by Mayukh Ghosh
July 2008.
“Welcome to our new reviewer, Martin, he has chosen a book about the Notts express to open his innings.”
This was a time when cricket’s premier website Cricinfo published more than one review a month. The reviewers were the likes of Gideon Haigh, Stephen Chalke, Ivo Tennant ,Stephen Fay and other equally illustrious names.
Thirteen years have elapsed.
The number of books they have reviewed in the past six months: ONE.
The magazines do review books but barring the likes of ACS and one or two others, they are just one or two paragraphs in which, quite often, the reviewer talks more about themselves than the books!
And among them reviewers who actually read the books they review make a rather small subset.
Slowly but surely, that ‘new reviewer’ has now become the most consistent in the cricket world.
He does it every week, at a time when people often feel lethargic to even read them every week. The number of pieces he has written in these 13 years is, as I write, four more than the number of wickets James Anderson has taken at the first-class level.
And he reads every single book that he reviews from cover to cover - a trait that some others can do well to emulate from time to time.
That book about the ‘Notts Express’ was Gerry Wolstenholme’s ‘Harold Larwood: Blackpool Cricket Club Professional’. I am sure he had chosen his subject carefully. Larwood is his cricketing hero and the subject of the book which got him started.
“My Dad was a very good cricketer and, although his talent sadly passed me by, his love for the game didn't and that's where the interest came from. As a child I read his incomplete run of post war Wisdens from cover to cover, time and again.
“As a teenager I discovered, for a few years anyway, that there was more to life than cricket and the voracious reading of old Wisdens stopped (although never completely). Then in my final year at University I staggered home from the pub one night and sat and watched the news in the TV room at my hall of residence. When everyone else there went back to their rooms I flicked through the channels and came across a '40 Minutes' documentary, made to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Bodyline series and was fascinated. I knew a bit about Bodyline but not a lot as my Dad's Wisdens were all post war and didn't include 1959 (Jardine's obituary). It fascinated me, and next day I went out and bought a copy of Larwood's autobiography that had also been re-released, and it started from there.”
But it rarely is one smooth ride.
“I didn't buy much for a few years as I didn't have much money, but I started buying books occasionally. Then I realised there were specialist dealers about, and I bought a few more, including a few of the original Bodyline books.
“In 1989 I found a long a run of old Wisdens that my Mum lent me the money to buy, and by around 1991 I had a collection of about 400 books but, also, three young children so all the books went up in the loft out of harm's way. They didn't come down again until around 2005, at which point I discovered eBay, and got completely hooked. I started writing reviews three or four years later.”
He has read thousands of them and hence picking favourites was not an easy job.
Early in 2018, I asked him this question.
“ My favourite books are still The Larwood Story and a collection of Neville Cardus's reports from The Guardian, The Roses Matches 1919-1939.
“That apart my favourite writers are Stephen Chalke and David Frith - if I had to nominate one from each it would be No Coward Soul and Stoddy's Mission.
”Crusoe Robertson-Glasgow and Alan Ross are great favourites as well.
”Much under-rated as a writer is the late David Green, whose A Handful of Confetti is brilliant. Also Colin Evans' Mods and Blockers and Douglas Miller's biography of Jack Bond (you may be noticing a pattern developing here!)
”From a collecting point of view, I have some particular favourites. First and foremost is a very rare brochure for an Archie Jackson memorial event. Not too far behind are a copy of a Cardus limited edition from 1929, The Summer Game, complete with dust jacket, and a copy of Sam Staples Benefit Brochure signed by the whole Notts XI (including Larwood and Voce). Two more are Ted McDonald's benefit brochure (illustrated in the biography of McDonald that Ken Piesse published) and a pre tour brochure for the 1896 Ashes series.”
I asked the question again, three years later. This time the demand was that of a list of ten. I knew that for someone who reads that much that regularly, it would probably lead to him selecting ten new names. Well, I was partially correct.
Here they are (in no particular order):
1. Greg Growden: Cricketers At War
Published as recently as 2019 a copy of this book only found its way into my collection this year. That was my loss. What will sadly be recorded by history as the late Greg Growden’s last book is a fascinating look at Australian cricketers who saw action in the Boer War, both World Wars and the Vietnam War.
2. Stephen Chalke and Derek Hodgson: No Coward Soul
Quite frankly I could have selected all ten books from Stephen Chalke’s oeuvre, but decided to limit myself to just one, but which one? In the end the nod went to this brilliant biography of Bob Appleyard.
3. David Frith: Bodyline Autopsy
Fortunately David Frith saves me from a Stephen Chalke type dilemma by having written the definitive account of the ‘Bodyline’ series, so my choice from his splendid body of work is a simple one.
4. Ralph Barker: Ten Great Innings
Make no mistake this 1964 book contains some fine accounts of nine famous innings, but it gets in to my ten because the essay on Harold Gimblett’s debut innings in First Class cricket remains the finest piece of cricket writing I have read, bar none (by the way, a companion volume, Ten Great Bowlers, came along three years later and is also a fine book) .
5. David Tossell: Grovel
As a teenager I watched as much of the five Tests between England and West Indies in 1976 as of any series that has taken place since. It was a thrilling contest, full of courage and skill and played in the sort of atmosphere that I imagine must have characterised events in the Coliseum in Roman times. David Tossell’s retrospective account, published thirty years later, captures it perfectly.
6. Ashley Gray: The Unforgiven
It took Ashley Gray years to put together the stories of the West Indian cricketers who toured South Africa in the early 1980s in the face of the unanimous condemnation of their peers. The result is a cricket book like no other.
7. David Foot: Wally Hammond, The Reasons Why
Wally Hammond was a superb all-round cricketer, and as complex a character as has ever played top level sport. Fortunately for the rest of us David Foot, after studying his man for years, worked him out, and this biography is an authoritative telling of a remarkable story.
8. Harold Larwood/Kevin Perkins: The Larwood Story
Cricketing autobiographies are, generally, much better books nowadays than they were in years gone by, but Harold Larwood’s 1963 collaboration with Kevin Perkins remains right up there with the very best.
9. Simon Wilde: Ranji, A Genius Rich and Strange
Simon Wilde’s name appears on the spine of a number of fine books, but however many he produces he will never manage to match the quality of his debut, this meticulously researched and superbly written biography of Ranjitsinhji.
10. Gideon Haigh: The Big Ship
Limiting myself to one book per author means Gideon Haigh gives me another choice. He has written outstanding tour books, and anthologies of his work are very much the best of the sort of book. He has also written two superb biographies, of Warwick Armstrong and Jack Iverson. I hate the agony of choice but, as I have to jump one way or the other, today that will be in the direction of ‘The Big Ship’. Tomorrow it would probably be ‘Mystery Spinner’.
Martin Chandler’s book reviews and other pieces can be found here: https://www.cricketweb.net/author/martin/
Anyone with any interest in cricket’s history and literature will find it worthwhile spending time on this selection.
And the same can be said about the books he has chosen.