Buzzin Cricket

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.