Cricket: The Game of Life: Every reason to celebrate

Description

Shortlisted for the MCC/Cricket Association Book of the Year. Scyld Berry draws on his experiences as a cricket writer of forty years to produce new insights and unfamiliar historical angles on the game, along with moving reflections on episodes from his own life. The author covers a range of themes including cricket in different areas of the world, and abstract concepts such as language, numbers, ethics and psychology; Scyld Berry relishes the joys cricket provides and is convinced of the positive effect it can have in people's lives. Cricket: The Game of Life is an inspiring book that reminds readers why they love the game and prompts them to look at it in a new way.

Scyld Berry has reported on more England Test matches than any cricket writer, over 400 of them, including 20 Ashes series. He was born and grew up within a mile of Bramall Lane in Sheffield. He started as a cricket journalist in 1976, and has successively been the cricket correspondent of the Observer, the Sunday Correspondent, theIndependent on Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. For four years he was the editor ofWisden Cricketers' Almanack. On the field, he has taken five wickets in an innings in county cricket - for Gloucestershire Over-60s. Cricket: The Game of Life is Scyld's seventh book - six of which are about cricket. He has three children, two cats and a wife.

The extended piece on the pressures of Ashes series on captains is beautifully painted....I think every aspiring young England cricketer should read this....not as something to be afraid of, but to enlighten and prepare for the challenges that may come his way * Andy Flower * When I see the quality of writing by people like Scyld Berry...I feel daunted. I can never write as well as they can. * Rahul Dravid * Cricket's rich and varied tapestry, revealing character and national characteristics is passed on here by a man who has always been passionately interested in both. -- Mike Atherton The game of cricket manages to invade the minds of all that are passionate about it on so many levels - it's combination of tradition, innovation, rivalry and friendship makes it truly unique. Scyld manages to encapsulate everything that is great about cricket into a fantastically entertaining book that reminds us all of how lucky we are to have involvement in the best game of all. -- Andrew Strauss This could be the first existential book about cricket I've ever read. It's certainly the most ambitious, and by turns the most beautiful...It's both sweeping and meticulous all at once....I can only say, truly, that my connection to the game feels deeper for having read it. It's a book that dares to concern itself with the 'why' question that lies behind everything. I feel like I understand a little more about why this enduringly magical, absurdly incongruous, infinitely renewable curio continues to take hold of us, and can offer no greater praise than that. -- Phil Walker * All Out Cricket * Perhaps more than any other sport, cricket has inspired outstanding writing. As Scyld Berry reveals in his new book, Cricket: The Game of Life, around 20,000 books or pamphlets have been produced in English on cricket over the years, a record. Now Mr Berry, a former editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and the cricket correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, has written a worthy addition to this rich lineage. The book may be eclectic, but it is also rewarding' * The Economist * ...400 page love letter to the sport, weaving in his own memories with tales from around the world. * Sport * Scyld Berry is a rarity: among cricket correspondents of what were once styled the broadsheets, he is a scribe with almost no playing pedigree...few can challenge the breadth of his knowledge and understanding, or his love, of this most subtle of all sports. Throw in the author's rich cultural awareness and command of the English language and the result is a very good cricket book, one I am happy to label great...Seldom have I read a dust jacket with a more accurate description of its book. Even more rarely have I endorsed a book so wholeheartedly. * Association of Cricket Historians * Scyld Berry's paean to the game from its early days to now is an intensely personal work from one of cricket journalism's most original thinkers, mixing serious historical research with the reveries and theories that have sustained him over a lifetime. A work of love. * ESPNCricinfo *