Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Tim Albone

Cool Runnings meets Joseph O'Neill's Netherland in an inspiring and feel-good story of bravery and sporting success from a country so widely known for war and extremism. This is the true story of the Afghanistan cricket team and their extraordinary attempt to join the world's elite cricketing nations. That this devastated nation should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as successful as this, is an unbelievable achievement. Seven years ago, in a country which does not have a real cricket pitch even today, there was no national team. But a group of young Afghan men, exiled by war, learnt to play in the smashed concrete of refugee camps, and have risen from obscurity to the groomed grass pitches of international cricket. 
 
With unlimited access, Tim Albone travelled alongside the team for the two years, charting the players' progress from refugees in Pakistan to the brink of international sporting stardom. Far from being bogged down in cricket jargon, this tale of a gang of dedicated, charismatic, occasionally exasperating young men seeking triumph out of disaster is one that will move and inspire everyone. 
 
Foreword by Mike Atherton.

Out of the Ashes

The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Afghanistan cricket team

Steve James

In 1999, England slumped to a new low in their tumultuous cricket history. Defeat at home by a mediocre New Zealand team saw them fall to the bottom of the world Test rankings, below even Zimbabwe. Yet only just over a decade later, England reached the top. It was a remarkable and profound transformation, brought about largely by two men with an insatiable desire to succeed, Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower. 
 
In The Plan, Steve James tells the story of the renaissance of English cricket from a unique perspective. As the former batting partner of ECB managing director Hugh Morris, a player under Fletcher at Glamorgan and Flower's closest confidant in the press corps, James is the perfect analyst of this period in cricket history. From crucial choices of captain to innovative coaching and a complete overhaul of training and preparation for matches, it is the tale of a refusal to be second best. 
 
And in examining Fletcher and Flower's background in Zimbabwe, where James himself played, he uncovers the continental shift behind the turnaround. It is the story of how English steel was melded with African fire to create the most potent combination in world cricket.

The Plan: How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Cricket

Barry Johnston

Brian Johnston, known to everyone as Johnners, was as well known for his on-air gaffes as for his Test Match Special commentaries. Here are his most famous and funniest cricketing mishaps, which have been chosen by his son, Barry. Among Johnners’ laugh-out-loud clangers are ‘joined by the Balls’, ‘sitting on a shooting stick’ and a streaker’s ‘cheeky performance... waving her flag and other things’. There’s also Mr Titt’s letter... More giggles from the archives include Johnners’ notorious Ashes comedy song, his appearances on Quote, Unquote and Trivia Test Match, plus Fawlty Towers insights from John Cleese. From leg-pulling to leg-overs, inflatable parrots to chocolate cake, this special recording is not just for cricket lovers, it’s for anyone who loves a laugh!

Johnners Cricketing Gaffes, Giggles And Cakes

Alan Hill

Sporting twins Alec and Eric Bedser are a remarkable duo. From humble origins at Woking to their reign as key members of the Surrey team during the magnificent succession of seven championships in the 1950s, they share a rare and precious relationship. 
 
The Bedsers is Alan Hill's engrossing study which explores the puzzles of their identical twinship. Alec Bedser was England's bowling standard bearer in the years following the Second World War. His exceptional strength and prowess yielding almost 1,924 wickets, including 236 in 51 Tests. He was at the peak of his powers in the 1953 series against Australia, when his aggregate of 39 wickets beat the previous record held by Maurice Tate. It included match figures of 14 wickets for 99 runs at Nottingham - a feat only surpassed against Australia by Wilfred Rhodes, Hedley Verity and Jim Laker. High among his other distinctions was his record against Don Bradman whom he dismissed on eight occasions. 
 
After retirement, Alex maintained his connection with cricket in fulfilling administrative duties, which included a record term as Chairman of the Test selectors. Knighted in 1997 for his services to cricket, he is the only English bowler to receive the honour.

