Your favorite cricket books which you recommend

[Nova]

Merged the thread by b555 with this thread. Check out the awesome recommendations. :)

[Vijy]

That's awesome. I have to agree with SJS50 on what he says about Cardus. There are lots of good, even great writers whose analysis could be considered more objective, but for sheer romanticism, the very reason why one watches cricket, Cardus trumps all. Same goes for BaB, which as others have pointed out isn't strictly a cricket book, but it captures the spirit and the joy of cricket.

[Crookbond]

Merged the thread by b555 with this thread. Check out the awesome recommendations. :)

Thanks! :hatsoff:

[Spiderguy252]

Standing My Ground by Matthew Hayden http://spydistrict.com/2012/04/standing-my-ground-by-matthew-hayden/ Did a quick review of this one for my website, I think this is the right forum to post it on?

[maniac]

I still have a copy of Cricket my Style and Sunny Days which my dad bought some 20+years back.....decent books...no shock value but it might come across as lame for people who enjoy cricket books written in recent times.

[badrii]

Good Share boss

[Spiderguy252]

Good Share boss

Thanks mate!

[MCcricket]

Does anyone have the FAST BOWLERS BIBLE by IAN PONT.

[Crookbond]

Which are the finest cricket books? http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/585639.html

[Sachin=GOD]

