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Mid-Wicket Tales: From Trumper to Tendulkar
Written with the passion of a fan and knowledge of a cricketer, Mid-Wicket From Trumper to Tendulkar is for all genuine lovers of cricket from every cricketing nation. It celebrates cricket in all its hues and brings alive the rich history, romance and technical nuances of the game, where diligent research and analysis is blended with rare and interesting anecdotes.
Even as the essays reflect the authors’ passion for the game, there is a perspective, balance and tolerant objectivity right through the book. Thus, if they lavish praise on Rahul Dravid for his batting or the wondrous all-round skills of Garry Sobers or the incomparable slip catching of Bobby Simpson, they also admire the less successful test cricketers, for there are just a few thousand test players in 137 years of international cricket.
It is the sort of book one can reach out and spend 30 minutes on any number of occasions, just like meeting old friends.
Even as the essays reflect the authors’ passion for the game, there is a perspective, balance and tolerant objectivity right through the book. Thus, if they lavish praise on Rahul Dravid for his batting or the wondrous all-round skills of Garry Sobers or the incomparable slip catching of Bobby Simpson, they also admire the less successful test cricketers, for there are just a few thousand test players in 137 years of international cricket.
It is the sort of book one can reach out and spend 30 minutes on any number of occasions, just like meeting old friends.
- GenresNonfictionSports
292 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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85 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 5, 2016
3.5/5 The authors have themselves played club cricket a lot and they have given this gem of a fast-read but satisfying collection of essays. It was fun to read their analysis on greatest cricketers in diff skill-sets eg stylish left-hand batsmen, off-spinners, fast bowlers etc etc
I bought this book for a comfort read on my trip and it served its purpose very well.
I bought this book for a comfort read on my trip and it served its purpose very well.
October 16, 2014
If you love cricket, read this or stop calling yourself a fan of cricket.
July 22, 2016
A beautifully written book giving insider details about the game we Indians love the foremost. Each article is well researched, backed by statistics and each gives a keen insight on the glorious past. This is a book which urges you to read more about the game. Articles about the heroes of the past like Trumper, Harvey, Laker, Venkatraghavan and other past heroes give a glimpse of the foregone era. On the whole, it is a wonderful read for every Indian cricket fan.
December 7, 2014
Must read for a true cricket fan.. Written by fans for fans!
Read
September 2, 2015A must read for any cricket lover. Anecdotes, as usual, are very joyful to read. Besides, the analytics that the authors present in the book are quite interesting.
August 3, 2019
One of the best books for cricket lovers
May 23, 2020
The book’s title arouses some curiosity with the timespan from Trumper to modern era seems too to be wide to be covered in a single book. However as one understands that this is anthology covering a varied no. of themes and topics, it starts to make more sense.
The book is a combination of memoirs, hardnosed analysis, personal favourites applied to an excellent range of cricketing topics. It takes time to get used to the authors’ writing style as it is intuitive, slight jumpy in nature but once you get used to it, the content flows well.
The authors bring a lot of sense to the cricketing tales that they narrate and, in many places, the authors really bring the intent of the topic home to the readers. Some of the essays are quite excellent specially on ‘First class cricket’, ‘For an even game between bat and ball’ and ‘Stories from Madras League’. The authors fall into a special category of cricketing fans- people who played cricket at club level and also retain the enthusiasm of non-playing cricketing population, and definitely elevates the content of the book.
A nice book- good for an quick read and in fact you can browse through any topic at random and enjoy the cricketing vignettes
The book is a combination of memoirs, hardnosed analysis, personal favourites applied to an excellent range of cricketing topics. It takes time to get used to the authors’ writing style as it is intuitive, slight jumpy in nature but once you get used to it, the content flows well.
