A Comprehensive Guide to Cricket: A Simple Guide to the Rules, History, Great Scandals, Famous Players, Exciting Characters, Beautiful Grounds and Wonderful Anecdotes of Cricket

By Ramsey Blake

This book will in a concise way explain to you the rules, history, anecdoes, and heritage of the wonderful game of cricket.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ramsey Blake
• Release date: May 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9798724356626

Book preview

Introduction

Just mention the word cricket, and many people start to conjure up images of cream teas and village greens in England, or the hot sun and dry grounds of India, or the baggy green cap of Australia, or the bruised faces of batsmen who have faced the West Indies. Cricket is a fascinating sport that covers a whole range of styles and emotions, and it is no wonder it is played and enjoyed by so many people in a variety of formats around the world, and has been for centuries.

If you’ve picked up this book because you have a growing interest in cricket or have wondered quite what it is all about, then you have come to the right place. This book is going to explain the basics of cricket so that you can understand the rules and happily go and play for a team or with your friends without controversy—well, relative controversy, anyway!—and also give you an insight into the history of the game, how it came about and developed down the years, and also into the great players and characters that have made up the game. This book is also going to give you a tour of the cricketing world as you get to find out some of the best grounds in the world. From Lords, the ‘home of cricket’ in England to the very best that the rest of the world has to offer.

I’m also going to be covering off the darker sides of cricket, not because I want you to follow in the footsteps of any of those involved, but because it is an interesting part of the history of the game and shows just how huge cricket has become. The chapter that focuses on this will cover those moments that are, perhaps, not considered ‘in the spirit of the game,’ such as the bodyline series between England and Australia, where England played within the laws of the game but perhaps spoilt their reputation for fairness in the process, the match-fixing scandals, such as those revealed by the late South African captain Hanie Cronjie, the many ball-tampering scandals that have cropped up, such as the fairly recent Australian sandpaper-gate, which almost brought one of the great cricketing nations completely to its knees, and also the personal scandals of greats like Kevin Pieterson and Shane Warne, who never seemed afraid to let their personal demons get in the way of their genius at cricket.

The final couple of chapters cover some of the greatest matches and series ever to be played, and some of the colourful and funny anecdotes that cricket, above all other sports, seem to produce lots of that could keep any self-respecting raconteur going for many a year.

So, what brought me to love cricket? Some of my earliest memories are around cricket. I remember reading in the newspapers (shows how long ago it was, it was in the papers, not all over the internet) the photos of Mike Gatting showing his finger into the face of an umpire and wondered how he could get so angry about a game of cricket. In the days when cricket was on the BBC in England and I could get up and watch a whole day’s play accompanied by the dulcet tones of the late great Richie Benaud, and hear the insights of the likes of Ray Illingworth. Then, when I was older, going to sit in the Lord’s sunshine, having a few beers with my friends, watching Mark Ramprakash at his finest hit a double-hundred for Middlesex. What a player he was. Because he was incredibly tense whenever he made his way to the crease for England, he is unlikely to make the chapter discussing the greatest players of all-time but, at county level, he was immense and, in terms of his batting, at a pure technical style, he was probably one of the best that the English game ever produced. Sadly, he could never overcome that tenseness and nervousness at international level, and so, here he is as a footnote in my introduction, rather than being discussed in the chapter regarding the greatest players the game has ever seen.

I have particularly nice memories of going to see England play a few times with my dad, who is no longer with us. Somehow, he got himself onto the Lords ticket ballots for England games and I went to see them a few times against various countries—not for the Ashes though; those were all sold out well in advance and never offered to those on the ballot. However, I did see England win at the Oval in an Ashes series, in the days when England were lucky to win a game against Australia. If matches went to a fifth day, then the ground used to offer entry for ten pound or something low like that, so off my dad and I went, to see Angus Fraser through his steady and accurate bowling, get the Australian team out and gain a rare victory for England. Of course, since Michael Vaughan’s team won back the Ashes after that ridiculously long drought, those victories are not quite as rare but, back then, they were, and I was very proud to have been at a game where England actually managed to beat Australia.

Those are just a few of my memories of cricket in my formative years, and, hopefully, you are starting to build your own memories. Maybe you recently got up at 3:45 a.m. to watch Joe Root and the England team win a test match in India, maybe it's the one day game or twenty-twenty, or the stars of the Indian Premier League that have piqued your interest. Maybe it is all those things and more, or maybe you really don’t know a single thing but have always wondered what cricket was all about. This book is here to help you on your way, to give you the basics so you can go out and play cricket or understand cricket as a spectator, and also to build up your knowledge and interest about the game and its history and, hopefully, give you the same love and appreciation for the game of cricket that I have.

Chapter 1: The History of Cricket

So, who on earth came up with