Cardus, when quisling traitor Gubby Allen went down to Australia, won the first two Tests, but because the Australians were so upset at having lost in '32-'33 through perfectly legitimate tactics from Surrey legend Douglas Jardine and Harold Larwood from these parts, no one was allowed to bowl a bouncer for three months, and Australia came roaring back with a 3-2 win. Um, Richard Morton has just read Ben Bloom's Batting for Time. There's a book that tackles the existential crisis in cricket, and you get quite a few of those. They're not really social histories like, say, Derek Burleigh's or Mike Marquez's Anyone But England, but they're ones that are kind of trying to point out that we need to do something, we need to be vigilant. That, that's the kind of type of book that appears a fair bit.

Yes, it does. Yeah, I've read that book. It's, it's very interesting. Um, Yeah, I mean, you— as you say, cricket's been in crisis since, since it started, really, hasn't it? Um, I mean, my thought about sort of the early days is that one of the, um, when we had professionals and amateurs playing the game, one of the ways that the amateurs could stay involved in the game was that they were allowed to write journalism about cricket. That you could be paid for journalism, uh, without breaching the rules. For some arcane reason, that was okay.

Just to be clear to our listeners, you couldn't, for example, you just couldn't be captain of England? If you weren't an amateur. So being an amateur, that status was very significant.

Exactly. But journalism was allowed, so you had people like Pelham Warner, C.B. Fry, these sort of people, my friend Gilbert.

Percy Fender, I guess.

Percy Fender. They were journalists, and that helped them continue to play cricket. So you had this sort of class of player who— the literature became a sort of an adjunct to the game, really. You needed people writing about it. To stay involved.

So you've also got the fact that there's, there's tours going on now, you know. If you're playing a game of football, yes, I mean, somebody can write about Manchester United's or Liverpool's season or whatever, but there's something exotic, isn't there, about the 1930s, Jim? Players going on a steamship, spending— I knew you'd have written about it loads, of course, Simon— but spending ages on this boat together, then arriving in a country where there are no airplanes. It takes ages to get around. It's hot, it's dusty, the conditions are dreadful. They're all living with each stuff's gonna go wrong. I mean, that— is that partly why cricket lends itself to this kind of writing?

I think so, yeah. It is that it teaches you historical things, but it also teaches you— yeah, to go back to it— teaches you about life and friendships and how to just get on. And how those, those, those books sort of tap into something that you perhaps might not have even thought of. I remember before, it was my first tour of Australia, and I hadn't thought of, you know, what it would be like to get a however long it took on a boat to go over there, and they, you know, they entertained themselves by playing deck quoits and all this sort of stuff. It seems very, uh, I mean, completely different to what it's like these days when you get on an airplane and, you know, you can be in that country the next day. So that was definitely part of it. It was part of the, you know, the touring side of it. They were away for an awful long time, and they had to— well, W.G. Grace was on, right? He would, in those early days, he would, you know, almost make a profit out of the tours, but he'd be the only one that's making any money out of those tours.

Yes, massive profits.

Of course, the tour book has declined since TV coverage came in. In the old days, you needed the tour books written by either journalists or players to tell you what had actually happened in Australia because you couldn't see it. But obviously now, since 1990, we've had ball-by-ball live coverage on TV of every— the tour books are now— well, there aren't any really, are there?

Not really. And the tour's not as long.

No.

And there's not as much variety. I mean, you know, the players stayed in the hotel for another week. I know they also went to Noosa, but you know, That's a book in itself. Annie, when we talked earlier, you reminded me about fiction, because not all cricket literature is about fact. And you reminded me of Shehan Karunatilaka's brilliant book Chinaman. I'd forgotten how much I loved that book until you reminded me. It's one that people really should read. What is it that grabbed you about that book?