The authors bring a lot of sense to the cricketing tales that they narrate and, in many places, the authors really bring the intent of the topic home to the readers. Some of the essays are quite excellent specially on ‘First class cricket’, ‘For an even game between bat and ball’ and ‘Stories from Madras League’. The authors fall into a special category of cricketing fans- people who played cricket at club level and also retain the enthusiasm of non-playing cricketing population, and definitely elevates the content of the book.
A nice book- good for an quick read and in fact you can browse through any topic at random and enjoy the cricketing vignettes
October 14, 2018
This is a pretty unique book! It is not just a collection of essays on Cricket; rather it is a beautiful symphony of passionate Cricket writing interspersed with detailed analytics and fact sets to support the hypothesis.
The topics of the essays cover the varied domains of Cricketing skills and each facet is explored in thorough detail. While the essays do tribute the masters of each craft, the analysis and stats throw quite a few surprises as well.
Another nice aspect of the book is the closing essay on Sachin Tendulkar. Written in 2013, the essay is a richly deserved glowing tribute to the meastro which makes us relive those glory days, once more!
I'd urge all the Cricket lovers to give this book a try. After all, did you know that Wicket keepers of yore kept a meat slab in their gloves for cushioning the impact of the ball!
The topics of the essays cover the varied domains of Cricketing skills and each facet is explored in thorough detail. While the essays do tribute the masters of each craft, the analysis and stats throw quite a few surprises as well.
Another nice aspect of the book is the closing essay on Sachin Tendulkar. Written in 2013, the essay is a richly deserved glowing tribute to the meastro which makes us relive those glory days, once more!
I'd urge all the Cricket lovers to give this book a try. After all, did you know that Wicket keepers of yore kept a meat slab in their gloves for cushioning the impact of the ball!
July 2, 2015
'Every Form of Spin – That’s India', starts the 19th chapter of Mid-wicket Tales, and it appears that the irony of the title might have been lost on the two tragics who have authored the work, S Giridhar and V.J. Raghunath or “I (Giridhar)” and “One of us (Raghunath)” as they soon become known, making it a point to document who is remembering what, and when, in their slightly barmy two-handed essays. For some of the statistics, and the conclusions they draw from them, have been spun in curious ways.
The heading of table 13.1 is a case in point. ‘Enigma: Why Is Australia So Weak in Left-arm Spin?’ is, yes, a table which reveals that not one Australian left arm spinner has taken 100 wickets or more in test matches. Fair enough. But the authors see no correlation between this table about left arm tweakers, and an earlier table (there are far too many of them) which is titled ‘Ranking the Leg Spinners Using an Effectiveness Index Model’. A cursory glance of this shows – using the formula put forward by the authors – that five out of the top eight leggies have been Aussie: Warne, Grimmett, MacGill, Benaud, and O’Reilly. The absence of left arm finger spinners in the Australian ranks is to ignore how successful these wrist spinners have been. Grimmett and Warne were both world record holders for the most number of test wickets at one time, and Benaud held the Australian record until being surpassed by Dennis Lillee.
It also misses the cultural difference in the way cricket is played down under; Aussies like it when spinners give the ball a good rip. While turning the ball the same way as a left arm finger spinner, the leg spinner gets bounce and fizz, and is ideally suited to Australian conditions. It’s also much riskier to bowl, and requires a greater degree of skill. Again, in the chapter on ‘The Chinaman and Mystery Bowler’ (there is a nickname that we’d do well to update in these more enlightened times) the obvious connection between a wealth of one and the lack of another is not made. When it is asked, ‘Why is it that most of the Chinamen bowlers are from Australia?’ the authors have the answer before them: ‘Strangely, Australia hardly has a worthy presence among orthodox left-arm spinners.’
By now the title of chapter nineteen has become clearer. Pointing out the shortcomings of English cricket – no wrist spinners – or Australian cricket – no finger spinners – is just a stop along the way to writing a chapter on how India has them in each category.
