No Holding Back - The Autobiography by Michael Holding

No Holding Back – The Autobiography by Michael Holding with Edward Hawkins

For much of this book I imagined that the title was no more than a little pun on this cricketing legend’s name – perhaps a nod to his fearsome bowling. Then, two-thirds of the way through, with his early life, cricketing, broadcasting and business careers, and a chapter on his love of, and involvement with, horse racing done, he remarks his run up. Takes it back to the sightscreen, plucks a new ball from the umpire’s grasp and, if you’re at the crease with a bat in your hands you’d better know how to use it.

No Holding back indeed. In the final portion of this enjoyable book, Michael Holding lets fly. Bouncer after bouncer, aimed at the heart. Chuckers, cheating umpires, players’ attitudes, preparation and practice, the Pakistan forfeited test, the Allen Stanford fiasco, the West Indies perceived inability to play swing bowling, non-walking batsmen, sledging, the West Indies Cricket Board, the ICC (of which he was once a member until he felt compelled to resign) and, the IPL, Twenty20 and the future of Test cricket. Forthright, honest and outspoken, yet much of it makes perfect sense.

Although this is nothing but a book about a truly great cricketer (my superlative, not his) and the game of cricket, there is very little in the book about cricket itself, in terms of matches played. This is not a criticism, just a different approach to the usual blow-by-blow rehash of classic performances and semi-forgotten encounters. However, a little more insight into the characters and personalities of those he played with and against would have been welcome. Clive Lloyd, Sir Viv Richards, Andy Roberts and the late Malcolm Marshall are fleshed out, but a few more observations or anecdotes would not, in this instance, have gone amiss. Lack of a career stats appendix, however, is a fault.

For someone of such strong opinions, and moreover, being unafraid to voice them, he comes across as a really nice guy. A man of great modesty and integrity, it would appear. The words steadfast, loyal, hard-working also spring to mind. Part of this perception will come from years of listening to his broadcasting with the famously soothing, Kingstonian, molten chocolate voice. A lot of credit must go to the ghost writer, Edward Hawkins, who succeeds in not only making these words tell Michael Holding’s story, but they tell it with his voice.

No Holding Back – The Autobiography by Michael Holding is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

My Favourite Cricketer edited by John Stern

My Favourite Cricketer edited by John Stern
Hardback, Wisden, pp 186, £13.49

The concept of this book couldn’t be simpler – John Stern has collected 46 essays from the past five years of the Wisden Cricketer magazine’s My Favourite Cricketer page. Being a cricket supporter, you may already be familiar with the feature.

Chosen by journalists, broadcasters, former players, actors, businessmen and novelists, their only qualification to contribute is to have a love of cricket. This is writing for kindred spirits; by cricket lovers, for cricket lovers and, I suppose like any writing that does not pander to the uninitiated, is all the better for it. No-one needs to explain the basics or attempt to woo an audience with the literary equivalent of bright coloured clothing in man-made fabrics plastered in sponsors’ logos.

As you would expect, some of the game’s true greats are advocated. Then again, some are not. Hardly surprising that there is no champion for Grace, Bradman, Hammond or Hobbs, yet, Trumper, Jardine, Hutton and Larwood (all playing before World War II) all appear. From more recent times, the likes of Sir Vivvy, Sir Beefy, Lara, Warney and Waugh (both Steve and Mark) are curiously absent. Although this may be explained by Michael Henderson, who admits that ‘Ian Botham was the greatest English player I ever saw and he too was a hero. The thing is, he was everybody’s hero’. (I shan’t tell you who Henderson’s favourite is, nor will I divulge any of those selected – I won’t spoil the fun in finding out, because I know your interest is aroused).

This, however, is the joy of the book. To be someone’s favourite, you do not have to be the best. We take many factors into account before deciding who we take to our heart. Of course, in most cases, once someone attains the stature of ‘My Favourite Player’, usually somewhere in your early teens, they are there for life. But the reasons they attain such status in the first place are many and have little do do with quantity of runs scored or wickets taken.

We cherish certain cricketers because of perceived unquantifiable qualities like doggedness, bloody-mindedness, lion-heartedness, stoicism, bravery, athleticism, demeanour, joie de vivre or perhaps even their clownishness. You may think that such a basic format would provoke 46 vaguely similar essays, yet what emerges from the page (accompanied by superb photographs) are 46 very different, personal, evocative, heartfelt essays.

Wisden produce few books, but when they do, they make it count. In my previous post I compared the joy of thumbing through a Wisden Almanack to that of a nine-year-old with a Beano Summer Special. I could easily do the same with this lovely book. If you’re looking for a reasonably priced birthday present for a cricket nut then your search is over.