The Bedsers

Twinning Truimphs

Glenn McGrath

From working the land in Narromine to winning cricket's World Cup three times, Glenn McGrath has always faced life with fierce determination and an unerring will to succeed, despite the odds. Now, following his retirement from international cricket, McGrath tells his complete story - on and off the field. 
 
The man known as 'Pigeon' won his baggy green cap in Perth in 1993 and went on to forge a brilliant career, eventually becoming cricket's most successful fast bowler with 563 Test wickets. McGrath entered Ashes folklore in 1997 when he destroyed England by taking 8 for 38 at Lords, and he even scored a Test half-century with the bat. With leg spinner Shane Warne, he formed the most devastating bowling combination in Test history. 
 
Glenn McGrath's most meaningful achievements, however, have been off the field. With his wife, Jane, he established the McGrath Foundation, a major funder for and supporter of breast cancer sufferers. Here, in their own words, the McGraths discuss their battles with the disease and Jane's tragic death. 
 
Line and Strength is the tell-all story of an Australian country boy who took on the world.

Line and Strength

The Complete Story by Glenn McGrath and Daniel Lane

Ian Botham

Sir Ian Botham and the Ashes are as closely intertwined as willow and leather or Merv Hughes and his moustache. You simply cannot think of one without the other. In this book, Sir Ian takes you on a ride through a lifetime's relationship with cricket's oldest and most treasured prize, revealing just how it has shaped his life and how he has helped to turn it into the contest it is today. 
 
From the moment he first watched the likes of Ken Barrington stride to the wicket in jaw-jutting defiance to the day he flayed Australia's bowling attack around Headingley as if playing with his mates in the park, and then onwards to his role in commentating on what was arguably the finest series of the lot, in 2005, Sir Ian has a rich and varied connection with the Ashes, and he tells all here. 
 
The Ashes is a series that has provided incredible highs and heartbreaking lows for English and Australian fans alike over the past 35 years. Sir Ian has often been at the centre of the roller-coaster ride. Whether it is his account of his days as England's dogsbody in 1977 in Melbourne or the story of his refusal to let Bob Willis bowl downwind until he was angry enough to skittle the Aussies in 1981, all is revealed in depth in Botham's Book of the Ashes.

Botham's Book of the Ashes

A Lifetime Love Affair with Cricket's Greatest Rivalry

Michael Simkins

A fat boy with a passion for sweets and a loathing for games, the young Michael Simkins finds in cricket a sport where size doesn't necessarily matter and a full-blown obsession is born. Now in middle-age, he still harbours the somewhat deluded belief that the England middle-order might usefully benefit from his hard-earned skills. From impromptu Test series played with his dad in the family sweetshop through to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates, Fatty Batter is the bestselling and hilarious story of one man's life lived through cricket.

Fatty Batter

How cricket saved my life (then ruined it)

Alastair Cook

Sir Alastair Cook is England's greatest batsman. In 12 years he achieved 12,472 runs, 161 Test matches, 33 hundreds, and 4 Ashes series wins. 
 
But such records only tell half the story. Why, at the relatively early age of 33, did he suddenly quit? 
 
Cricket, the sport of gleaming whites and gentility, is polite, friendly, and reserved. But beneath the surface anxiety looms, tensions run high and emotions can be explosive. 
 
Alastair began and ended his England cricketing career on soaring highs, yet at times he feared for his career. He embodies the resilience, endurance and mental determination required at the highest level of international sport, fighting against the constant pressure and the ever-present fear of failure. 
 
He recounts the fiery fall-out with Kevin Pietersen and the ruthless decisions a captain must make. He expands on the highs of leading England to their first series win in India in 28 years, the glory of four Ashes wins and what, finally, convinced him to leave international cricket. 
 
To know Alastair Cook is to know what it takes to be successful, in any field. In this candid autobiography he captures not only what it takes to be one of England's greatest sportsmen but also the price paid by a professional athlete at the top of his game.

The Autobiography

The Sunday Times Bestseller

Voted the greatest English cricketer of the 20th century by the fans, Sir Ian Botham is the English game's one true living legend and his story both on and off the pitch reads like a Boy's Own rollercoaster ride. 
 
