Now I'm 62

This diary records a cricketer’s year: from early January and a pre-season fitness campaign through to late August and the scoring of the last run.

Philip Stone’s father played a last game of cricket at 62. “He wasn’t fit,” Stone’s mother said. “I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. He made a complete fool of himself.” Now Stone himself has turned 62 – and he too is still playing cricket. “Am I making a fool of myself?” he wonders.

He captains a team in Division 9 of the Wiltshire League, thirty miles from his childhood home. The diary records the unfolding story of his summer, interwoven with memories of his years of growing up.

On the surface Now I’m 62 is about cricket, a warm and witty portrait of the game’s lower depths. But below that surface there is love and loss, youth and ageing, memory and mortality. Past and present blend together, creating a book that is both funny and moving.

Stephen Chalke is the author of several award-winning books on cricket’s history, but in Now I’m 62 he has looked inward to write a work of some originality.