First, a disclaimer: we went to Jarrod’s wedding. Set against that is the fact that he’s Australian, so we probably average out as being impartial.

People always talk about the swearing and the sex references when they talk about Jarrod’s writing. Jarrod himself often plays up to this, but he’s doing himself a disservice in doing so. It makes it sound gimmicky, when it’s nothing of the sort. The truth is, he’s a sharp writer and the occasional ‘fucken’ is just window dressing.

When Freddie Became Jesus is about the 2009 Ashes, but it’s best when it’s not about that. The parts about the action itself, while energetically-described, are the weakest parts of the book, because the series is in the past now. It’s far better when he can draw conclusions that still ring true.

He deflates Australian pundits who talk up once-in-a-generation cricketers by pointing out that there were no fewer than five once-in-a-generation cricketers in the 2009 Ashes squad and for someone who would hate to be called politically correct, Jarrod can’t bear the one-dimensional look of the Npower girls:

They’re such great role models for young girls coming to the cricket for the first time: be white, dye your hair blonde, remain under size-12 and apply fake tan and you too can be popular at the cricket.

There’s also a nice running joke about Phil Hughes’s inane contributions on Twitter. “Need to dig deep today.”

The book builds to a climax with the series going to the last match, the wedding in the offing and Jarrod’s media exposure going through the roof (or at least into the loft).

If you buy When Freddie Became Jesus, you will enjoy it. We can’t state it much better than that.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
11 Comments »

Jarrod Kimber from Cricket With Balls has written another book. We’ve not actually read it yet, but we feel we’re on pretty safe ground recommending it. If you’ve read his site, you know the kind of thing to expect.

The book is about the 2009 Ashes series and being as Jarrod’s Australian, it must have been pretty tough for him to spend so long writing about what was a pretty humiliating defeat for his side. We think you should buy the book on that basis alone.

Plus, it’s only seven quid in hardback, which is a bloody good deal.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
10 Comments »

We were supposed to review this ages ago. Note to publishers: don’t push cricket stuff during the Ashes. We know it’s the cricket Christmas, but everyone’s a bit busy.

Ask Bearders is subtitled Answers to the World’s Most Challenging Cricket Questions. It’s a compilation of Bill Frindall’s columns for the BBC where he answered mostly statistical questions posed by readers.

We expected not to like it, because questions like ‘who were the first 10 bowlers to bowl a thousand maidens in Tests?’ leave us cold. While there is a lot of that, there are also a fair few decent questions and Frindall’s answers often lighten up some of the drearier ones.

To a question about an innings played by Test Match Special’s Jonathan Agnew, Frindall’s response starts: ‘No-one in their right mind should remember anything about the batsmanship of Jon Agnew.’

The book also taught us that David Lloyd’s nickname is ‘because his profile, involving a prominent probscis, is not unlike that of animation characters called ‘Bumblies’ featured in one of the late Michael Bentine’s children’s television programmes’.

Because of its format, you can’t read much of this book in one go, but it’s good to dip in and out of. We recommend keeping it in a place where you might regularly find yourself sitting down for five or ten minutes at a time with nothing to keep you occupied. We won’t name that place.

Get Ask Bearders from Amazon here.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
2 Comments »

At what point does a book become so bad that you actually find yourself wanting to read it?

There are some great reviews of Ronnie Irani’s book, No Boundaries, on Amazon:

“I once bought a Man United shirt with the name of Keith Gillespie on the back days before the club swapped him for Andy Cole. At the time I was skint and devastated by the wasted cash. I thought nothing could top that… In the last 14 years nothing has. Until now.”

That was a one star review. In all there are 19 one star reviews, two five star reviews and nothing in between.

Here’s another one star:

“This is by some margin the worst book I’ve ever read.”

And another:

“I would rather read the back of a crisp packet.”

It’s not all bad, though:

“Although devoid of any real content, interesting anecdotes, humour etc you don’t get his voice grating on you.”

After reading all of the reviews, we find that Irani’s book has gone beneath being so bad we want to read it, so we’re going to give it a miss.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations, Ronnie Irani by King Cricket
6 Comments »

While Lawrence Booth’s posts sometimes nestle next to ours on the Wisden Cricketer blog, we’ve never actually spoken to him, so you can be assured of our impartiality.

Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict’s Guide To The World’s Most Exasperating Game is officially recommended.It’s kind of an overview of the game as it currently stands; a primer to tell you everything you really need to know. Not the rules or the records, but the culture of the game.