Wickets and Wonders: CricketÃÔ Rich Literary Vein

1. What makes a sport a good subject for a novel? On American shelves, baseball is king: it often feels disproportionately represented in literature, especially with football and basketball taking up so much space in the cultural landscape. (Not to mention car racing, the most-watched sport in the countryÃÕhough IÃÎ not clamoring for that Great American NASCAR Novel just yet.) But books and baseball feel like an easy fit: after all, the sport has essentially fictionalized its own history, creating a big, century-long narrative that often serves to whip up equal parts nostalgia and excitement for the modern game. It seems that the most successful sports novels are those that can exist within these big narratives, regardless of the relative popularity of the sport: horse racingàdying industry propped up by its own historyÃÔits at one end of the spectrum, while soccerÃÃiving, breathing, and still rapidly growingÃÔits at the other, but great novels have been written about both. ItÃÔ not particularly surprising, then, that great novels have been written about cricket. Cricket fans hate lazy comparisons to baseball, but the literary analogy is an apt one here: if baseball is America, then cricket isÃÃr rather, wasængland. From Dickens (the All-Muggleton versus Dingely Dell match, in The Pickwick Papers) to P. G. Wodehouse (who played amongst remarkably impressive literary company on an XI that sometimes included Arthur Conan Doyle, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne, G. K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells, and just about every other late Victorian writer who went by his first two initials), cricket served as a means to celebrateÃÃr criticizeÃÔomething intrinsically English: a game fashioned in the image of a nation. British culture has moved on in the intervening years; these days, soccer is clearly the ruling game. Cricket now belongs to the nations of the Commonwealth: the sport has huge international appeal and is dominated by the former colonies of the British Empire, from the Indian subcontinent to the West Indies to southern Africa to Oceania. The literary history of cricket, in turn, is a lesson in colonialism and post-colonialism. Cricket enthusiasts began building the sportÃÔ narrative in the Victorian eraÃÕhey wanted it to represent the idea of a near-fictional England, with an emphasis on the rural and the ancient, a construction that they exported to the farthest reaches of the British Empire. The sport wasÃÂnd still isÃÊmbued with a deep sense of morality. In 1909, Ford Madox Ford wrote, Åñplaying cricket is synonymous with pursuing honourable courses. ůot cricket was code for unsportsmanlike and ungracious conduct; abroad, the same phrase evoked a sense of disorder that the colonizing British felt the need to conquer and set right, however misguided (and extraordinarily harmful) those impulses may have been. As cricket circumnavigated the globe, its narrative began to splinter and grow in different ways, but the idea of cricket as a gentlemenÃÔ game remained. By the mid-twentieth century, cricket was being used as a metaphor and an argument for self-rule in the colonies. Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. JamesÃÔ Beyond a Boundary, equal parts memoir and treatise, is politics by cricketÃÂnd considered one of the greatest sports books of all time. In the twenty-first century, these legacies remain. WeÃÓe left with two wonderful post-colonial novels in which cricket plays a central role: Joseph OïeillÃÔ 2008 critical darling, Netherland, and Shehan KarunatilakaÃÔ extraordinary Chinaman, published that same year in Sri Lanka and the winner of this yearÃÔ Commonwealth Book Prize. It was released this spring in the U.S., re-titled The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. Reading these books side by side, you see more differences than similarities: old world versus new, and old styles versus new, as well, the occasionally stifling Ã…Ãyrical Realism, to borrow Zadie SmithÃÔ critique of Netherland, versus the beautifully erraticîichael Ondaatje rightly said that Pradeep Mathew was Å crazy ambidextrous delight. Stylistically, structurally, and thematically, Netherland and Pradeep Mathew are wildly divergent. But the story of cricket is embedded deeply in both narratives, along with the code of ethics that rules the sport, however constructed those ideas might be. To read these novels as ÅÄricket books is to attempt to understand the story of cricket; without that shared narrative, weÃÅ be left with a pair of books about lonely guys who can barely handle the reins of their own lives. 2. CricketÃÔ exact origins are somewhat contentious, but the first recorded matches of the game as we recognize it today took place in England in the mid-1500s. Two centuries later, it was the national sport. The game was considered a ÅÓough one then, known for its violence and played for large sums of money, which invariably attracted the sort of spectator looking to turn a quick profit. By the nineteenth century, cricket had evolved into a deeply classist affair: ÅÈentlemen, amateurs mostly from the upper classes who learned to play in public schools, were pitted against ÅÑlayers, professionals mostly from the lower classes. Gentlemen were widely known for batting, and the best among them were celebrated for their elegance and their economy of movement; players, meanwhile, were the workhorses, saddled with the less-glamorous and more physical task of bowling. (A woman was rumored to have invented the overarm bowlÃÉer hoopskirt got in the way of overhand tossesÃÃecause in mixed-gender games, men would always bat, while women would always bowl. In reality, the overarm bowl was invented by a man, but the stratified imagery remains.) In the colonies, as the British taught the game to their new subjects, colonists would inevitably be cast in the role of players, bowling to their batting colonizers. For a comprehensive history of cricket and literature, it seems best to start with Anthony BatemanÃÔ Cricket, Literature and Culture, published in 2009. ItÃÔ probably one of the most readable and lively