Perhaps it’s churlish to suggest that they have done so deliberately; it is more likely that in their amateur enthusiasm for the sport – and their great love of Indian cricket, especially the longer form – the authors have massaged some of their tables into supporting their pre-existing views. They certainly seem blind to some of the faults of the Indian game – the historical lack of genuine fast bowlers, for example, or the continued inability to win consistently abroad.
For a book that aims to cover the period between Trumper and Tendulkar, the baffling absence of Bradman is also quite noticeable. It seems only fitting to try and explain it with statistics. The Don gets a mention on 10 pages – i.e. one more than Vijay Manjrekar, who gets nine, and two less than Arthur Mailey and Salim Durani, both on a dozen – all excellent cricketers, no doubt, but never mentioned in the same sentence as Bradman otherwise. Tendulkar – of course, befitting his status as The Little Master – gets a whopping 23 pages, and a share in the title of the book, along with Victor Trumper, who gets five. I suppose it wouldn’t have bothered Old Vic; his name became a piece of rhyming slang for jumper, bumper, and dumper (a cigarette butt). And the authors needed someone else with a last name that started with T, for alliterative purposes.
Actually, they – “I (Giridhar)” and “One of us (Raghunath)” – needed an editor. Badly.
“One incident remains etched in Giridhar’s memory. It was January 1972 and the second morning of the match between Madras and Mysore at the Central College grounds in Bangalore. 9 a.m. and an hour more for play to begin, I (Giridhar) walk into the ground to chat with Venkat.”
Walking into the ground is the least of the narrator’s problems; he sounds as if he has walked into a wall.
I lost count of the number of times that the word ‘of’ was used instead of ‘off’ – “thumped of the back foot” – and some of the sentences, while meant as genuine praise of the great cricketers they describe, are extravagantly sloppy.
“McGrath, among all fast bowlers we have seen was the most accurate and relentless. He combined the unbridled aggression of a tearaway fast bowler (without being really fast) with an unmatched combination of discipline, tenacity and cunning. That cliché ‘corridor of uncertainty’ outside off stump – the batsman’s ultimate test of judgement – truly belonged to McGrath. He made batsmen play every one of the 29,248 balls he bowled in test cricket.”
Leaving aside the unhinged use of the royal ‘we’, and the dig at McGrath for not being truly fast, take a look at the last sentence. The batsmen had to play every one of the 29,248 balls that he sent down. That is, not one opener shouldered arms to McGrath once during his whole test career, ever.
Too many loose sentences like that have undermined the book, and the confidence we might otherwise have had in the authors’ opinions. It’s a shame. As a resident of Delhi, I share their distaste at the sight of youngsters playing tennis ball games in the park, and making no effort to bowl with a straight arm. Seeing a boy run fast to the crease, then stop and throw the ball, means that a passer-by might slow his stride to watch the outcome of one delivery, but never two.
The heading of table 13.1 is a case in point. ‘Enigma: Why Is Australia So Weak in Left-arm Spin?’ is, yes, a table which reveals that not one Australian left arm spinner has taken 100 wickets or more in test matches. Fair enough. But the authors see no correlation between this table about left arm tweakers, and an earlier table (there are far too many of them) which is titled ‘Ranking the Leg Spinners Using an Effectiveness Index Model’. A cursory glance of this shows – using the formula put forward by the authors – that five out of the top eight leggies have been Aussie: Warne, Grimmett, MacGill, Benaud, and O’Reilly. The absence of left arm finger spinners in the Australian ranks is to ignore how successful these wrist spinners have been. Grimmett and Warne were both world record holders for the most number of test wickets at one time, and Benaud held the Australian record until being surpassed by Dennis Lillee.
It also misses the cultural difference in the way cricket is played down under; Aussies like it when spinners give the ball a good rip. While turning the ball the same way as a left arm finger spinner, the leg spinner gets bounce and fizz, and is ideally suited to Australian conditions. It’s also much riskier to bowl, and requires a greater degree of skill. Again, in the chapter on ‘The Chinaman and Mystery Bowler’ (there is a nickname that we’d do well to update in these more enlightened times) the obvious connection between a wealth of one and the lack of another is not made. When it is asked, ‘Why is it that most of the Chinamen bowlers are from Australia?’ the authors have the answer before them: ‘Strangely, Australia hardly has a worthy presence among orthodox left-arm spinners.’