As we read it, we continually thought it was the kind of book we’d try and foist onto a friend who didn’t like the sport to trick them into entering our world. ‘See, it’s not shit,’ would be our implicit message. But if you’re worried it’s a book for those new to cricket, it’s not.

We probably read more cricket writing than most, but there were plenty of good stories in here that we’d never heard before and Booth’s also a writer who’s not averse to sneaking out the kinds of stories that cricketers and cricket writers usually keep to themselves.

A man who writes a chapter on the language of cricket has to know the clichés well enough to steer clear of them and Booth is a writer who seems like he thinks about each of his sentences. We’re not sure he could write a duff cricket book. Buy it from Amazon, if you haven’t got a copy already.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
6 Comments »

You have to write in some detail when you do a book review, but in our eyes there are two main types of books. There are books that you enjoy and there are books that you have to force yourself to read.

We enjoyed What I Love About Cricket and as long as we don’t feel like we’ve wasted time on a book, we’re happy with it. Now for more detail. Some of the following may seem negative, but bear in mind that these criticisms are from a perspective of having liked the book.

[Read more →]

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
12 Comments »

He claims it’s got better spelling and grammar than the website, but he’s put ‘disrepsective’ on the page where he’s selling the thing, so do you trust him on that?

The writer of Cricket With Balls gives us The Year Of The Balls 2008: a cricket disrespective. Part with your hard-earned and support the man.

We thought about doing a book once, but we Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Ved our way to a standstill. Writing books is hard, even if you’ve already done all the writing.

Tags: Cricket books | reviews and recommendations by King Cricket
8 Comments »

Yes, it’s good. There’s a review for you.

Okay, let’s do a little bit more. First of all, the title. If It Was Raining Palaces I’d Get Hit By The Dunny Door is quite transparently a bit of Australian slang. It’s a way of saying you’re unlucky even when it’s nigh-on impossible to be so. The subtitle is ‘The Ashes travails of a whingeing Pom’, which should go some way further to explaining what this book is about.

The author, Nigel Henderson, is a freelance journalist who mostly works on the Times’ sports desk. During the last Ashes series, he delved into his bank account and took his girlfriend, Sue, on a punishing jaunt around Oz following the English cricket team. When we describe it as punishing, we mean the cricket mostly.

That’s probably the main weakness of the book, actually. While it’s well-written, flitting from light-hearted anecdote to deeper thoughtfulness, the subject matter’s a bit unremittingly bleak if you’re an England supporter and being as this is written by a self-proclaimed ‘whingeing Pom’ it’s aimed at those people.

It’s billed as part sports book, part travelogue, part loser-lit, but the travelogue aspect never really takes centre stage. We’d guess it was never really supposed to, but in light of the one-sided nature of the cricket, it might have been better to bring it the fore a touch. Even an English cricket writer can’t sustain the humour-in-tragedy tone for an entire book.

The best parts are the dealings with the locals. Some were clearly humorous at the time, but even those that were probably borderline unendurable become entertaining in the retelling.

At one point, during the subsequent one-day series in which England were victorious, Mike Hussey is dismissed. Henderson has been getting pissed off with some mouthy Australians a few rows back from him and turns to celebrate the wicket in an ‘in your face’ kind of way. They notice and retaliate with the the ferociously barbed shout: “Grey shirt” because Henderson is indeed wearing a grey shirt.

In a way it would be good if that ended there, but they actually recover quite well. The chant becomes: “Grey shirt, grey hair, grey man, grey country.” Henderson’s internal response is “That’s harsh. The shirt, the man and the country I can take, but the hair? It’s not like I’m completely grey. There’s a bit around the edges I grant you, but Sue says it makes me look distinguished. Is she fibbing?”

Sue’s role is to reflect Henderson’s thoughts back at him with added clarity, so that you see the absurdity of what he’s thinking and what you too would doubtless be thinking in his shoes. Any mindless cricketing optimism is soon undercut by someone who barely knows the game and on a train journey ‘the longest stretch of straight track in the world’ can go from sounding like a quirky little point of interest en route to something that literally defines bordom, depending on who’s describing it.

Speed-read the bits where Flintoff’s chipping a catch to mid-on and you’ll like this book. It’s a cricket book and it’s not a biography of a 25-year-old.

Get If It Was Raining Palaces I’d Get Hit By The Dunny Door from amazon.co.uk

Tags: Australia cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s, Cricket books | reviews and recommendations, England cricket news | Tests, ODIs, T20s by King Cricket
No Comments »