Born with a natural genius for cricket, Botham began breaking records with bat and ball from a young age and soon became the man English cricket expected most from. After a troubled period as England's captain, Botham rose once again to become a national hero with his display in the Miracle Ashes of 1981. But, with his confrontational nature and wild streak, he began regularly making the wrong kind of headlines. With accusations of drink and drugs, affairs and ball-tampering, he became hounded by the tabloid pack, never sure whether they wanted him to triumph or implode. Now a Knight and just as famous for his tireless charity work, Beefy gives us the definitive story of his never-dull life and times in his own no-nonsense words.

Head On - Ian Botham: The Autobiography

C L R James

'To say "the best cricket book ever written" is piffingly inadequate praise' Guardian 
 
'Great claims have been made for [Beyond a Boundary] since its first appearance in 1963: that it is the greatest sports book ever written; that it brings the outsider a privileged insight into West Indian culture; that it is a severe examination of the colonial condition. All are true' Sunday Times 
 
C L R James, one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century, was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it. 
 
Part memoir of a West Indian boyhood, part passionate celebration and defence of cricket as an art form, part indictment of colonialism, Beyond a Boundary addresses not just a sport but a whole culture and asks the question, 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?

Beyond A Boundary

Kevin Pietersen

Described by the media as 'the David Beckham of cricket', Kevin has become the poster boy for English cricket. But he is also in possession of a prodigious talent - fearless, bold and with unflappable nerves. His unique batting style has produced hundreds of runs and many outstanding innings, culminating in his extraordinary triumph at the 2005 Ashes. Yet with the highs, come the lows, and he gives his version of events during the 2006/07 Ashes when England were defeated by Australia. 
 
Crossing the Boundary recounts Kevin's remarkable journey so far - from growing up in his native South Africa and the opposition he faced from the national cricket board; his move to England and burgeoning career at Hampshire to winning a place on the England team. It provides a rare insight into the mind of an international cricketer, on and off the pitch. Reflecting his youthful charisma and his bullish confidence, this is a sporting memoir like no other. 
 
Full of personal anecdotes and insight from numerous sporting legends such as Shane Warne, Ian Botham, and Nasser Hussain, this is the riveting story of one of the most significant cricketers of our time.

Crossing the Boundary

Sandy Balfour

What I Love About Cricket is the story of a summer when a 'master' cricket obsessive teaches his novice 'pupil' the wisdom of the game. Sandy Balfour is cast as the supposed master and his sixteen-year-old daughter's new boyfriend - the skateboarding boy wonder - is the reluctant pupil. 
 
This beginner's guide to the infuriatingly perverse game of cricket is a love letter addressed both to 
those who utterly fail to understand it and to those who need reminding why they fell in love in 
the first place. What unfolds is wonderfully observed, very funny and as much about fathers 
and daughters, love and life, as it is about cricket.

What I Love About Cricket

One Man's Vain Attempt to Explain Cricket to a Teenager who Couldn't Give a Toss

Miles Jupp

** Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award ** 
 
Fanatical about cricket since he was a boy, Miles Jupp would do anything to see his heroes play. But perhaps deciding to bluff his way into the press corps during England's Test series in India wasn't his best idea. 
 
By claiming to be the cricket correspondent for BBC Scotland and getting a job with the (Welsh) Western Mail, Miles lands the press pass that will surely be the ticket to his dreams. Soon, he finds himself in cricket heaven - drinking with David Gower and Beefy, sharing bar room banter with Nasser Hussain and swapping diarrhoea stories with the Test Match Special team. 
 
But struggling in the heat under the burden of his own fibs, reality soon catches up with Miles as he bumbles from one disaster to the next. A joyous, charming, yet cautionary tale, Fibber in the Heat is for anyone who's ever dreamt about doing nothing but watching cricket all day long.

