A Sideways Look at the Language of Cricket

Arm-ball to Zooter

Lawrence Booth is the man behind the Guardian's enormously popular column The Spin, which pulls in a weekly readership of around 10,000 subscribers. A lifelong cricket fan, he is the author of Cricket: Celebrating the Modern Game Around the World (2005) and a contributing editor to Wisden Cricketers&rsquo; Almanack.

What's the difference between short leg and deep midwicket? When would you be thinking about bowling a yorker? What's so great about the sound of leather on willow? Cricket&rsquo;s vocabulary is a mixture of jargon and clich&eacute;, poetry and prose, misty-eyed romanticism and old-gits&rsquo; cynicism. Arm-ball to Zooter is a witty guide to the peculiarities of the game, its history and major figures; cricket-lovers might find their own pet hates confirmed; cricket newcomers might be amazed at what cricket-lovers have been up to all these years.

Lawrence Booth

It is a great virtue in a cricket writer, the ability to flourish a polished anecdote or a droll quotation like a man embellishing an engaging conversation... Anything [Booth] writes is going to be worth reading

One of England's funniest and most engaging cricket writers

Lawrence Booth has put together a sports book like no other

Wry, affectionate, irreverent and full of delicious anecdotes

An Addict's Guide to the World's Most Exasperating Game

Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a journey around the perennially curious world of cricket, leaving no metaphorical leg-break unturned and peering at the game from every conceivable angle. Here, Lawrence Booth, who had little option but to turn a youthful obsession with the game into a means of paying the mortgage, seeks to consider the questions that crop up on a daily basis but rarely receive a satisfactory answer. What are the players really like? What is the secret of sledging? Why get so worked up about the Ashes? Why all the clichés? And how did India take over the world? 
 
Taking the reader to the heart of a game that seems more capable than any other of bewitching its followers, this is a captivating look at the way cricket has become what it is today - and what, given a fair wind, it might be like in the future.

Lawrence Booth

Praise for Cricket, Lovely Cricket?

It is a great virtue in a cricket writer, the ability to flourish a polished anecdote or a droll quotation like a man embellishing an engaging conversation... Anything [Booth] writes is going to be worth reading

Engaging... a delight

One of England's funniest and most engaging cricket writers

It is a great virtue in a cricket writer, the ability to flourish a polished anecdote or a droll quotation like a man embellishing an engaging conversation... Anything [Booth] writes is going to be worth reading

Engaging... a delight

One of England's funniest and most engaging cricket writers

It is a great virtue in a cricket writer, the ability to flourish a polished anecdote or a droll quotation like a man embellishing an engaging conversation... Anything [Booth] writes is going to be worth reading

Engaging... a delight

One of England's funniest and most engaging cricket writers

Books by Lawrence Booth

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