Rain Men

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 competing with are your teammates. It shows the game as it is really played, and analyses the mystique of such diverse elements as the misery of Test match attendance, professionally eccentric commentators and the pointlessness of Merv Hughes' moustache.