What do you think?
Rate this book
The Moon Is Toast: A Year In the Life of a Cricket Statistician
Andrew Samson is a well-known cricket statistician. Apart from working as Cricket South Africa's Official Statistician since 1994 he has worked on many television and radio broadcasts of the game since 1988. Most of this has been for BBC and SABC radio. He has been a member of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians since 1980 and was on the committee from 2003 to 2007. He was the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians Statistician of the Year 2013. He was Official Statistician for the following ICC events in South Africa: Cricket World Cup 2003, World Twenty20 2007 and World Cup Qualifier 2009.
He is co-author of '1107 All Out - The Cricketer's Quiz Book' with Peter Fridjhon; 'The Blue Book' with Andre Odendaal and Krish Reddy; 'South African and International Sports Fact Finder' produced annually between 1992 and 1997 with Anton Berkovitz. He has contributed the statistics for the South African Cricket Annual since 1994 and also contributed to Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since that date. He has contributed statistical chapters to a number of biographies of South African cricketers.
This is his first book written all by himself and [it] recalls the [cricketing] year 2015 in which he gives a unique insight into the life of a cricket statistician trying to explain how he does his job.
He is co-author of '1107 All Out - The Cricketer's Quiz Book' with Peter Fridjhon; 'The Blue Book' with Andre Odendaal and Krish Reddy; 'South African and International Sports Fact Finder' produced annually between 1992 and 1997 with Anton Berkovitz. He has contributed the statistics for the South African Cricket Annual since 1994 and also contributed to Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since that date. He has contributed statistical chapters to a number of biographies of South African cricketers.
This is his first book written all by himself and [it] recalls the [cricketing] year 2015 in which he gives a unique insight into the life of a cricket statistician trying to explain how he does his job.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 16, 2016
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 14, 2017
You cannot help but admire Andrew Samson for not only does he work as Cricket South Africa's official statistician, contribute to television and radio broadcasts on the game of cricket, assist with the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians and jet around the world covering Test and other matches but he finds time to maintain a diary of his 2015 cricket season. The result is 'The Moon Is Toast'.
And in the book, as is to be expected, there is a plethora of statistics of different varieties, some mainstream, some obscure and some off the wall - but all of them meaningful in the context of the game of cricket. Having said that, I have been an avid follower of the game for many years and as a consequence, rather like the statistically oriented NFL, cricket lodges statistics in the brain. So one builds up a knowledge of feats, scores and oddities over the years but there is nothing to compare with Andrew Samson's output. And he can, and indeed does, always augment his knowledge by, as he says, writing a quick computer programme to pick out some obscure facts or to give us a completely updated perspective on something that has occurred.
Some of the statistics he relates are mind boggling, some amusing, some almost unbelievable. We learn that in 2015 Australian Chris Rogers retired from Test cricket with the same number of runs, 2015, as the year that he retired in and that the only other player in that category is Anshuman Gaekwad of India who played his last Test in 1985 and left the crease with 1985 runs to his name. Rogers also features as being the first opening batsman to make seven 50s in consecutive Test innings and his effort also equalled the existing world record by a batsman anywhere in the order.
In addition, when Alastair Cook passed Graham Gooch's record to become England's leading Test runscorer, Jimmy Anderson, England's leading wicket taker was also in the side and that was only the second time that the two leaders of each category had played in the same Test. Jack Hobbs and Sydney Barnes were the previous duo who held the batting and bowling records respectively when playing in the same Test. And other well researched statistics include, Dean Elgar becoming the 50th player, and the sixth for South Africa, to carry his bat in a Test innings, Dale Steyn having a much better batting average when playing on Boxing Day, 34.72, as against his overall average, 14.11, and that when Johnny Bairstow stumped Temba Bavuma on 30 December 2015 it was the first time an England wicketkeeper had effected a stumping in 38 Tests spread over three years. The previous occasion was when Matt Prior stumped Cheteshwar Pujara at Mumbai in 2012.
The author does not just confine himself to Test cricket statistics, for he is constantly updating his data base with first-class matches from all over the world - I wonder he has the time - and consequently there are plenty more statistically records and anomalies throughout the book - and it is all fascinating stuff.
