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    I strongly recommend the book of the Channel 4 series in 1984 where Brearley chatted with Arlott. Very open and frank.

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      I'm currently reading Why We Kneel, How We Rise by Michael Holding, not strictly a cricket book, but I cannot recommend it enough.

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        Has anyone read Bat Ball & Field? It's got a blurb, on it from Hilary Mantel praising its writing but also one from Tom Holland.

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          I note that it is now our in softcover.

          Haven't read it, but like Hotten in general

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            Oh that's a g0od recommendation. I'm not sure from the back whether it's something interesting or something to get for a cousin who once said they like cricket.

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              I was going to post in the Warne thread but the last post there is from VT and I don't feel like bumping it.

              I'm going through this year's Wisden that arrived this week. The tribute to Warne was very well judged. I liked the mini interviews with the batters who were his 100th, 200th etc. wickets. Only Alec Stewart comes across poorly I think but that might be my anti-surrey anti-him bias speaking.

              It was a bit disappointing to read Heyhoe Flint say South Africans not playing in the first world cup was a victory for politics. But I guess that's cricket for you.

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                I got my Wisden over the weekend and am firmly of the belief that it needs a change of editor. The women's coverage is an absolute joke - 11 pages for the World Cup, full scorecards for only the semi finals and final. The men's T20 World Cup in contrast gets 45 pages, full scorecards for everything after the first phase. Potted scorecards for most of the white ball women's games elsewhere, including the Ashes, the Commonwealth Games bar the semis and the final and the England home summer. The overview of women's cricket in general gets all of three pages. All stuff that might have been acceptable a decade back but the world's moved on since then.

                One woman who does get substantial coverage is the Queen, whose passing is marked by six pages of content plus the first entry in the obituary section. Some bloke from the Times writes that the rain at the Oval Test on the day of her death was the sky crying. Somebody actually wrote and published that in 2023.

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                  Wait until they cut another 100+ pages next season (per Booth's interview with Collins)

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                    I think Booth is inching Wisden forwards, but understandably is cautious given that much of it's readership probably thinks the greatest scandal of 2023 was the threat to end Eton vs Harrow being played at Lords. That said, he doesn't seem to get particularly engaged with women's cricket.

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                      They must think that they are doing ok though. There is a bit in the summary of the first world cup about how little regard Wisden paid that tournament and women's cricket in general.

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                        Maybe they think that the increased number of women in the 5 cricketers of the year (1 in 2009, 1 in 2014, 7 from 2018 onwards) and the woman cricketer of the year award (since 2015) is sufficient.

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                          I remember Booth proudly announcing a few years back that they were launching a dedicated section for all women's cricket played, but they need to fill it out more. They still give 37 pages to schools cricket, which feels a massive anachronism now.

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                            Maybe less of an anachronism now that is the only route to becoming a test cricketer in England - assuming they also cover South African schools cricket too.

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                              Well there is always the mild entertainment of seeing the entire England team in old Wisdens (there's an edition around the turn of the century featuring a picture of Alastair Cook with a pudding bowl haircut) but most of it is just unnecessary reviews and averages. I think the world would keep turning if we didn't learn that G.T.C. Allom scored 173 runs at 27.16 for St George's College, Weybridge.

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                                But presumably, his parents buy Wisden to see his name there so there's a commercial logic to it.

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                                  Reading "The Great Tamasha" at last it's ok so far. The first third is mostly a rehash of Guha (which I know is out of print) with a few interviews thrown in.

                                  The interviews are a bit odd, either someone retells an anecdote or a politician in openly disengenuous towards him. Oh and the mention of a tight t-shirt and hair flicking was a bit weird when interviewing a female TV producer. The bit on Pujara was genuinely touching though.

                                  I'm writing as I've just got to this

                                  https://twitter.com/NationaliseMCC/status/1670421751522631683?t=DJSyj8SzTjzWfWGFKky0wA&s=19
                                  Last edited by Levin; 18-06-2023, 13:34.

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                                    It's not a bad book. It just has a few things that annoy me.

