Full Circle

by Unknown Author

Genres: History

Hardcover

About the author

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Reviews

[Martin Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good, really interesting. I learnt a lot and it was well written and engaging. The only downside was that the authors seemed to want to push the 'English are racists' line a bit too hard. Like Gatting is a racist for the Rana incident, but only reported that England acted up over the decisions, not that the decisions were wrong and that certain umpires had a history of foul play. So it ended up only giving one side of the story. Otherwise very interesting, and the bits about class and the weird hypocrisy of the class system and the amateur and shamateur system was genuinely odd.

[Tony Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, informative and authoritative history of the sport. The authors (Richard Heller and Peter Oborne, despite Goodreads listing the book as by an 'unknown author') do sometimes overestimate the general reader's familiarity with cricketing jargon and even the very history they are describing (there are, for instance, references to Kerry Packer several chapters before the one discussing him, which thus only made sense to me in retrospect) and struggle to hide their bias towards the out-dated 'test' format of the game and outright scathing contempt for The Hundred (i.e, the most accessible form of the game for those not already indoctrinated). Still, well worth a read as an introduction to the history of the game.

[Leon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genuinely interesting and accessible history of cricket from its origins right up to the present day. This is a book that keeps returning to two principle themes: cricket is full of tradition, but cricket has always changed too.

The challenge that the game has is balancing the two. How does it maintain (and even grow) the first-class version against the economically all-important (and more popular) T20 version? How does it become more inclusive whilst recognising the challenges in promoting cricket around the world?

An excellent read which will be of interest to any cricket fan.