I think just it's a bit of a mystery kind of book, and it's just, it's just got extraordinary passages of writing in it. Um, it's, it's a wonderful, wonderful book. And, and also fiction, even though it's a fiction book, it teaches you a lot about, um, you know, about cricket in, in Sri Lanka. And, and so it's, it's just a great book. There's, there's, there is a lot of, um, interesting cricket fiction around. I just think it's, it's quite hard to find it. You were saying that you hadn't read a lot of cricket fiction.

Uh, there's Joseph O'Neill's Neverland as well, isn't there? That was really, really popular. And that, that set in New York, and it's about a cricket league sort of put together by the occasional shady character and, and the occasional obsessive. And it won loads of awards, and it's, it just is bizarrely wonderful.

You just—

it's so evocative of its time and its place, and the characters are so magnificently drawn. That's Joseph O'Neill, isn't he?

The O'Neill book has a great bit. He describes fielding as pulmonary, the sort of movement of fielders in and out. And I've definitely stolen that line actually from him.

I've done that on commentary because he talks about it like a lung taking in air and then coming back in again as the fielders come in and go back out again.

And I actually thought of that line. That's funny how certain lines come to you. On day one when I was walking around the concourses and about how England looked pretty ragged, you know, I was thinking, well, maybe they've gone a bit sclerotic or whatever. And there's people at the back of the concourses passed out in 36-degree heat. It all felt quite, uh, yeah, that there was an organ failing there. But, um, they've done well to get, I suppose, to cling on in this match.

Uh, Joanna Biddington, her favorite book is Penguin Stock Play by Harry Thompson. We mentioned that. She says hilarious book, tells the story of one of those great idiotic enterprises only an Englishman could have dreamt up, for 11 village cricketers to play cricket on all 7 continents of the world, including Antarctica. Made all the more poignant, of course, by the fact that Harry Thompson died shortly after publication. Felix White wrote a lovely book It's Always Summer Somewhere. And you know, that's a book which— where it is a bit like Annie, your book about how much cricket changes someone's life, how much it means to them. I mean, Felix there, uh, dealing with, with his mother, his mother. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a beautiful book, isn't it?

It is. It's, it's a really— it's a really cheerful and positive book, but also a really deeply moving book as well. I remember thinking you know, having that sort of sensation of laughing and crying at the same time. So I think that's really good in a book.

Um, I've got another one here from Dave Trussler in Leighton Buzzard. He loves Fatty Batter by Michael Simpkins. It's ages since that came out, isn't it? I mean, that's another one of those books which is about hapless teams, but you know, there's emotion in those as well, you know, because a lot of it, you know, it's about It's about elderly try-hards like me hoping for one last moment in the sun. And, you know, somebody gets a 50 in some game and it means so much to them, and it takes them away from all the torments of their daily lives. And I mean, Simon, that's part of what cricket's about, is it? The escapism.

It says—

well, what—

I mean, there's a book out, um, now, I think, by Olly Randall called Writers in Whites, which is about literary figures who loved cricket. And so J.M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, these sort of people, even War, I think.

Alec War.

Yeah, yes, exactly. So there's the, the cricket's got this, um, reputation of being, um, having a fine literature, but it's also got some great literary figures who love the game.

Oh, Edmund Blunden and all that. And that team kept going, didn't it? But in various iterations, it sort of, uh, it had the— see, Aubrey Smith, I think, played for them a couple of times, the actor. And, uh, but J.M. Barrie was an obsessive cricket fan. But then you go later on and, you know, we've got first-class cricketer who's got a Nobel Prize, Samuel Beckett. Not many have got that. Cricket's got a prime minister who's got first-class— played first-class games, Alec Douglas-Hume.

So there's a list. Yeah, I mean, cricket's got literary connections sort of everywhere, everywhere you look, really.

Um, that team is still going, right?

They—

I mean, we've played for them a couple of times, and, and there's, there's some, uh, very good writers who play there. Sebastian Faulks has played for them, and, and shout out to, uh, to John Houghton, who is a writer of some fantastic cricket.