For the launch of My Favourite Cricketer, the publisher’s are doing a poll on their twitter page and website to find out who is the nation’s favourite cricketer. When people enter the poll they are given the chance to win a copy of My Favourite Cricketer. My own Top Three all made it into the book (I ended up deciding that Carl Hooper was my fourth favourite – alas, he is not included). Here is a link to that site so you can cast your own vote.

My Favourite Cricketer edited by John Stern is now available to buy.

The Ultimate Test: The Story of the 2009 Ashes Series

The Ultimate Test ~ The Story of the 2009 Ashes Series by Gideon Haigh
Published by Arum, £12.99

It’s a good idea. Take cricket’s oldest and fiercest (Pakistan-India not withstanding) rivalry. Two sides lock horns over twenty-five days of unremitting drama, with the balance-of-power fluctuating day-by-day, session-by-session, occasionally over-by-over. Take one man’s daily press reports from the whole series and, with undue haste, have it on the bookshelves within an hour or two of the little urn being held aloft.

It worked in 2005, so it should again. And it does so, not simply because the latest series matched the previous encounter (the 2006-07 debacle Down Under has been erased by England’s Ministry of Truth) for drama, though not for the quality of cricket or big name protagonists, but because Gideon Haigh is such a good writer; shrewd, witty and readable.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Whereas his 2005 account was a straight rerun of his Guardian pieces, this book collects his thoughts from the Business Spectator (Melbourne), The Times (London), The National (Abu Dhabi), a blog and diary from The Wisden Cricketer, plus some features for Ladbroke’s and columns for The Australian and Sunday Age.

He traces the story back to the last day of 2008 as Australia lose their second test series in a month, the home defeat by South Africa following a trouncing in India.  We get 49 pages of background and musings prior to a ball being bowled on Day One at Cardiff and a further 16 as epilogue six short weeks later.

The success of the format is not that one gets an immediate post-play account, but is privy to the pre-play thoughts without hindsight revision (how many ex-pro’s employ the Ministry of Truth in ghost-written biogs?). It makes subtle and refreshing copy for the reader. Thus, one sees his advocacy of Ramprakash as a straight replacement for Pietersen for the Third Test, but his rejection of the idea on the eve of the Final Test, giving good reasoning on both occasions. He applauds the selection of Trott, and wishes him luck, but is fearful of the Oval’s legacy as a debutants graveyard.

He has a good eye for the trivial stat or anomaly that all true cricket lovers adore, such that India’s Virender Sehwag (no Derek Underwood he) is the only spinner to have twice hit Ricky Ponting’s stumps in tests (as illustration that Swann’s doing so at Edgbaston was still no mean achievement) or that England’s batting backbone, numbers three to five, faced just sixty balls in the Headingley shambles, and were dismissed by six of them.

He muses on serious matters, such as the very future of Test Cricket, in competition with the “resistless tide of Twenty20”, and notes that by the series finale, with the Ashes poised on a knife-edge, the sports pages lead with Arsenal v Celtic, the Harlequins rugger fiasco, and “soccer, incongruously, played all day (on televisions) in the (Oval) press box”.

He is also waspishly funny when describing Aussie keeper Brad Haddin as ham handed, or musing that those in corporate hospitality at Cardiff must be dining on “braised unicorn and ambrosia” ~ the only possible explanation for empty seats whilst Flintoff  is bowling at 93mph to Phillip Hughes.

The success or readability of this book can only be judged with time. Cricket fans (I’m sure I’m not the only one) still take Mike Brearley’s account of the 1981 series off the dusty bookshelves in the football season (i.e. between late July and mid June) not because of his perceptive insight and way with words, but because of the dramas that happened on the field.

The publisher’s haste in getting this book on the shelves is betrayed by nine blank pages (how many trees?) before the back endpaper. This would have been ten blanks but for an imperial-to-metric length and distance conversion chart. I cannot fathom what this possibly has to do with this book (SuperFred’s run out of Ponting is described as an undefined “distance”) other than it has been superimposed on the template of last year’s Schott’s Miscellany or perhaps the Highway Code (I don’t suppose for a minute they print such things in maths text books anymore).

Cricket attracts ‘characters’ and eccentrics, think Rags Randall, Merv Hughes, Freds  Trueman and Flintoff, Warney, Beefy, Lamby, Vivvy, Johnners, Blowers and the Jimmy Saville look-alike who is picked out in the crowd by TV cameramen wherever England play. Gideon Haigh joins them as a proud Australian, who has lived there almost all of his life, yet, when it comes to cricket, supports England, presumably in honour of his being born here one day 40-odd years ago.

I admit I haven’t gone cover-to-cover with this book just yet, but in a few winters will do so, just as I occasionally dip into his 2005 edition, because both turned out to be series of great, gripping cricket matches. That Gideon Haigh’s prose will reignite them for me is all to the good.