Bloody Lucky

Stephen Fry's funny story of chicanery and deceit in a school match opens this celebration of cricket. The pieces, all specially commissioned for this anthology, range wide: from humour (Miles Kington's spoof cricket murder mystery) to nostalgia (John Arlott reminisces about the players who gave him pleasure over the last 50 years, and Donald Trelford remembers the cricket of his childhood and army days. From hard fact, with Mike Brearley's analysis of the psychological pressures of modern test cricket, to fiction, with Mark Lawson's dark tale of adultery revealed through a beach game, the peices are all imbued with their authors' distinctive personalities and helpless addiction to the game.