And Simon Lister as well. Yeah, yeah, lots of really good cricketers play there.

Let's, let's just briefly touch on Houghton though, because John Houghton wrote, I think, one of The Great Cricket Books, which didn't get as much publicity as I thought it might, but he did a sort of a Damned United version of Geoffrey Boycott, didn't he? So where you've got Geoffrey's actual diaries, which are very extensive, and then John Houghton inhabits the brain of Geoffrey Boycott and gives you a second view.

And it's in second person, and it's— he put— he really puts you in there. So you think this, and you did this, and you hear it on the radio when you get selected for England. And, uh, Being Geoffrey Boycott, it's called, and you really are put in put in his brain. And Geoffrey had kept these diaries of his playing time, and John sort of took them in lockdown, I think it was, and turned them into this with, you know, with Geoffrey, turned them into this fantastic sort of, uh, the go— it's a ghostwritten book, but he can't, you know, they sort of intertwine. And yeah, it's a liminal space, isn't it?

Because half of it is actually written by Geoffrey. Yeah, because they are his diaries. Yeah. And then the other half is an interpretation of Geoffrey. Which, who knows how accurate it is, but Geoffrey was happy with it, and he wasn't— I mean, he was happy. Yeah, absolutely.

Some of it I think, oh God, really? Did Geoffrey— was Geoffrey all right with that? But apparently, apparently he was. But I, I love the fact you say it's like Damn United. It's, it's a really similar sort of style book, and, and that was a fantastic book in itself.

It was, it was superb. About Brian Clough, if you're interested. Football has its own literature as well.

Oh yeah.

The TMS Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. John Simington from North Yorkshire's got in touch. He says, first time I've, I've got in touch. I do enjoy the chatter you all have. The book I was interested in was 500 to 1. Oh yeah, about the famous Australia tour of '81. It also had an interesting background about the state of the country at the time. That, that is a feature of a lot of cricket books, that you don't just get an arid description. Everything is done in context. And of course, '81, we had the context of um, you know, the poverty, deindustrialization. Margaret Thatcher had just got in, Princess Diana riots, I think, inner-city riots, Brixton, Toxteth, and the like. And so it's sort of— it's always placing these sporting events in their social context, which is what the David Woodhouse book is very good at, In the Caribbean, as you mentioned. Absolutely, in '53, '54. And, and actually, um, Stephen Brinkley, his, his book about the 1926 series, Annie, you'd have read that for judging a couple of years ago.

Yeah, again, really good book. Yeah, yeah, there's so many, there's so many like that that are excellent. One really important book that's just been written recently is Windrush Cricket as well by Michael Collins. Again, a really good social book.

Yeah, I mean, the 19— the, the, the Breakley book about '26 is actually as much a book about the general strike as it is about cricket. So if you're interested in history, I mean, I find out from cricket books so many things about the past that I didn't know. I mean, your book, Simon, of Chasing Jessop, was brilliant on the getting inside the press box, but also understanding speed and how it was coming in and how the telegraph was being used and how suddenly people could get scores updated in no time. And these are things you don't think about in the internet age. You sit here—

I knew nothing about that really until I started researching the book and found out about the telegraph system and how newspapers were going through a revolution right around that period, really, and the new titles coming in— Daily Mail, Daily Express, etc. And things were really changing fast. And that story, which was obviously big news, they could— the newspapers could adapt to and respond to that story quickly because of the telegraph system that was evolving so fast at that point.

And that So in a way, you know, your book is as much about a fast-changing world that Jessop scored his runs in as it is about that innings. Lorraine Hill is in Coventry. She says, hi, for me it has to be first Menace by Dennis Lillee. He was the reason I became interested in cricket. A group of us in the early '80s during our lunchtime would sneak into the TV room within the school library and put the Ashes on. I fell hopelessly in love with this dark head bowler, shirt open wide, medallion swinging Dennis Lily. And another one she mentions is a heartbreaking book, of course, The Judge by Robin Smith. Oh yeah, and that's sort of— that, that's in that realm, isn't it, Annie? The sort of the Marcus Dress Gothic type book, and increasingly people being able to talk about, about those sorts of things in their lives, which they wouldn't have been able to do even 10, 15, 15 years ago.