academic books IÃ×e ever come across. Bateman is concerned with the Ã…Ãiteraturization of cricket, the process by which written material fed into and influenced changing perceptionsÃÂnd eventually, the institutionalizationÃÃf cricket over the past two centuries. To introduce links between the sport and literature, thereÃÔ Benny Green, a cricket historian: ůot only does cricket, more than any other game, inspire the urge to literary expression; it is almost as though the game itself would not exist at all until written about. Bateman begins with the Reverend James Pycroft and his wildly popular 1851 book The Cricket Field, which celebrated what would later be known as Å®uscular ChristianityÇ÷Å doctrine that saw physical weakness as evidence of spiritual shortcomings against which Christian faith, clean living, self-discipline and exercise in the form of team sports was the only cure. Bateman later describes the book as Ã…Ãvertly xenophobic? Pycroft wrote, Å©ence it has come to pass that, wherever her MajestyÃÔ servants have ÃÄarried their victorious arms and legs, wind and weather permitting, cricket has been played. Still the game is essentially Anglo-Saxon. Foreigners have rarely, very rarely, imitated us. As cricket evolved from a rough folk game to the sport of public schoolboys and gentlemen batsmen, it began to take on the pastoral and nostalgic overtones that it carries to this day (though it was celebrated in the Victorian era, in the twenty-first century, this sort of stuff isnÃÕ usually seen as positiveÃØith its white sweater vests and seemingly sleepy pace, cricket often feels anachronistic and stuffy to outsiders). But more importantly than all of that, it was an English gameÃÕhe same celebration of the pastoral as something deeply English was happening across the country, in music, art, and popular literature. Cricket was well suited for the task. Neville Cardus, one of the most celebrated cricket writers of the twentieth century, wrote that ÅÄricket more than any other game is inclined toward sentimentalism and cant. Cricketing idealism carried the British upper classes blithely into the First World WarÃóWhen the sons of old England are all driven from their native land by foreign foes, thenÃÂnd not till thenÃØill the bat, the ball, and the wicket be laid aside and forgotten, wrote Nicholas Wanostrocht half a century priorÃÂnd nostalgia for the pre-war days in the twenties and thirties featured a great deal of wistful cricket talk: the long, slow afternoons on the pitches of some fantasy Edwardian England stood in for the relative innocence that was decimated by the war. Far from these mythical fields, cricket was an integral part of the expansion of the British Empire. Bateman writes that the spread of the sport was Ã…Ãften informal, uneven and geographically specific©Ãot part of a straightforward, centrally controlled and consciously executed ÃÄivilising mission? Cecil Headlam (whose racism Bateman later describes as Ã…Ã’uite staggering but casually-expressed? summed up the general trajectory of the invading Britons: ŧirst the hunter, the missionary, and the merchant, next the soldier and the politician, and then the cricketerÃÕhat is the history of British colonisation. And of these civilising influences the last may, perhaps, be said to do least harm. On the surface, there was some truth to thatÃÄolonists were being taught a sport, not converted or taxed or conscriptedÃÃut these test matches arrived with a rigid ideas about race and class: colonists were relegated to perpetual bowling slots, and when rules were misunderstood or their play was unorthodox or Ã…Ãot cricket? colonizers would chalk it up to racial inferiority, the idea that no non- (white) Englishman could ever master the game. But modernity arrived, and before long, white and non-white colonists alike were sending their best players for tours of EnglandÃÂnd the English began to lose. (The 1932 Bodyline affair, in which the English, tired of losing to Australia, resorted to some largely Ã…Ãot cricket tactics to take down Australian great Donald Bradman, is still known as one of the most infamous and important events in the sportÃÔ history.) It was under the changing landscape of international cricket that C.L.R. James emerged. Ťricket had plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it, he wrote in Beyond a Boundary, published in 1963. Ÿhen I did turn to politics, I did not have too much to learn. Bateman writes that James works within the tradition of English cricket writingÃópart of a broader discourse of Englishness that functioned©¼by] rendering culture no longer a construct to be fought overÇ÷and turns that tradition on its head, arguing for Caribbean sovereignty within EnglandÃÔ own prescribed set of terms. This echoed throughout all cricket-loving nations in the decades that followed: the former colonists took cricket and expropriated it for themselves, though in the process, they overlaid their own cultural concerns and political conflicts on the game. In Netherland, we find a mix of cricket refugees, Commonwealth immigrants exiled in cricket-averse New York City, navigating the politics of America while trying to uphold the ideals of the sport. And in Pradeep Mathew, all of Sri Lankan politics are wrapped up in all of Sri Lankan cricket, played under the thumb of a decades-long civil warÃÃne in which the eponymous cricketer has inevitably gotten tangled. 