Overview

For most of his professional life Michael Parkinson has been a highly regarded sports journalist. This consistently entertaining collection of his best articles reminds us that his first love is cricket and the people who excel at it. His ambition to play for England was thwarted, but not before he opened the batting with a young Dickie Bird at Barnsley. Along with hilarious memories of his cricket mad father and a lost youth emulating his heroes in street games, Michael Parkinson has written compelling descriptions of great players he has known and the moments or matches during which they became famous. Unsurprisingly, there is an edge to what the author has to say about cricket administrators and the way the game is run; the book is a sheer joy to read and written with the author's easy assurance.

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9780340825082

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Reviews

From the first section dealing with his own early encounters with cricket onwards, distinguished sports journalist Parkinson strikes a nostalgic tone without ever straying into sentimentality. Throughout the book his love for the game shines through. He puts forward trenchant opinions with regard to such matters as administrators or the uncertain fate of small local clubs, but always a warm humour shines through. This is particularly true when he discusses Yorkshire cricket and his cricket-obsessed father. Here we enter a world of awful pitches, cynical old pros, legendary bats - including one allegedly part-covered with kangaroo skin to give it a unique extra quality - and umpires appealing on behalf of bowlers. The pieces cover a whole range of cricketing topics, with many articles inevitably showing a bias towards the game in Yorkshire. These provide many amusing anecdotes and stories concerning the likes of Wilfred Rhodes, Geoffrey Boycott and Dickie Bird. One of the best describes how a young, bespectacled Boycott got the last laugh over some grizzled old players who were barracking him by playing a beautiful back-foot shot that made them quit their joking and gawp in admiration. Looking beyond Yorkshire there are pieces covering such matters as fire-and-brimstone fast bowlers, umpires exacting revenge over mouthy players and short profiles of cricketers past and present from Keith Miller and Garfield Sobers to Darren Gough and Shane Warne. This is an ideal book for dipping into on a rainy afternoon, with something to entertain all cricket lovers. Whether describing the genius of Keith Miller and Garfield Sobers or the more contemporary exploits of Darren Gough and Shane Warne, many of the articles will transport readers to summer afternoons in far-off pavilions, or to hard-fought games on rutted old Barnsley pitches. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Born in Yorkshire, Michael Parkinson left school at sixteen with the ambition to play cricket for Yorkshire and England and to write about cricket for the Manchester Guardian. Although, he didn't manage to fulfil the first half of his ambition, he has since become one of the most successful journalists of his generation. He wrote a sports column for The Sunday Times for fifteen years and now writes for the Telegraph. He is also a legendary TV and radio presenter and can currently be seen on BBC 1 in the return of his hugely popular TV chat show, Parkinson.

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