Author(s): Richard Thomas

Cricket

"A wonderful read. Exhaustive and comprehensive as a reference tome, but also infused with a passion for the game and its players that distinguishes a mere cricketing aficionado from a true cricket lover."--Phil Steele, BBC Sport   "What an enthralling voyage this book affords, with its vivid style and sequences of fascinating detail. Thomas has created something unusually readable."--David Frith, founding editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly Cricket is defined by the characters who have played it, watched it, reported it, ruled upon it, ruined it, and rejoiced in it. Humorous and deeply affectionate, Cricketing Lives tells the story of the world's greatest and most incomprehensible game through those who have shaped it, from the rustic contests of eighteenth-century England to the spectacle of the Indian Premier League. It's about W. G. Grace and his eye for a pound; Charles Burgess Fry and his flirtation with Albania; the invincible Viv Richards; and Sarah Taylor, "the best wicketkeeper in the world . . . male or female." Paying homage, too, to the game's great writers, Richard Thomas steers a course through the despair of war, tactical controversies, and internecine politics to reveal how cricket has always stormed back to warm our hearts like nothing else can.