I am a writer who has written an assortment of over a hundred and seventy different articles, poems, and books. I love cricket and have spent a lot of my life unsuccessfully learning how to play it. It still has a fascination for me. I am also a psychologist, and cricket has given me an even deeper understanding of human life.
It’s full of little stories and you think at the beginning of each one that that it’s going to describe an interesting situation from a serious point of view. So you wait for the ending. But it suddenly turns at the last and gives you a totally unexpected comical twist.
I have heard a lot of cricket stories but I hadn’t heard the one about WG Grace before. This book is a diamond mine.
Marcus Berkmann doesn’t write about great famous cricket players of superb accomplishments. He writes about people who are also great, but in a different way. He writes about incompetent amateurs like us, the ordinary weekend cricketers.
Berkmann is a prime example with a thunderously low batting average. It’s all about failure in so many ways and is so hilarious for being all that. It’s absolutely perfect for reading in the cricket pavilion or in your car on a rain-affected cricket day waiting for the showers to stop. But you will still get wet with tears of laughter. It’s so true of trivial human life.
This book is aimed at the fan; at the person who listens to the Test Match on a motorway and narrowly avoids crashing whenever somone takes a wicket; at the weekend player who happily gives up his valuable afternoon to be given out for 0 by the umpire and who can't quite remember the lbw law. However, unlike most cricket books (gentle, elegiac, full of photographs of village greens circa 1850), this book is realistic. It accepts the great unspoken truth of cricket: that the other team are only there to make up the numbers and that the people you're…
This is a total gem of a book. It is a collection of all the best classic short stories about cricket that there are.
They have the Arthur Conan Doyle one called "The Story of Spedegue’s Dropper". This will always be my favourite. I roared with laughter at the Furniss Drawings in the book – caricatures of WG Grace reprinted with permission from MCC. But besides these there are little gems collected from obscure sources, each of them brilliant in their own right.
Very rarely do you have anything so good in one volume.
This is a very funny book about a very serious game’ and has a foreword by David Lloyd, the famous comical cricket commentator and ex-professional player.
This is a true book describing all the events involved in getting a team together to play cricket each week. It’s hilarious some of the excuses they come up with for not turning up each week.
There is a magnificent photograph at the end of the book showing all the members of Mike Harfield’s XI in 1981. People’s names have not been changed and no one’s identity is protected.
There are also some real gems of information that you wouldn’t find even in Wikipedia about the finer points of the derivation of the word ‘Nelson’. Also some humorous quips about real-life famous figures, not necessarily connected with cricket, but the descriptions are depicted in cricketing terms.
Of all the books about cricket, Mike Harfield's "Not Dark Yet" brings a rare authenticity to the subject. This is a book by a genuine cricketer and a genuine cricket fan with a talent for capturing the spirit of this special game in his witty prose. David Lloyd, aka Bumble, laughed so much he agreed to write the Foreword. He even showed the book to Christopher Martin-Jenkins who found it 'very entertaining and enjoyable'. Reading the book raises the spirits with its cheerful jollity. The mixture of banter and eclectic cricketing information carries the reader along, making for both easy…
This is a fantastic idea, to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents in the world. What is more amazing is that it actually took the place.
The book is actually a posthumous publication since Harry Thompson, the famous writer, died soon after completing the tour and was still playing cricket in his last days. There are wonderful descriptions of their players.
One, apparently was so covered in hair that he was accepted by a troupe of monkeys whilst fielding in the outfield in Kuala Lumpur.
It seemed a simple enough idea at the outset: to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe. Except - hold on a minute - that's not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, amorous Argentine Colonels' wives, cunning Bajan drug dealers, gay Australian waiters, overzealous American anti-terrorist police, idiot Welshmen dressed as Santa Claus, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and whole armies of pitch-invading Antarctic penguins, you quickly arrive at a whole lot more than you bargained for. Harry Thompson's hilarious book tells the story…
An outrageous, compelling, unforgettable story of cricket played to a farcical level. A must-read for cricket fans everywhere. The story builds with exciting descriptions of the matches later in the book.
Jeremy Freeman hates cricket, but is enticed by woman cricketer Claire who turns his life upside-down. Fardeep Singh shows him how he can use spiritual powers and mystical charms to achieve his secret dreams. Oriental magic meets sport psychology in an explosive mix. But that is only the start of their problems. Anything can happen – and does. Follow the exploits of Jeremy as he starts to search for players, finds a coach, builds a team, hires somewhere for nets, and then takes the team through the matches in a season.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