3. To most Americans, there is something inexplicably foreign about cricket. On the surface, it is pretty similar to baseball, at least compared to just about any other sport: bats and balls and runs and inningsÃÃike baseball, cricket is heaven for statisticians. But perhaps the similarities throw us off: we watch a few minutes, expecting it to be perfectly analogous and comprehensible, and are irreparably jarred by the differences. (The funniest example of our perceptions of cricket might be a sketch that, despite coming from the Dutch comedy show Å«iskefet? is entitled Ÿhat playing cricket looks like to Americans on YouTube, and involves a giant chessboard, a freestanding set of swinging doors, and commentary full of gibberish.) Halfway through the nineteenth century, baseball and cricket were on equal footing hereÃÊf anything, cricket was the more popular of the twoÃÃut during and after the Civil War, baseballÃÔ Ã…Ãational pastime narrative was constructed and spread. Baseball was supposedly more egalitarianÃÊt could be played in any open space, rather than cricketÃÔ proscribed pitchesÃÂnd its promoters sold the game on a national level as a uniquely American sport. Cricket stayed local, largely in the big cities of the Northeast, and faded from the American consciousness. But when immigration laws were loosened in the sixties, members of the Commonwealth nations began to arrive, and cricket quietly came back to America. Today, an estimated 200,000 people play the sport in some organized way in the U.S., mostly in amateur leagues and casual games on weekends. It is within this slow cultural turn that we can locate Netherland, Joseph OïeillÃÔ 2008 novel which, according to the sticker affixed to my paperback copy, President Obama has described as both ÅÇascinating and ÅØonderful (he turned to it when he was ÅÔick enough of briefing books in the spring of 2009). Netherland was a big hit: broad critical praise, prestigious awards, and a firm place in the pantheon of very-recent post-9/11 fictionÃÕhe subject is dealt with quietly but pervasively, a heavy undercurrent running through the entire anxiety-laden narrative. Irish-born OïeillÃÔ protagonist, Hans van den Broek, is a Dutch financial analyst living in New York City before and after September 11, trying to mend a disintegrating marriage and searching for a metaphorical and metaphysical place in both the city and the country. He finds the Staten Island Cricket Club, the oldest in America and an organization that is today largely frequented by these Commonwealth immigrantséans is the only white man on a team that is made up of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and West Indians, Ã…Ãominally, three Hindus, three Christians, a Sikh, and four Muslims. On a foreignerÃÔ map of New York City, these are growing but often largely invisible groups, relegated to enclaves at the far ends of subway lines: in the early pages of Netherland, Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian who is HansÃÔ closest friend through most of the book, makes an impassioned speech to this effect, which starts with the Ã…Ãot cricket expressionÃÉe is discussing some poor behavior on the field prior to that eveningÃÔ game. He then draws some fairly unsubtle but potent metaphors about cricket and those who play it in America: Ūn this country, weÃÓe nowhere. WeÃÓe a joke. Cricket? How funny. So we play as a matter of indulgence. And if we step out of line, believe me, this indulgence disappears. What this means is, we have an extra responsibility to play this game right. We have to prove ourselves. We have to let our hosts see that these strange-looking guys are up to something worthwhile. I say ÃÔee. I donÃÕ know why I use that word. Every summer the parks of this city are taken over by hundreds of cricketers but somehow nobody notices. Now thatÃÔ nothing new, for those of us who are black or brown. As for those who are notÇ÷Chuck acknowledged my presence with a smileÃóyouÃÃl forgive me, I hope, if I say that I sometimes tell people, You want a taste of how it feels to be a black man in this country? Put on the white clothes of the cricketer. Put on white to feel black. Chuck often speaks in big, sweeping metaphors. (Later, he tells Hans: ÅñThe noble bald eagle represents the spirit of freedom, living as it does in the boundless void of the sky. I turned to see whether he was joking. He wasnÃÕ. From time to time, Chuck actually spoke like this.? Playing cricket, living by cricketÃÔ values, becomes a metaphor for quiet assimilation. In the first cricket scene, Hans describes the pitch on which they play, where the grass is never cut properly. On a traditionally kept pitch, with its trimmed grass, a skilled batsman will try to bank bouncing shots along the ground. In tall grasses, this is rendered impossible: Ťonsequently, in breach of the first rule of batting, the batsman is forced to smash the ball into the air©Ând batting is turned into a gamble. Hans later realizes that he is going to have to change his batting style if he wants to play cricket in America, so to speak. But as the only person of privilege on the teamÃØhite, wealthy, Westernéans consciously separates himself from his teammates. Å£ut it was, I felt, different for them. They had grown up playing the game in floodlit Lahore car parks or in rough clearings in some West Indian countryside. They could, and did, modify their batting without spiritual upheaval. I could not. HansÃÔ friendship with Chuck reorients that map of New York both physically and spirituallyÃÕraveling the long stretch of Coney Island Avenue, in South Brooklyn, or across Hillside Avenue, in the far reaches of Queens. Chuck pushes him forward, however slightly, towards action; Hans is the sort of passive and permissive character whose lack of movement becomes a plot point. But cricket remains an undercurrent, as the plot meanders: Chuck wants to start a cricket club in New York, to plow out an old Brooklyn airfield and open a cricket stadium, to reignite an American passion for the sport that died more than a century ago. He has other schemes, lots of schemes, and these are the least life threatening (we learn within the first pages of the book that he has turned up dead in the Gowanus Canal). But for Hans, cricket in America is a moral dilemma: Ã…Ãn the one hand, my sense of an innings as a chanceless progression of orthodox shotsÃÊmpossible under local conditionsÃÂnd, on the other hand, the indigenous notion of batting as a gamble of hitting out. When he finally makes the leap, and smashes one out of the park, so to speak (only to be called out soon after): Å¢nd everything is suddenly clear, and I am at last naturalized. 