Yeah, it's a bit like, um, some of Foxy Fowler's books and, and, um, Paul Smith's Wasted as well. It's all that same sort of thing of people talking about the bad things that happen as well, as well as just the good things.

And Rob Smythe helped Robin Smith write that book, and he really— those two worked together really closely. And they— he— I remember speaking to Rob about it, and he was saying, you know, do you want to mention this? Do you want— do you want to go to these sort of places? You know, they're very dark places. He said, absolutely, you know, this is This is my story, it's all part of it. And I thought that was an incredible book actually. And I really do like those sort of, 'cause you do get some autobiographies that are straight up and down, you know, a player finishes their career and it's kind of, you know, born here, played here, finished here, did all that sort of stuff. But those books that kind of take you to a different place or play with the format a little bit, I think are very interesting. So a great book is Kim Hughes by Christian Ryan, Golden Boy. Which is a sort of— I don't think, you know, I don't think Christian even— he just uses all this sort of source material. He doesn't speak to Kim Hughes at all. It's— but it's a remarkable sort of character study of him and, you know, his place in Australian cricket and how he didn't quite fit with the sort of macho figures at the time. And, you know, I read that recently and thought that was—

he also did a book about some photography, didn't he? Yes.

Yeah.

One Five Thousandth of a Second.

That was it.

That's right. Brilliant.

That was a very exceptional book, I thought.

I mean, there are some brilliant Australian writers. Gideon Haig would go top of the tree. Jeff Lemmon's book, Steve Smith's Men on the Sandpaper Gate stuff. Some brilliant books come out of Australia. But there's one that I'm just going to recommend to people because it was an absolute gem that went under the radar last year, and it's called Father Marriott's Summer Holiday. Wasn't that an absolute— it was very simple, 150 pages. Song, but it's about a man who played one Test match for England, took 11 wickets in that Test match, never played again. He fought in the First World War. He was friends with Edmund Blunden, who we were talking about a moment ago, one of the members of the authors' team. And he obviously had post-traumatic stress disorder, but it wasn't diagnosed in those days. And he went to teach at Dulwich College, and he would only play cricket in the summer holidays and the half term. And he used to play with a man called Titch Freeman in Kent, who took over 3,000 wickets. And when he and Freeman got together, Kent would win all their games. They got very, very close to winning the title on a number of occasions. But Father Marriott— he was called Father Marriott, he wasn't, he wasn't a— that was his nickname, he wasn't a man with a cloth— he would then abandon Kent to go back and teach, teach cricket at Dulwich. I mean, such a bizarre time. And that book is as much about, you know, the damage that the First World War did, but also the amateur-professional distinction that you're making. And, uh, and just a remarkable cricketer who averaged about 16 in first-class cricket, but no one, no one knows about him. And what's beautiful about it is when you get good writing, you kind of know, don't you? Like, in about 2 pages you feel, oh, I am safe with this person's style. And I gobbled that book up. I think it took me a long train ride, actually. I mean, I would so recommend that. Guy Dorrell says, don't forget— oh, I like this one. Yeah, Ballum to Bollywood by Chris England, a very funny book about an Indian tour by a village team. That's another, that's another absolutely classic of that particular genre. Don't people get to end up playing in—

is it playing a cricket match? Yeah, which is— Lagan, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, if you haven't seen Lagaan— I mean, I know we're talking about books.

I love that.

Read that book and watch Lagaan. It's a very long film, it's in two parts, and it's, uh, it's my favorite Bollywood movie. It's about a cricket match in about, what, 1910 or something, is it?

