READERS SAY...
I thought, without reservation, that it was a wonderful read.
Beautifully written, effortlessly compiled.
I was drawn completely to the emotional honesty that ran through it.
Several passages were dark, much darker than I expected.
Others made me laugh out loud. I couldn't get enough of it.
It's a lovely book, reinforcing everything I love about cricket and, in a way, England.
It pulls off that wonderful artist's trick of taking a small canvas and saying big things.
A very special book. It has a terrific freshness and a tremendous honesty.
Kindness and sympathy run right through it, and the writing is beautiful.
An execrable aberration. Vicious, ill-researched and DULL, DULL, DULL.
I was absolutely blown away by it. If I could write one tenth as well,
that would be how I would like to write a book. It was superb. It really was.
It was utterly compelling. I couldn’t put it down.
I’ve put it aside for now. I got to about page 90, and I thought to myself,
“Does it just go on and on like this?”
The author writes so beautifully that you turn the page eagerly,
yet come to dread the end of the book.
All the switching back and forth didn’t really work for me. It seemed disjointed.
The personal material integrates beautifully with the cricket.
You have created something exceptional.
I enjoyed every word on every page in every chapter.
I had not expected the bittersweet emotional roller-coaster.
It deeply affected me. I could not get to sleep after reading it.
I really laughed – so much that my wife thought I’d gone mad – well, madder.
I was in tears when I was reading about your mother passing away.
It was very funny in places, but it wasn’t a ‘This is a funny book, you must laugh.’
Laugh? No. Was I supposed to?
It is, quite simply, the best book I’ve ever read about village cricket.
A quite wonderful read – and I’ve read it now three times.
Having captained a village side myself, it all rings very true.
There have been numerous books on village cricket.
For me, though, this book sets a new benchmark, one that will be very difficult to beat.
Comfortably the worst book on cricket that I have ever read.
I can’t work out at all what the book’s target readership is,
but I'll tell you this. I think it's absolutely brilliant.