                                    The whole page

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                                      Turning Over The Pebbles is an excellent memoir by Mike Brearley. Its premise is how age gives you a second wisdom that is a chance to overcome the selfishness and impatience of your young and middle years. It's best read in tandem with his 'On Cricket' (2018) as it really gives you the philosophical grounding for the views expresses on the game in the earlier book. Brearley taught philosophy for three years for signing for Middlesex in 1971when he was 27-28.

                                      He acknowledges the luck he needed in 1981 to beat a more talented side, notably the pneumonia that Lillee had in the first part of the tour that knackered his preparation (and Chappell skipping the series, and Hughes being the wrong choice to captain).

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                                        Elephant In The Stadium by Arunabha Sengupta, on India's 1971 victory at The Oval, but also much more: an analysis of how and why cricket histories are selectively created and remembered, and how so much cricket lore is myth distorted by power.

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                                          Oh that sounds interesting.

                                          I finished the Great Tamasha. I was perhaps a bit hard on it, the authorial voice annoyed me though. There was too much of him in it and it was written very much as an outsiders perspective. There was a little Warne interview that was lovely.

                                          I kept getting glimpses of interesting things that could have been expanded. For example, the deal that allowed the IPL teams to use local stadiums etc was that they had to give 20% of tickets to the stadium owners. Astil kept mentioning that the TV money amounts the teams got were going down over time but never explained why. Was it all given as a lump sum rather than over the length of the contract.

                                          Overall the book raised more questions than answers

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                                            Sounds a lot like India in general tbf.

                                            A microcosm of the country, as a whole.

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                                              Originally posted by Levin View Post
                                              It's not a bad book. It just has a few things that annoy me.

                                              The whole page

                                              PS.
                                              That's a fascinating extract.

                                              Very pertinent to my personal circumstances.

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                                                Finally read my battered little paperback copy of Another Bloody Tour. Very amusing in a posh, arrogant Oxbridge kind of way, although the lofty style of writing and a lot of the wry, anti-PC asides have not aged that well. Still, you can see why your average testosterone-driven English Test Match cricketer of the mid-80s might not have been keen on the idea of having a smart and witty woman along for the ride, especially one taking notes for a book.

                                                Edit: expanding a little. The book is hugely readable if you were following cricket around this time. The author doesn't take herself or the game seriously at all, and doesn't really give a shit what anyone thinks about her, which is probably a good trait to have as a very opinionated writer. Favourite scene: during the third day of the fifth test when she turns around and finally confronts a really annoying Yorkshireman and contradicts him, but in Latin.

                                                I always liked (now ex-) husband Phil as a cricketer because he played with a smile. Some players in there I hadn't thought about in decades - Greg Thomas, Neil Foster, Bruce French. Gooch going to South Africa under apartheid was also completely forgotten about by the time he became England captain a few years later and was scoring triple centuries. Until I picked up the book, I'd completely forgotten about it too.

                                                Anyone read Edmonds' other diary, Cricket XXXX Cricket?
                                                Last edited by imp; 01-12-2023, 15:12.

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                                                  Another Bloody Tour is one of my favourite cricket books but the enjoyment depends on knowing that England are being hammered by a great side by the primary means of lethal fast bowling. The Australia book doesn't have that: it's a weak England side beating an even weaker Australia one. The players are probably more guarded around her and it has all the familiar problems of trying to write a sequel to a classic.

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                                                    Another Bloody Tour is also interesting from the perspective that it’s written by someone who acknowledges that they’re writing it during a moment of cultural change - at least from a sporting perspective - with the relationship between players and press beginning to sour as the tabloids focussed on and made up stuff about players’ private lives. I first read it in 2004, at the point where Andrew Flintoff was maturing into an all-rounder of such consistent class that the wait for the new Botham was officially all over. I remember hoping that someone would give him a copy of the book and tell him to mentally digest the lessons within it. Ironically, it was a spell of indiscipline in the Caribbean, after a whitewash (albeit in Australia) that saw him briefly having to deal with the same pressures/criticism as Botham in early ‘86. The sense of a hero being publicly willed into becoming a villain.

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