Cricket Explained


Book Description

Cricket Explained offers the sports enthusiast a user-friendly introduction to baseball's British cousin, a game that shares with America's national pastime the common ancestor "rounders." This is the definitive beginner's guide to the game of cricket, written by Robert Eastaway, a world authority on the sport, and co-inventor of the Coopers & Lybrand World Cricket Ratings System. Cricket Explained takes the reader from the game's fundamental --basic rules, terminology, equipment --to the finer points of strategy, individual playing styles, and cricket lore. The book includes a combined glossary/index for easy reference and is illustrated throughout with the lighthearted drawings of British cartoonist Mark Stevens. So even if you don't know "short leg" from "silly mid off" or a bowler from a batsman, you'll come away from Cricket Explained with an understanding for this truly international sport which, like baseball, is loved both for its elegant simplicity and its vexing complexity. Among the topics covered in Cricket Explained's concise, user-friendly entries are: -- Cricket's history -- Making sense of the action on the field -- Batsmen and the batting order -- Fielders and fielding positions -- Fielding and batting tactics -- Scoring and statistics -- Bowling strategy -- How many players are required -- How runs are scored, outs are made, and a game is won -- Umpires and the rules -- Bowlers and their individual styles -- Different types of cricket played throughout the world




The Wit of Cricket


Book Description

A bumper collection of the funniest anecdotes, jokes and stories from cricket's best-loved personalities. Cricket is a funny old game -- even when rain stops play! Now you can read not only the most popular stories by five of the game's all-time great characters -- Richie Benaud, Dickie Bird, Henry Blofeld, Brian Johnston and Fred Trueman - but also the humour and insights of modern players including Michael Atherton, Andrew Flintoff, Darren Gough, Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne. Crammed full of dozens of hilarious anecdotes about legendary Test cricketers such as Ian Botham, Geoffrey Boycott, Denis Compton, Michael Holding and Merv Hughes -- plus broadcasting gaffes, sledging, short-sighted umpires and the first male streaker at Lord's!




A Thirst for Life


Book Description

With his trademark bow tie, his distinctive rich, plumy voice, and his eccentric observations, Henry Blofeld is one of Britain's prized cricket experts. He has been close to the heart of the game for over 40 years. As a leading commentator on Test Match Special and cricket writer, at home and abroad, he has informed and entertained wide audiences with his extensive knowledge and perception of cricket at the very highest level.




Ray's Readers A-Z


Book Description




Ten to Win . . . And the Last Man In


Book Description

'Is there anything in sport to compare with the sustained excitement of a cricket match, especially a Test match, in which the advantage continually fluctuates one way and then the other, and when the match enters its last few minutes, all four results are still possible?' After entertaining countless radio listeners around the world for decades, who better to convey the breathless drama of a Test match cliffhanger than Henry Blofeld? Now, in Ten to Win . . . and the Last Man In, he has personally selected thirty matches featuring unforgettable finishes and brought them vividly to life again in his own inimitable way. Ranging from the match-winning bowling of F.R. Spofforth against W.G. Grace's England in 1882, via the first tied Test between Benaud's Australia and Worrell's West Indies in 1960, to the never-say-die batting of Ben Stokes in 2019, he picks out the key events and performances of each memorable match and describes them as only he can. Alongside the big-hitting heroics of Jessop in 1902 and Botham in 1981, he revisits less celebrated matches such as South Africa's hard-fought first Test win in 1906, as well as a crucial innings from Denis Compton in 1948 and a match-saving performance by a young Alan Knott in Guyana in 1968 - one of the most exciting matches he has ever witnessed first-hand. Filled with colourful detail and informed by insight gained from a lifetime immersed in the sport he loves, Henry Blofeld's latest book will leave the reader in no doubt - as he himself puts it - about 'what an absurdly irresistible game cricket can be'.




Miscellaneous Plays


Book Description

The four plays in this volume represent just a small fraction of the total output by early modern women dramatists. Other plays will appear in later volumes in the facsimile series devoted to individual authors. Marcelia (1660), The Perjur'd Husband (1700), She Ventures and He Wins (1695) and The Unnatural Mother (1698) were written at a point in time when women playwrights were becoming a significant force in the theatre. Many of these plays were first performed in key theatrical venues by well-established drama companies. The scant critical attention paid to these works since they were first written begins to be rectified in this volume. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright discusses the playwrights and their texts, and explains the choice of editions printed here.




Silence Of The Heart


Book Description

Cricket has an alarming suicide rate. Among international players for England and several other countries it is far above the national average for all sports: and there have been numerous instances at other levels of the game. For thirty years, celebrated cricket author David Frith has collected data on this sad subject. Silence of the Heart is his compelling account of over a hundred cricketers - involving top names from the past hundred years - who have taken their own lives, with an explanation of factors that led to their premature deaths. Can the shocking rate of self-destruction among cricketers be reduced? Can those who run the game do something to save its participants from this dreadful fate? These are among the questions addressed within this catalogue of biographies. But the key question is whether cricket itself is to blame for its losses - or is that this summer game attracts people of a melancholic and over-sensitive nature? Stoddart, Shrewsbury, Gimblett, Bairstow, Trott, Iverson, Robertson-Glasgow, Barnes . . . There remains a sense of disbelief that these high-profile cricketers killed themselves. And many more cases are examined in this extraordinary book, which comes crammed with detail, is not devoid of humour, and must rank among the most intricately researched volumes in cricket's extensive library. With a foreword by former England captain Mike Brearley, now a psychotherapist, Silence of the Heart is a startling investigative narrative covering the phenomenon of cricket's unduly high level of suicide.




A-Z of Ilkley


Book Description

Explore the Yorkshire town of Ilkley in this fully illustrated A-Z guide to its history, people and places.




2021 New Zealand Cricket Almanack


Book Description

Includes coverage of domestic and international cricket, the Black Caps and the White Ferns, alongside detailed records of the season.




The laws of cricket


Book Description