To complement Gareth’s feature on CMJ the book review team will be having a look at some of his work in the coming weeks. David starts us off with an early tour book.
In this feature David Taylor takes a look at the former Essex and Glamorgan leg spinner Robin Hobbs, and speculates as to whether we will see his like again.
With apologies to Graham Parker and the Rumour, David Taylor takes a look at an area of the game where opinions are sharply divided, the value of night-watchmen
Keith Booth is best known for writing biographies of Surrey cricketers from Victorian times, but he hasn’t always concentrated on that subject, as this week’s book demonstrates.
One of the mysteries of cricket literature is why Ronald Mason, who died in 2002, wrote only one more cricket title after this week’s book appeared in 1971.
Few cricket books are bestsellers, and I doubt this week’s book ever was either, but it has been through several editions, and I don’t suppose its total sales have been exceeded by many.
Despite selling many more copies than almost all cricket books with loftier reputations I don’t recall seeing a review of “Cricket’s Strangest Matches” until now.
The England selectors will soon have to turn their minds to the trip to India this winter, but are unlikely to make the same decisions their predecessors did 40 years ago. In this feature David Taylor recalls the 1972/73 series.
The flow of, and presumably therefore demand for, books about Sir Donald Bradman, shows no sign of drying up. We haven’t reviewed many, so to help redress the balance David has been reading a 1996 biography.