4. If Netherland is a book of cricketing outsiders, what does the sport look like from the inside, from the heart of the cricket-loving world? We can turn, then, to Sri Lanka: the narrator and hero of Shehan KarunatilakaÃÔ The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a washed-up, alcoholic sports writer named W.G. Karunaseraøiji to his Sri Lankan friends, ŸeeGee to the English ones, and Gamini to his long-suffering wife. He himself longs to be known by his initials onlyÃóW.G. May not roll of the tongue, but I like how it sounds. Come W.G., letÃÔ put a drink. W.G. at your service madam. IÃÎ sorry, Mr. W.G., but we cannot refund your bet. Sadly, the only place my initials appear is where I place them myself. Wiji is an extraordinarily charming narratorÃÂnd a suitably unreliable one. Cricket isnÃÕ merely a metaphor here, as it is in Netherland, though it often serves as one: Wiji treats cricket as he does alcoholÃÉis passion for both is painful and debilitating, and he cannot live without either. He doesnÃÕ waste any time getting into the details of it, to both his amusement and the bewilderment of the uninitiated reader. From page 6, Ťlean Bowled? The simplest dismissal is when the bowler knocks over the batsmanÃÔ wickets. Mathew did this with most of his victims. He sent left-arm chinamen, googlies, armballs and darters through pads and feet. Here is a not-so-random sample of batsmen whose balls he dislodged. Border. Chappell. Crowe. Gatting. Gavaskar. Gower. Greenidge. Hadlee. Imran. Kapil. Lloyd. Miandad. You are shaking your head. You are closing the book and frowning at the cover. Rereading the blurb at the back. Wondering if a refund is out of the question. On the surface, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is about the search for Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew, a Sri Lankan cricketer who seems to have slipped from the record books, even though peoples vague memories and sketchy stories paint a portrait of one of the greatest and most mercurial players in Sri LankaÃÔ history. (The original title, Chinaman, refers to a common type of bowling style.) In the opening lines of the novel, another list: Ÿhy, you ask, has no one heard of our nationÃÔ greatest cricketer? Here, in no particular order. Politics, racism, power cuts, and plain bad luck. If you are unwilling to follow me on the next God-knows-how-many pages, re-read the last two sentences. They are as good a summary as I can give from this side of the bottle. Politics, racism, power cutsÃÊn a few words, the story of Sri Lankan cricket, and, in turn, Sri Lanka, unfurl: Mathew is Tamil, and, unrelated or not, seems to have made some shady deals. But the entirety of the novel takes place within the long, bloody stretch of the Sri Lankan Civil war, which began in 1983 and ended just three years ago. This book couldnÃÕ exist without that context. Like C.L.R. James, this is politics by sport, though Karunatilaka often muddies these waters; the analogies arenÃÕ nearly as cut and dry. Wiji is a poor detective, though what he lacks in focus and skill he makes up for in enthusiasm. To reduce this novelÃÆither of these novelsÃÕo books ÅÂbout cricket is to take away from all the amazing things that Karunatilaka does here: the entire book, with its brief episodes, lists, and anecdotes, is sleight-of-hand, but the sort that leaves you feeling gratified in the end, rather than cheated. But to say that Pradeep Mathew isnÃÕ ÅÂbout cricket is also a gross misrepresentation: there are diagrams, photographs, statistics, random asides, and all the rules of the sport in what seems like the completely wrong order, so that a cricket novice might close the back cover and say, Ū still donÃÕ really understand how this game is basically played. ItÃÔ as though your drunk uncle set out to explain something to you, giving you all the wrong information at the wrong time and getting far too excited about minor details or non-sequitursÃØhich, I suppose, is exactly whatÃÔ happening here. In Pradeep Mathew we come at the sport from the most unusual angles, but luckily, our understanding of the game deepens in turn. Running beneath all of this is politics. Wiji sees it, acknowledges itÃÊn some ways, heÃÔ internalized it long agoÃÃut he stops every so often to lay it out, and to explain some basic things to a non-Sri Lankan, which is helpful to a Western reader trying to sort out cultural differences from cricket talk. Like when Karunatilaka revisits the rebel South African tours: in the eighties, South Africa was banned from international cricket as a result of Apartheid, but test matches were still organized and staged by South Africa, luring players desperate for money and able to overlook any political or moral misgivings. Or when heÃÔ talking with his English friend, Jonny, about the British ability to set aside conflicts of nationality and culture on the sporting field, something, he says, Sri Lankans didnÃÕ manage to inherit: Sri Lanka is filled with many shades of brown©ªt is not so much the colours as the ideas that these colours spawn that I find objectionable. The united super-race of Britons may have started it when they, among other things, segregated our cricket clubs. Though it is perhaps unfair and inaccurate to lay the blame for our racial problems on the streets of Downing or the palaces of Buckingham. Despite the existence of a Sinhalese Sports Club, a Tamil Union, a Moors SC, a Burgher Recreation Club and a perversely christened Nondescripts Cricket Club, cricket as a sport refuses to be segregated. Clubs grab talent regardless of vowels or consonants or moustaches or chalk. So much for divide and conquer. In the end, at the heart of The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a deep, unwavering love for cricketÃÂnd just as we inevitably fall for the storyÃÔ narrator, we come to love the sport itself, despite its history or its faults. In a world where facts and statistics are painstakingly recorded and often celebrated, we find just as much joyÃÃŽaybe moreÃÊn something less tangible: the idea of the game, and the people devoted to it. Early on, Karunatilaka snags us easily, seducing even the most skeptical reader. From Å´ales Pitch, weÃÓe hooked: If youÃ×e never seen a cricket match; if you have and it has made you snore; if you canÃÕ understand why anyone would watch, let alone obsess over this dull game, then this is the book for you.