By now the title of chapter nineteen has become clearer. Pointing out the shortcomings of English cricket – no wrist spinners – or Australian cricket – no finger spinners – is just a stop along the way to writing a chapter on how India has them in each category.
Perhaps it’s churlish to suggest that they have done so deliberately; it is more likely that in their amateur enthusiasm for the sport – and their great love of Indian cricket, especially the longer form – the authors have massaged some of their tables into supporting their pre-existing views. They certainly seem blind to some of the faults of the Indian game – the historical lack of genuine fast bowlers, for example, or the continued inability to win consistently abroad.
For a book that aims to cover the period between Trumper and Tendulkar, the baffling absence of Bradman is also quite noticeable. It seems only fitting to try and explain it with statistics. The Don gets a mention on 10 pages – i.e. one more than Vijay Manjrekar, who gets nine, and two less than Arthur Mailey and Salim Durani, both on a dozen – all excellent cricketers, no doubt, but never mentioned in the same sentence as Bradman otherwise. Tendulkar – of course, befitting his status as The Little Master – gets a whopping 23 pages, and a share in the title of the book, along with Victor Trumper, who gets five. I suppose it wouldn’t have bothered Old Vic; his name became a piece of rhyming slang for jumper, bumper, and dumper (a cigarette butt). And the authors needed someone else with a last name that started with T, for alliterative purposes.
Actually, they – “I (Giridhar)” and “One of us (Raghunath)” – needed an editor. Badly.
“One incident remains etched in Giridhar’s memory. It was January 1972 and the second morning of the match between Madras and Mysore at the Central College grounds in Bangalore. 9 a.m. and an hour more for play to begin, I (Giridhar) walk into the ground to chat with Venkat.”
Walking into the ground is the least of the narrator’s problems; he sounds as if he has walked into a wall.
I lost count of the number of times that the word ‘of’ was used instead of ‘off’ – “thumped of the back foot” – and some of the sentences, while meant as genuine praise of the great cricketers they describe, are extravagantly sloppy.
“McGrath, among all fast bowlers we have seen was the most accurate and relentless. He combined the unbridled aggression of a tearaway fast bowler (without being really fast) with an unmatched combination of discipline, tenacity and cunning. That cliché ‘corridor of uncertainty’ outside off stump – the batsman’s ultimate test of judgement – truly belonged to McGrath. He made batsmen play every one of the 29,248 balls he bowled in test cricket.”
Leaving aside the unhinged use of the royal ‘we’, and the dig at McGrath for not being truly fast, take a look at the last sentence. The batsmen had to play every one of the 29,248 balls that he sent down. That is, not one opener shouldered arms to McGrath once during his whole test career, ever.
Too many loose sentences like that have undermined the book, and the confidence we might otherwise have had in the authors’ opinions. It’s a shame. As a resident of Delhi, I share their distaste at the sight of youngsters playing tennis ball games in the park, and making no effort to bowl with a straight arm. Seeing a boy run fast to the crease, then stop and throw the ball, means that a passer-by might slow his stride to watch the outcome of one delivery, but never two.
March 16, 2020
Good read but somewhat too dry and technical for it to be a fun one. Maybe great for hardcore cricket buffs
January 28, 2021
A romantic side of the game we all love. As Dravid said, this book will make you fall in love with the game all over again :)
November 8, 2014
This book is a labor of love, love for the game of cricket in all its multifarious forms and aspects. The art and history of the game is explored through not only many anecdotes, snippets and the traditions of the game but also through the vast amount of statistics available on the game's past and present. The authors, being engineers and management consultants in their lives, bring their considerable knowledge and abilities in quantitative methods to apply to the game's vast trove of data and glean insights from these numbers. The result is an enjoyable journey through the romance of the game's great characters, its traditions, its laws and various aspects of the finer points and nuances of the game.
