Sticky Dogs and Stardust

Martin Chandler | 2:27pm BST 11 June 2023

Published: 2023
Pages: 283
Author: Oliver, Scott
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 4.5 stars

This book was a cracking idea from Scott Oliver and, quite frankly, with hindsight so blindingly obvious that there must be several authors out there kicking themselves for not beating him to it. For them, and indeed Oliver himself, the good news is that there remains plenty of scope for more of the same.

The problem has doubtless always been the limited appeal of any book about club cricket. Publishers have enough concerns about potential sales of books that are of national interest, so it is hardly surprising that they are not going to be looking at anything that isn’t going to sell many copies beyond an area of a few square miles.

In truth of course there are at least as many books published about club cricket as there are about the First Class game, but they tend to be privately produced and are written as historical chronicles by authors who are enthusiastic amateurs rather than professional historians and writers.

And all those books tend to overlook one not always readily obvious feature of the club game, neatly summarised by Oliver himself at the very start of his introduction; No other sport offers up stories quite like the ones collected in these pages. Only cricket – and especially the club cricket of the British Isles – allows recreational players to rub shoulders with international stars and even superstars in a fully competitive context …

One of the most popular genres of cricket writing are the biographies and autobiographies of the greats of the game. These vary in quality from the truly excellent to the distinctly ordinary, but they all have one thing in common, that being that they, entirely understandably, concentrate on the highlights of their man’s career. His involvement in club cricket, at whichever end of his First Class career it comes, tends to get mentioned only in passing.

There are 22 individual chapters in Sticky Dogs and Stardust. Almost all of them relate to just one man, but there are a couple of pairings, so 24 men all told. Only three of them have not been the subject of full length books, Jacques Kallis, Andre Russell and Imran Tahir.

The most written about is the legendary Garry Sobers. There have been a number of books by or about Sobers, but four in particular have told his life story, autobiographies in 1966, 1988 and 2002, and a biography by Trevor Bailey in 1976. All touch upon his five years with Ratcliffe in the Lancashire League, and four with Norton in the North Staffordshire and Cheshire League, but no more than that.

As is only to be expected there is, in Scott Oliver’s twenty pages on Sobers, the occasional nod towards his man’s greater achievements. But the the purpose of the chapter is to thoroughly review Sobers’ time in the League, how he lived his life in England and what those who saw him play, both teammates and spectators, thought of the man. Having read just about everything there is on Sobers I thought a knew a good deal about him, and indeed I did, but I know more now and in particular was pleased to learn a little more of brother Gerry, who also played at Norton.

Kevin Pietersen has also been the subject of a number of books, in his case by my reckoning two autobiographies and three biographies. A young Pietersen, at the time primarily an off spinner, spent a summer with Cannock in the Birmingham and District Premier League. Oliver tells the story of what was, on the field, a successful summer for the club and its young pro. The die was cast during that season, not just for Pietersen the batsman, but also Pietersen the man it is difficult to like.

There are other examples of precocious young talents, AB De Villiers and Kallis from South Africa, West Indies’ Russell and three distinctly useful Australians, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh. Curtley Ambrose arrived in Cheshire with just a single First Class match behind him, and each of Mark Taylor, Matthew Hayden, Shane Bond, VVS Laxman and Courtney Walsh were certainly still youngsters, albeit who had set out on their First Class careers before they arrived in the UK to report for duty. A little further down the road to success and already internationals when their featured summers took place were Steve Waugh, Shahid Afridi and Kapil Dev. 

A couple of established Test players are also featured, both at Lancashire League big spenders Rishton. Injury meant that Mohammed Azharuddin’s 1988 summer was cut short but, still at the peak of his powers, Allan Donald topped the League’s bowling charts in 1996, and even averaged almost 30 with the bat. It is still remarkable though that amongst some stunning bowling displays there were still a couple of occasions when such a great bowler failed to take a wicket against his amateur opponents.

And then there are a handful of men whose careers were winding down. Inevitably Rishton’s 1987 coup in securing the signature of Vivian Richards is featured, as are two of his regular teammates, Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall, who Leyland of the Northern League got terrific value from in 1993 and 1994. Smethwick in Birmingham did not do so well with Wasim Akram in 1999, but he still had his moments.

With this sort of book it is always tempting to try and single out a favourite piece, and if pushed I think I would have to choose Sobers who is, after all, ‘The Greatest’. But having made that entirely subjective assertion I think I would have to concede that the best writing in the book comes in the longest, final chapter, that on the subject of Imran Tahir. Why? That one is a little different in that Tahir played for Moddershall in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire League, and one of his teammates there was Scott Oliver, so that one is written from an entirely different perspective, and from the best seat in the house.

So an unequivocal nod of approval from me for Sticky Dogs and Stardust, and I look forward to a second helping in due course. Doses of Bill Alley, Basil D’Oliveira and Manny Martingale would be a good start.