How to Catch a Cricket Match

by Harry Ricketts

How do you deliver a "googly" or make chin music? What are a beamer, a flipper, a corker, and a jaffa? What do a bunny, a cherry, a dolly and a royal golden duck have to do with sports? Readers will discover the answers to these questions and learn much more about the noble sport of cricket in this entertaining and enlightening book. Written by a passionate player and cricket-watcher, the book traces the sport from the author's cricketing childhood in England to a seat on the bank at the 2006 match between the Black Caps and the Windies at the Basin Reserve.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Harry Ricketts studied to Oxford and taught at universities in Hong Kong and the UK before moving to New Zealand in 1981. He is a professor in the English Programme at Victoria University of Wellington and also teaches creative non-fiction in the International Institute of Modern Letters. He has published over 30 books, including biographies, personal essays and collections of poems. He has also co-edited several anthologies of New Zealand poetry and a collection of new essays about World War I.

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars!

It’s just not cricket…until it is. Cricket is one of those things whose charms have always escaped me?... though bizarrely I have an Italian mate who loves it. Although not for me, I have very fond memories of (trying) to play it back in the day as a backpacker in Australia, where we used to organise entertaining games where the Celts (loosely made up of Scots, Welsh and Irish) would play against the English, but usually this was just an excuse for drinking and banter.

I came to this with a great deal of ignorance and prejudice, but in a bid to try and read my way out of my ignorance and prejudice and to be fair this did a decent enough job of partly enlightening me, if not converting me. I did catch the occasional whiff of a contact high with his warmth and enthusiasm for the game and this gave me a renewed and restricted measure of appreciation, understanding and respect for the old leather on willow.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't participate in the silly 'my sport is the only 'real' sport' pissing contest. I realize that each sport has its moments of beauty (and its fare points boredom). So I seek to know what captivates the fans of various sports rather than seek to ridicule them as ESPN does w/ soccer (football) and other sports they didn't grow up watching/playing.

So, I was hoping this book (a New Zealand series of books introducing you to various topics) would help me get a stronger grasp of Cricket, but, alas, I think I'm hopeless in this pursuit. The book does do it's part of demonstrating how watching Cricket (or most any sport that takes its time, like baseball or golf) is a narrative, but because the lingo is so specific and difficult to ascertain w/o constant visual reinforcement, so much was lost on me.

However, one of the nice surprises was how effortlessly (meaning, w/o pounding politics over the head) Harry Ricketts weaved in some Feminism, reminding us that women play games too, and play it well.

These passages slide in un-announced because Ricketts sees no need to specially sanction them -

"While Styris wanders off, I start to tell Tony about Penny Kinsella, the New Zealand international whom I once had the good fortune to play with in the mid 1990s. She was known for playing the hook shot compulsively. I certainly remember her unleashinging it on several quite pacey male bowlers in that match; they looked shaken" (106).

Or casual asides like, "Crusoe records how once, after an ultra slow innings in a Test in Australia, Jardine apologised to an Australian for batting 'like an old spinster defending her honor.' That's not witty, says Tony, that's sexist" (109)

[Peter Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just got through this... to try understand what all the fuss is about in preparation for going to see two ICC World Cup games... first one in two days :-)
Heavy going fur a non-cricket-devotee... but I think I got the idea and are now looking forward to the game Friday :-)
Even got ICC app on phone to watch scores, catches, run-outs, innings, wickets, LBWs... though still no idea what a googly is ;-)
Book about the right length :-)

[Alan Wightman · Rating 3 out of 5]

General introduction to the game of cricket via a description of the second day of New Zealand vs West Indies at the Basin Reserve in March 2006 (I had attended on the third day). Light and easy reading.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bills itself as an intro to cricket, but is really more memoir-y. And since I wasn't looking for a memoir... not all that interesting.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really grab me. I'm so ready to fall in love with cricket, but this book didn't do it for me!

[Lawrence Patchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book on cricket. Has the warmth and humour that can also be found in this author's poetry.