Fibber in the Heat

A century has always had a special resonance, in all walks of life, and none more so than in cricket. Scoring one hundred runs is the ultimate for a batsman. As former England captain Andrew Strauss admits, it's incredibly hard to do; for Ricky Ponting, it's a transformational moment in the career of a cricketer. Or in the words of Geoffrey Boycott, 'a century has its own magic'. 
 
In The Art of Centuries, Steve James applies his award-winning forensic insight to the very heart of batting. Through interviews with the leading run-scorers in cricket history and his own experiences, Steve discovers what mental and physical efforts are required to reach those magical three figures. Despite his own haul of 47 first-class tons, he himself felt at times that he was poorly equipped for the task. 
 
So working out how to score centuries is an art. And bowlers might not agree, but there really is no better feeling in cricket.

The Art of Centuries

Simon Jones

Winner of the Wisden Book of the Year 
 
Eighteen years, eight series, eight defeats. These are the facts. I look around the room. We’re a young team. Strauss, Flintoff, Vaughan, the new guy, Kevin Pietersen. None of us remember England holding the Ashes. We are a generation that have grown up in Australia’s shadow. 
 
In 2005 Simon Jones took part in the greatest Ashes series of all time. As a devastating fast bowler in a brave young England team, Jones went toe to toe with the might of the seemingly unbeatable Australians. Over the course of fifty-four days Simon would experience the greatest highs of his career, and plunge to the lowest depths. The series would change his life for ever. 
 
In chapters that alternate between an unforgettable, insider's account of each of the five Tests and the remainder of his life, Simon presents the raw and unvarnished truth behind international sport; the joy and the sacrifice, the physical and mental cost and the unrelenting pressure. Heroes emerge, and cricketing legends are made human.

The Test

My Life, and the Inside Story of the Greatest Ashes Series

Brian Johnston

When Brian Johnston was a schoolboy, his reports were full of phrases such as 'talks too much in school' and 'apt to be a buffoon'. Later millions of radio listeners would be delighted to discover that some things never changed! Johnners brought his unique wit and personal charm to an enormous range of BBC radio and television programmes for nearly 50 years, from In Town Tonight and Down Your Way to Test Match Special. After Brian died in 1994, Christopher Martin-Jenkins wrote: 'It is hard to believe that anyone in the history of broadcasting has induced such widespread affection'. 
 
A Further Slice of Johnners covers Brian's early days, from his childhood in Hertfordshire and his schooldays at Eton and Oxford to his job in the family coffee business in the City and his service with the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War. There is also a selection of the most memorable characters and locations from his fifteen years on the Radio Four programme Down Your Way. Finally there is a collection of Brian's popular 'View From the Boundary' interviews on Test Match Special, including fascinating conversations with Eric Idle, John Major and Peter O'Toole.

A Further Slice Of Johnners

Gideon Haigh

The Ashes, the symbol of cricket supremacy between England and Australia, is the game's oldest and fiercest rivalry, still hot to the touch after a century and a quarter. The Book of Ashes Anecdotes collects hundreds of the best stories from more than 260 publications to create the fullest, fieriest and funniest account of these two nations divided by a common game. 
 
 In 2005, and after 16 long years, England's cricketers regained the fabled urn in a series that fascinated and gripped cricket fans as never before. The drama of this contest raised ancitipation about the 2006-07 series to record levels, and Ashes Anecdotes provides an unrivalled collection of the highlights of this celebrated tournament. 
 
 The book includes a foreword by David Frith and extracts from the best cricket writers of the past 124 years. Featured here are the giants of the game, the most memorable Ashes matches, gamesmanship, Bodyline, tales of travel, cricket fever and fan fanaticism, luck and superstition in the game, selection and sledging. It's a book no cricket fan should be without.

The Book of Ashes Anecdotes

Soumya Bhattacharya

The great C L R James once asked: 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?' For some of us answering that can keep you awake at night. 
 