Set— what's your second favorite, Daniel?

My second favorite Bollywood movie? Well, I can't pronounce it all very well. Uh, right, I've got some more suggestions here. Um, Barbara Platt. According to my husband, one of the best books is First of the Summer Wine by Harry Pearson. He also says the book does not only bring to life the three great Yorkshire players George Hurst, Schofield Haigh, and Wilfred Rhodes, but also describes how the County Cricket Championship was the original and most important competition in the English summers up to the First World War, eclipsing any Test match cricket played during that period. He said that's another thing that you sort of only find out from the stadium. As a child, Jim, I used to read all the Test match scores and assume that that was what it was all about, like it is today. But in those days, actually, counties didn't want to give their players away, did they?

No.

And yeah, I'm still a member of some WhatsApp groups where they still don't, you know, where they say, you know, such and such has been picked for England, you know, we've got a big game next week. And I know you probably feel that as a— from a Surrey— all your players basically get a—

oh, I hate it. I hate it when it gets— they won't, they won't thank me for it, but I hate it when Surrey players get selected for England. Unlike, if you don't mind me saying so, Annie Somerset fans who are desperate for their players to play for England. And I just say, be careful what you hope for.

I don't feel that myself, I have to say.

That's the right— that is the spirit, Annie. Annie is a Somerset fan, if people didn't realize. They've been in the cupboard for 10 years. I've got another one here that I remembered, which I love this, because Johnny Barker he's such a fun writer. He says that Roger Miles in Angmering in West Sussex says, can I suggest John Barclay's Life Beyond the Air Ring Covered? I mean, that's a, that's a title of a book that's going to get you going for a start. A book which highlights that our county and national team players are simply regular human beings when all is said and done. The PR brigade love to promote the celebrity element, but nothing puts bottoms on seats like the whack of willow on leather, a stinging catch, the red grenade heading for the car park, all at the behest of a bunch of chaps with exactly the foibles of their audience. And you know, that's something that you—

I've read, I've read that book, it's very good. Um, I mean, you mentioned earlier Simon Hughes's A Lot of Hard Yakka, which I thought was terrific really. It's, um, it sort of really opened up the life of the county pro. Um, you know, Simon didn't play for England, but he was a very good county player, but he hung around with, as he says in the book, I hung around with a lot of of superstars like Botham, Richards, etc. So he— I thought that shed a really interesting light on the game. He was very 80s cricket. Very 80s cricket. Yes, I mean, a lot of— yes, well, let's hope they don't behave like they did then, but I fear they might do some of them.

But, um, yeah, I think standards have improved a bit actually since the '80s. Oh, the Lord Botham would have thought so. Right, I'm afraid this chat, which I could keep doing for yonks, has to come to an end because the players are coming out. So I'm going to do that invidious thing. It's cruel. I'm going to put you on the spot. You're on a desert island. Maybe you're on a desert island. You've got one book. I'm not allowing you to have Wisdom, like what's-his-name had in the prisoner of war camp, you know, E.W. Swanton.

All the works of Shakespeare.

You've got one book. I'll start with you, Jim.

Oh, um, well, I'm— yeah, I'm gonna go for John Hutton. He's been a great, uh, he's been a great mentor of mine over the years, and I think he's, he's, he's an amazingly empathetic writer, and he's so crystal clean with his prose. And The Meaning of Cricket is, I think, a really good book to, to dip in and out of, and you can keep going to it. So yeah, if I was on a desert island, it'd be one where you can dip in and out of and, you know, and commune with a lovely, lovely writer.

The Meaning of Cricket. John Harden.

Simon?

Oh, this is impossible.

It is.

It's ridiculous.

Choose one of your own if you want.