Having said that, the book is not without its shortcomings. In their great desire to avoid courting controversies and be politically correct, the authors turn a blind eye to the many problems plaguing the game today. They deal with some of them in passing but treat the issues with kid gloves. This is a disappointment because the authors see themselves as purists and genuine lovers of the game. In my view, they could have dealt with the problems without pointing fingers at people but providing insights on dealing with them.
I shall first talk of the things I liked about the book. The final chapter of the book is an interview with S.Venkatraghavan, India's great off-spinner of the 1960s and 70s, and it is perhaps the best chapter in the book. Venkat is quite insightful about many aspects of the game in this interview. I was particularly struck by his rejection of the DRS (Decision review System) in deciding LBW appeals. Venkat says: "...Hawkeye cannot predict the trajectory of the ball after hitting the pad. The age of the ball, new, 20 or 40 or 80 overs old will make a difference - the softer the ball the less it will bounce; turn and bounce will be different depending on whether it pitches on the seam or the side. The age of the pitch too, depending on whether it is day one or day five will make a difference to bounce and trajectory. ". If this is the basis for BCCI's rejection of the DRS, it makes sense.
The other insight from Vankat is that when a batsman plays forward, even to a spinner, the ball is likely to jump higher than the height of the stumps unless it hits him below the shin.
The other things which captured my attention are the following conclusions after analyzing the statistics on the game:
(i)That batsmen who end up eventually successful show signs of early success within their first ten tests.
(ii)That Kapil Dev was the best among ODI players in rotating the strike and that his running between the wickets was sensational in that he was never run out in test matches spanning 184 innings.
(iii)That Australia never had a great left-arm finger spinner ever in the game's history! In contrast, England always had a commanding presence in this area.
Now, I shall turn to my disappointments about the book. The authors are purists of the game by their own admission. So, they have a duty to deal with the issue of `match fixing' and say something about it. With their analytical minds, I am sure that they have much to say, but I think they simply eschewed it in favor of avoiding controversies.
The other key issue is the trend of off-spinners and `chucking' during the past 20 years. I don't see how they can write approvingly of Muralitharan, Harbhajan Singh, Saqlain Mushtaq and Saeed Ajmal, all of whose bowling actions have been under the cloud. In the same way, they heap praise on the beautiful bowling action of Holding and Lillee but then include Lasith Malinga as one of the great fast bowlers since 2000. Surely, we don't want youngsters copying Malinga's action.
Elsewhere, the book praises Jim Laker's great performance of 46 wickets in five tests in 1956 against Australia without making any mention of the severe criticism of the preparation of pitches in that series from eminent Australians like Bill O'Reilly, Colin McDonald and others. How did a fast pitch at Old Trafford which nurtured Brian Statham, suddenly turn into sand and marl when the Aussies played, resulting in Laker getting 19 wickets for 90? I think the authors needed to balance the praise from fellow Englishman Vic Marks on Laker with that of O'Reilly.
The book has a chapter of gushing compliments on Tendulkar . Yes, Sachin is a great player and I have loved his batting, but even a die-hard admirer like me has got alienated by the way he focused attention on himself just prior to his retirement, making a mockery of the final two tests that he played. I wish the authors didn't join this sorry bunch of journalists and TV personalities who bored us to death for a whole month last year. I wish Sachin had retired with the same grace, dignity and obscurity as did Laxman, Kumble and Dravid.
The book is enjoyable for the serious student of the game and is certainly worth a read.
Having said that, the book is not without its shortcomings. In their great desire to avoid courting controversies and be politically correct, the authors turn a blind eye to the many problems plaguing the game today. They deal with some of them in passing but treat the issues with kid gloves. This is a disappointment because the authors see themselves as purists and genuine lovers of the game. In my view, they could have dealt with the problems without pointing fingers at people but providing insights on dealing with them.