The Millions

[Cricketics]

Your favorite cricket books which you recommend I feel there are plenty of great books. From autobiographies to some great write up, I reckon we will have a lot of books which are worth reading but we don't know about. So let's share some of those top ones. I must mention John Wright's - Indian summers. I haven't completed this one but I just re ordered so that I can finish this one off. So mention the good ones all.

[philcric]

Both Aakash Chopra's books, Beyond the blues and Out of the blue, are pretty decent. Not great literature wise but they do give good insight into the travails of domestic Indian players. Out of the two, I'd recommend 'Out of the blue' first. This is about Rajasthan's journey from obscurity to winning the Ranji championship. It's more about the other players of the Rajasthan squad. Beyond the blues is more about Aakash Chopra himself after getting dropped from the Indian team.

[Crookbond]

We have a thread on some book reviews/recommendations. http://www.indiancricketfans.com/showthread.php?t=178347

[chilkuchikku]

Hello! Does anyone know where I can find these cricket books by Cardus, Fingleton, Frith, Arlott, etc. They are not available on the usual online bookshops. Are there are any used book shops or public libraries where I can find them?

[The Outsider]

Hello! Does anyone know where I can find these cricket books by Cardus, Fingleton, Frith, Arlott, etc. They are not available on the usual online bookshops. Are there are any used book shops or public libraries where I can find them?

Marine Sports in Bombay. They have pretty much everything.

[Sachinism]

Marine Sports in Bombay. They have pretty much everything.

Call beforehand to make sure they have things in stock. Wasted a day getting to the bloody place and came out with one book as most other things weren't available then

[chilkuchikku]

@ L'Etranger & Sachinism: Thank you!