It was a book— okay, I mean, this is just random, but there's a book called The Golden Age of Cricket by Patrick Mora, which is a great account of the Golden Age era in 1893 to 1914, and it tells all the great stories of that period. And I remember reading that when I was young, and it sort of captivated that period for me. Now, I subsequently wrote books about Ranji and Jessop, so I guess that sort of got me going on on that period.

Annie, you know what's coming. I've got to be brief because the players are out. What's your favorite?

Very, very quickly then, if I had to be— Summer's Crown by Stephen Chalk, because then I'd have pictures of all the county, um, grounds as well.

That's brilliant. Do you know what, I think mine would be also by, uh, Stephen Chalk. It's, uh, No Coward's Soul, the biography of Bob Appleyard. Now you've got a favorite cricket book, Andy? I mean, Crazy question in a way, but because you might have many favorites, but let's throw in a few. Uh, well, I mean, the classic Beyond a Boundary by CLR James, that's one of my favorites. I have a soft spot for John Arlett's, uh, book about the 1954-55 Ashes, which I think was the only time he went to Australia. Ah, the first tour book. One of the first books, cricket books I read. Do you have a favorite, Michael?

Um, I've got a couple. Um, I must admit, I did enjoy Steve Waugh's Bible, his autobiography. It's very thick. Yes, did enjoy that. Uh, Tuffers Tales.

Tuffers Tales, yeah, yeah. He's a terrific writer, is Tuffers. I mean, prolific. He's written so many. Well, I think he's on to his 13th. Yeah, book.

Yeah.

Um, Simon Hughes's book, Load of Hard Yakka. Yes, that's a great fun book, isn't it?

Do enjoy that one.

My favorite book of a while is the book that Duncan Hamilton wrote about Harold Larwood. That was a terrific book, all the bodyline stuff and the atmosphere of Adelaide.

I had, uh, Your Diary of a County Season. Oh, was that about 87?

8 Days a Week. Oh yeah, gosh, yes.

I thought you were going to say Adrian Mole then.

Diary, 1988, that was.

Did you used to do a diary?

Did you ever know? It was in those— Simon Hughes wrote one, A Lot of Hard Yakko, I think it was, that's about the same time. And they hadn't really been done before.

I think a footballer had done one whose name I can't remember. Is it Eamon Dunphy?

It was.

It was, absolutely.

Goodness.

So that's very good. So suddenly there was this thought, what a great idea. And so Simon and I wrote our books at about the same time. And it was interesting because the players in our team really had no idea I mean, certainly in Leicestershire, I had no idea really that I was doing it.

Also, it was a secret.

Well, it was sort of. It had to go back. I remember every night and wrote it, but you couldn't just go and say, got up, got up at 7:30, uh, you know, had a shower. Only had to get some humor into it and, and, and, and create characters. And I did have characters. I mean, Les Taylor was just such a character. He was my roommate. I wrote about him a lot. Peter Willey. But I'm not sure how much when it came out. I'll I'm not sure how much they enjoyed it really, because it's, you know, so was it released? You've got to take the mickey a bit at the end of every summer. Oh, it was only once. Okay, there's one year, 1988, I think it was. See, Simon wrote—

it would have been competing with Adrian Moller around that time.

I interviewed Sue Townsend on Test Match Special, actually.

Yeah, she's a Leicester woman.

It was quite brave to do it because you, you say you, you couldn't just write it totally straight. But I was, I was jealous of Simon because he had both of them. So if you're writing about playing with both of them, you're away, aren't you?

You know, you really are.

And as long as you sustain possibly a bit of punishment afterwards, uh, from a disgruntled Ian, and it was okay. Jeremy Coney is alongside me. What cricket books stand out for you, Jeremy? Did you write a book?

Yes, I did, which I wrote myself. It's called The Playing Mantis.

Oh, very good.

Yes. Oh yes.

To explain that, you were known as the praying mantis.

Yes.

Was that because of your bowling particularly? What was it? What was it? What was it? Where did the praying mantis bit come from?