Soumya Bhattacharya knows this: he has a steady job, a loving wife, a daughter he dotes on. But most of all he has cricket. Or perhaps more accurately: cricket has him. Ever since he can remember, he's loved the game. From his first knockabouts on the living-room carpet - with his mother's paper bats and balls - he progressed to Test Match Special on short-wave, then to the whole panoply of obsession: one-dayers, Test matches, TV highlights, re-runs of TV highlights, always following one team - India. When you come from a country where the game is more than a religion, you must like cricket, right? 
 
In this sparkling memoir of a lifetime spent in the company of eleven men, a green field and a billion other worshippers, Soumya Bhattacharya gives us a guided tour of the soul of a cricket obsessive. Part reportage, part travelogue, part cultural politics, You Must Like Cricket? takes us from his home in Kolkata to Lord's and back again as Bhattacharya explores the joys and the lows (mostly the lows) of a thirty-year love affair, how one game has become so closely tied to a nation's identity, and the troubling hold cricket has over him. But if your home ground was called Eden Gardens, where else would you rather be?

You Must Like Cricket?

Memoirs of an Indian Cricket Fan

Simon Hughes

Cricket defines Englishness like no other national pastime. From its earliest origins in the sixteenth century (or an early version played by shepherds called creag in the 1300s), through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published and the Ashes series was born, this simple sport of bat and ball has captured the imagination of the masses. 
 
Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought us from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains. 
 
William Hill Award-winning writer Simon Hughes, no mean player himself, has lived and breathed cricket his whole life and now takes his analytical skills and typically irreverent eye to charting the history of English cricket. But this is no dry, dusty tome. It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence. And it takes us beyond sport, to the heart of what it really means to be English.

And God Created Cricket

D J Taylor

In January 1929, before 20,000 spectators, Norwich City of the Third Division South went down 0-5 in the third round of the FA Cup to an amateur side composed of ex-public school boys who disdained professional tactics in favour of instinct and teamwork. Within a decade, the Corinthians, the club that for forty years had supplied the entire English national side, had all but ceased to exist. The world was changing. By the time of the last 'Gentleman vs. Players' cricket match in 1962 a whole era in English sport had come to an end. 
 
But the passing of amateur sportsmen - footballers, cricketers, golfers, tennis players - had implications beyond the playing field. A century ago 'amateur' was a compliment to someone who played a game simply for love of it. A hundred years later it is a byword for cack-handed incompetence. In this brilliant study of the patterns of sporting and cultural life, D J Taylor examines the process that led to professionalism's triumph and the long rearguard action fought by sportsmen - and literature - on amateurism's behalf. 
 
On the Corinthian Spirit has many heroes - from 'Charlie Bam', the legendary Corinthian defender, who once played a game with a broken leg, to the boys' school story hero Strickland of the Sixth, Old Etonian cricket-lover George Orwell and the 14th Norwich Cub Scout XI of the early 1970s. Drawing on his own experiences of 'amateurism', D J Taylor describes a changing moral universe with profound consequences both for sport and the world beyond it.

On The Corinthian Spirit

The Decline of Amateurism in Sport

The name of Hedley Verity, the master bowler of unyielding menace, is one to be cherished more than 50 years after his death. Allan Hill tells the story of a magnificent sporting obsession in this reissue of the first full-length biography of a revered cricketer. Verity headed the English first-class bowling averages in his first season with Yorkshire and twice took ten wickets in an innings in consecutive seasons. Overall, his mesmeric left-hand spin yielded 1,956 wickets, including 144 for England, in less than ten years. 
 
The book, winner of the Cricket Society's Jubilee Literary award in 1986, contains a foreword by Sir Donald Bradman (whom Verity twice dismissed at Lord's in June 1934 to mastermind England's only victory over Australia at cricket's 'headquarters' in a century). It also includes a revealing memoir of Verity's boyhood and an Australian tour journal (1932-33) kept by the Yorkshireman for his relatives and friends. 
 
The story ends with a graphic account of Verity's ultimate heroism during the Second World War and is followed by a full statistical analysis of his career.

Hedley Verity

Portrait of a Cricketer

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