On a personal note for Andrew Samson, he admits he does not keep statistics of how many times he
has been upgraded to first-class on his many air travels following cricket; he estimates, not a word that he uses at all, five times at most. And as he concludes the book his 31 December entry tells us that he had made 21 flights in the year, he had slept at home on 224 nights and slept away for 141, the 15 Tests he attended had a total of 31040 balls bowled (including no balls and wides!) and there was a total of 17114 runs scored (that's more runs than the great Sachin Tendulkar scored in his entire Test career!) and 518 wickets taken.
He is indeed a statistician extraordinaire!
However, as a book to read it could be perhaps considered overpowering as statistic follows statistic - I do enjoy them but getting burned off is a distinct possibility - so 'The Moon Is Toast' is probably best used as a book to keep by the armchair and to be dipped into every now and again when you need to know something new or want to indulge yourself statistically!
And in the book, as is to be expected, there is a plethora of statistics of different varieties, some mainstream, some obscure and some off the wall - but all of them meaningful in the context of the game of cricket. Having said that, I have been an avid follower of the game for many years and as a consequence, rather like the statistically oriented NFL, cricket lodges statistics in the brain. So one builds up a knowledge of feats, scores and oddities over the years but there is nothing to compare with Andrew Samson's output. And he can, and indeed does, always augment his knowledge by, as he says, writing a quick computer programme to pick out some obscure facts or to give us a completely updated perspective on something that has occurred.
Some of the statistics he relates are mind boggling, some amusing, some almost unbelievable. We learn that in 2015 Australian Chris Rogers retired from Test cricket with the same number of runs, 2015, as the year that he retired in and that the only other player in that category is Anshuman Gaekwad of India who played his last Test in 1985 and left the crease with 1985 runs to his name. Rogers also features as being the first opening batsman to make seven 50s in consecutive Test innings and his effort also equalled the existing world record by a batsman anywhere in the order.
In addition, when Alastair Cook passed Graham Gooch's record to become England's leading Test runscorer, Jimmy Anderson, England's leading wicket taker was also in the side and that was only the second time that the two leaders of each category had played in the same Test. Jack Hobbs and Sydney Barnes were the previous duo who held the batting and bowling records respectively when playing in the same Test. And other well researched statistics include, Dean Elgar becoming the 50th player, and the sixth for South Africa, to carry his bat in a Test innings, Dale Steyn having a much better batting average when playing on Boxing Day, 34.72, as against his overall average, 14.11, and that when Johnny Bairstow stumped Temba Bavuma on 30 December 2015 it was the first time an England wicketkeeper had effected a stumping in 38 Tests spread over three years. The previous occasion was when Matt Prior stumped Cheteshwar Pujara at Mumbai in 2012.
The author does not just confine himself to Test cricket statistics, for he is constantly updating his data base with first-class matches from all over the world - I wonder he has the time - and consequently there are plenty more statistically records and anomalies throughout the book - and it is all fascinating stuff.
On a personal note for Andrew Samson, he admits he does not keep statistics of how many times he
has been upgraded to first-class on his many air travels following cricket; he estimates, not a word that he uses at all, five times at most. And as he concludes the book his 31 December entry tells us that he had made 21 flights in the year, he had slept at home on 224 nights and slept away for 141, the 15 Tests he attended had a total of 31040 balls bowled (including no balls and wides!) and there was a total of 17114 runs scored (that's more runs than the great Sachin Tendulkar scored in his entire Test career!) and 518 wickets taken.
He is indeed a statistician extraordinaire!
However, as a book to read it could be perhaps considered overpowering as statistic follows statistic - I do enjoy them but getting burned off is a distinct possibility - so 'The Moon Is Toast' is probably best used as a book to keep by the armchair and to be dipped into every now and again when you need to know something new or want to indulge yourself statistically!
February 20, 2017
An easy read, written in a conversationalist style - you can image the author sitting across from you telling you all the information. Although there are a lot of statistics, you don't get too bogged down with them as they form part of the narrative.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews