Glorious Summers and Discontents: Selected Writings from a Dramatic Decade

by Mike Atherton

The best from a decade of the writing of Mike Atherton, the sports journalist of the year. Former England Cricket captain Mike Atherton was named the Sports Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in March 2010. This book compiles Atherton's best writings over the last decade, to provide a revealing and insightful portrait of modern cricket and much else besides. Fully up-to-date to include a chapter on England's glorious winter Ashes series. In this fascinating book, Mike Atherton selects the best pieces he has written over the last decade. Renowned as a shrewd and resolute captain of England, Atherton moved effortlessly into the commentary box and Fleet Street, proving himself every bit as capable with the pen as with the bat. It has been a dramatic period, seeing the rise of Twenty20 cricket and the IPL, as well as the revival of England's prospects, breaking a long era of Australian dominance in the Ashes. There has also been controversy, too, with terrorist attack

Genres: Sports

416 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2011

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only really borrowed this from the library on the basis it will surely be removed from stock soon, but while each individual piece was fine they didn't have the staying power of those by Gideon Haigh, say. They provided a useful insight into the thoughts at the time, but wouldn't warrant a re-read.

The main draw is that Atherton is good at writing, while offering an insight as a former player at the top of the game. He therefore wrote with authority without being boring, and offered judgements of cricketers based on their abilities rather than just their value to the spectator. It is interesting to see the same arguments about test cricket compared to one day cricket that are still replayed today, but Atherton wasn't as good at the wider analysis as many traditional journalists. In a sporting landscape where VAR in football is regularly compared to the equivalent in cricket, it's insightful that at the time, Atherton was cheering a Bangladesh series that didn't have a decision review system.

The non-cricket pieces I found less engaging, as they followed the journalistic trope of comparing cricketers to footballers and their respective moralities, and I also skipped the Ashes 2010-11 reports which seemed to be included because they were topical at the time, rather than for their written value.

The Stanford pieces were much more interesting as they gave a fuller impression of what was promised at the time, and such details are generally lost in modern retrospectives. Much of the collection serves to highlight that columnists are expected to have opinions on everything and that the judgements on what was news at the time are not necessarily reflected in later summaries.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atherton was a great batsman and captain and is now a great cricket journalist and writer - this collection covers 2000 to 2010

[Joshua S Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. I hope somewhere Athers is getting ready to publish another collection of his writing in The Times.

[David Meldrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of some of the author's cricket (and a few other sports in one chapter) journalism. The articles are as insightful and clear-sighted as we've come to expect from his commentary contributions. He remains an important voice in English cricket, and this book only underlines that.

[SHANKAR KRISHNAN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frim a person of Atherton's stature and background, this is an insipid ouput. Jeff Thomson's autobiography was more readable.