Usually from running and fielding, just the awkward gait.

Sort of crept in quite stealthily when you bowled, didn't you?

Well, if you weren't watching, it wasn't that long a run-up, was it really?

No.

Hugh de Selincourt, I think I remember reading I think it was called The Cricket Match, and the build-up of two very small local areas playing each other. Right. Wonderful.

There'd be so many, you know.

Yes, wonderful books, haven't they?

Neville Cardus was always someone who interested me. Gideon Hay.

Joanne Napper has emailed: As the daughter of a massive cricket fan, I had no choice but to become a fan myself. And at the age of 16 I read The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley. Fascinating stuff, my first ever leadership book. I now read leadership books as part of my job. So cricket, as you all know, is relevant to all aspects of life.

It's a book I take with me every tour I go.

Yeah, absolutely.

In my— it's in my bag at the moment.

It is a fascinating book, isn't it? Good book. Yeah, it is. I think when you read a cricket book, you, you don't want anything bland? Do you want insight? You know, because cricket takes so much time, there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. People, I want an insight into that, don't they really? But also I think they want a tactical insight as well. What's it like to be out there? What are you thinking at the time? Because we can, we can look and try to surmise what's going on, because you've been in that position as New Zealand captain. You knew what was going on out there in the middle, so you can tell us that if you choose to do so, if you choose to reveal all the details. Stephen Astin says, please save a mention for Miles Jupp's book Fibber in the Heat, a romantic truthful account of blagging of the highest order, not for profit but for love, the love of the game of cricket, worth any number of minutes to dive in, enjoy the fun. Miles is a brilliant comedy writer, performer, a classic cricket book. Well, I was kind of part of that because he, Miles, was on that tour and he turned up at Mumbai Airport And he said, well, he said, well, I'm part of your team. I said, Miles, are you? We didn't know. I didn't really know him then at all. I know him very well now. But he said, I'm working for BBC Scotland and for a newspaper in South Wales. I think it was like, okay, BBC Scotland, that's interesting. The Tour of India. That basically, Miles, he was at the Oval Test in 2005 and he thought, he looked over the press box and thought, I'd like to be in there. So he got himself on, he got himself accredited. He knew a couple of people that BBC Scotland, one in a paper in South Wales. He got himself accredited, and I think what happened with it—

I think—

so where did his reports go?

Well, this is a, this is a very good— I mean, read, read the book, everyone. It's a great book, and obviously he's a great storyteller as well. I think the first day we were there, so he was doing some reports for— he'd managed to get some commission from a newspaper in South Wales. But the first day we were there, I think we got news on our, on our WhatsApp or Texts, Simon Jones is out of the tour. So the one player he could write about, you know, with a Welsh angle, that was it straight away, right at the top of the tour. So I think he's, you know, he's got this sort of sinking feeling. But also, one of my first memories of Miles is we were— we had a flight up to, I think it was Rajkot, possibly, for the first Test match, and we had quite a long time to wait there's a few of us, we hired a hotel room because we had a long flight. We just did a hotel room kind of for the afternoon into the evening before our flight because we had nowhere to go. And Miles took a shower, but in the Indian hotel that we were in, I think he'd failed to realize that you had to pull this curtain down. So my first memory of Miles was basically seeing his bare backside in the, uh, having a shower because he hadn't realized that, you know, you needed to pull this Yes, curtain thing down. You probably stayed in hotel rooms like that.

Yes, I have.

So, you know, an unforgettable start. We became friends on that trip. And on that basis, yeah, well, you know, you do get close to people, don't you? Um, but he—

so he—

but so he didn't make any money out of working for BBC Scotland or the newspaper, so he'd make any money out, but he did eventually because he turned it into a book and then a stage show. Because he's a great performer. So he performed a state, you know, toured it around, talk about his experience called Fibre in the Heat, and then he wrote the book of it as well. So I think ultimately came out of it pretty well.

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