Ground Rules a Celebration of Cricket - Various
 Contributions
from 10 of todays leading authorities on cricket;
ranging from Test cricketers, cricket writers and
commentators, the book isnt set out in the style you
would expect to see in an historical cricket book.
It takes the form of stories and recollections from
international Test match venues around the world;
every Test playing country is represented in one form
or another dating back to the very first Test match
played at the MCG in 1877 between Australia and England.Ground
Rules It is impossible to cover every Test venue in
a book and Dakini have chosen wisely in my opinion
although they could have covered Headingley, scene
of the Botham magic in 1981! Grounds covered include
Sydney and the MCG in Australia, the AMP Oval and
Lords in England and the Sinhalese Sports Club in
Colombo Sri Lanka to name but a few.Buy
Ground Rules Now
Unless
well written and amply illustrated, historical books
have a tendency to be dull, hard going and heavy often
struggling to keep the reader interested. We have
no fear of that happening with this publication thanks
mainly to a well thought out design, fact laden chapters
and amazing photographs that will keep you wanting
to come back for more. If like me you struggle to
find an hour to sit down and read a book, one of the
positives from this title is that it has been written
in such a way that allows you to pick it up and turn
to any page and start reading. With over 200 large
format illustrations it is hard to pick some of my
favourites but I will save a little space to mention
just a few that caught my eye. Harold Larwood is included
and the picture shows him on his way back to the pavilion
after his mammoth 98 as night watchman against Australia
in the infamous Bodyline series in 1932-33. Also included
is the portrait of Victor Trumper who died at the
young age of 38, Bradman walking through the partisan
crowd and a magnificent aerial view of the Basin Reserve
in Wellington, probably the worlds biggest roundabout?!
As
I mentioned earlier, the one thing I did like about
this book were the personal accounts from players
such as Steve Waugh, Sourav Ganguly and Andy Flower,
not to mention the highly respected cricket commentators
Christopher Martin-Jenkins (Test match special) and
West Indian Donna Symmonds. My only gripe with the
book is that there wasnt enough room to include every
international Test ground, but in the interest of
fair play it would have taken a huge book to pull
this off! The statisticians arent forgotten either
with a collection of records and statistics from each
ground covered in this book. Another interesting addition
is the scorecards for every Test match played at the
venues and I mean every Test match.
There
are far too many memories, stories and personal accounts
to mention in this small review, Ill leave that up
to you the reader to plough through the hundreds of
pages on offer in Ground Rules A celebration of Test
cricket.
Dakini
are no stranger to quality books and have yet again
excelled themselves with this collection of great
cricketing articles centred on some of the major cricketing
venues around the globe.
It
is a must for any serious cricketing aficionado or
fan of the great game and a wonderful addition to
anyones book collection. All we have to do now is
hope that there will be a second volume in the future! Buy
Ground Rules Now
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