'It's Not Cricket: Skullduggery, Sharp Practice and Downright Cheating in the Noble Game'

by Simon Rae

This is a definitive history of the seedy underside of cricket. From the 18th-century crowd violence to the obsessive will to win of W.G. Grace; from the bodyline to throwing; from sledging to the match-fixing allegations brought against a host of Test players, culminating in Hansie Cronje's lifetime ban from the game, Simon Rae's work is a revelatory look at a game that was always supposed to be the yardstick of all that was true, honest, pure and of good repute.

Genres: Nonfiction

332 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Simon Rae is a British poet, broadcaster, biographer and playwright who runs the Top Edge Productions theatre company. He won the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition in 1999 and has also been awarded an Eric Gregory Award and a Southern Arts Literature Bursary and held Royal Literary Fund fellowships at Oxford Brookes and Warwick Universities. His play Grass won a Fringe Highlight award in 2002.

Reviews

[Dipra Lahiri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amidst the nonstop hurly burly of all year round cricket, the cricket fan needs to be occasionally reminded of the fact that since inception, not all was well with the gentleman's game, and perhaps, under the surface, there still exists a seedier side manifesting itself in gamesmanship, unsporting behavior, cheating, bending the rules, match fixing etc.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

He writes in a weird way, but I liked hearing about crooked cricket. If you do not know cricket, you should not read this book.