I shall first talk of the things I liked about the book. The final chapter of the book is an interview with S.Venkatraghavan, India's great off-spinner of the 1960s and 70s, and it is perhaps the best chapter in the book. Venkat is quite insightful about many aspects of the game in this interview. I was particularly struck by his rejection of the DRS (Decision review System) in deciding LBW appeals. Venkat says: "...Hawkeye cannot predict the trajectory of the ball after hitting the pad. The age of the ball, new, 20 or 40 or 80 overs old will make a difference - the softer the ball the less it will bounce; turn and bounce will be different depending on whether it pitches on the seam or the side. The age of the pitch too, depending on whether it is day one or day five will make a difference to bounce and trajectory. ". If this is the basis for BCCI's rejection of the DRS, it makes sense.
The other insight from Vankat is that when a batsman plays forward, even to a spinner, the ball is likely to jump higher than the height of the stumps unless it hits him below the shin.
The other things which captured my attention are the following conclusions after analyzing the statistics on the game:
(i)That batsmen who end up eventually successful show signs of early success within their first ten tests.
(ii)That Kapil Dev was the best among ODI players in rotating the strike and that his running between the wickets was sensational in that he was never run out in test matches spanning 184 innings.
(iii)That Australia never had a great left-arm finger spinner ever in the game's history! In contrast, England always had a commanding presence in this area.
Now, I shall turn to my disappointments about the book. The authors are purists of the game by their own admission. So, they have a duty to deal with the issue of `match fixing' and say something about it. With their analytical minds, I am sure that they have much to say, but I think they simply eschewed it in favor of avoiding controversies.
The other key issue is the trend of off-spinners and `chucking' during the past 20 years. I don't see how they can write approvingly of Muralitharan, Harbhajan Singh, Saqlain Mushtaq and Saeed Ajmal, all of whose bowling actions have been under the cloud. In the same way, they heap praise on the beautiful bowling action of Holding and Lillee but then include Lasith Malinga as one of the great fast bowlers since 2000. Surely, we don't want youngsters copying Malinga's action.
Elsewhere, the book praises Jim Laker's great performance of 46 wickets in five tests in 1956 against Australia without making any mention of the severe criticism of the preparation of pitches in that series from eminent Australians like Bill O'Reilly, Colin McDonald and others. How did a fast pitch at Old Trafford which nurtured Brian Statham, suddenly turn into sand and marl when the Aussies played, resulting in Laker getting 19 wickets for 90? I think the authors needed to balance the praise from fellow Englishman Vic Marks on Laker with that of O'Reilly.
The book has a chapter of gushing compliments on Tendulkar . Yes, Sachin is a great player and I have loved his batting, but even a die-hard admirer like me has got alienated by the way he focused attention on himself just prior to his retirement, making a mockery of the final two tests that he played. I wish the authors didn't join this sorry bunch of journalists and TV personalities who bored us to death for a whole month last year. I wish Sachin had retired with the same grace, dignity and obscurity as did Laxman, Kumble and Dravid.
The book is enjoyable for the serious student of the game and is certainly worth a read.
April 15, 2024
Beautifully written essays by two true fans of India’s national passtime, bordering on religion. Would’ve gone into our library if only I hadn’t left the book on our flight from Port Blair to Bangalore! Hopefully another cricket fan will pick the copy and enjoy it as much as I did.
November 4, 2019
The authors crisply demonstrate that cricket writing is not the sole prerogative of either the lyrical eloquence of a Neville Cardus or the cutting edge precision knowledge of a David Frith. This is a book by, for and of a true cricket fan.
March 8, 2021
Interesting, interesting and interesting. So many things we never paid attention to. Beautifully laying out interesting cricket data along with context.
May 30, 2023
Heavy on numbers but coupled with some good anecdotes. Good read
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews