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Original Spin: Misadventures in Cricket
In April 1974 new recruits Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Peter Roebuck and Vic Marks reported for duty at Somerset County Cricket Club. Apart from Richards, 'all of us were eighteen years old, though Botham seemed to have lived a bit longer - or at least more vigorously - than the rest.'
In this irresistible memoir of a life lived in cricket, Vic Marks returns to the heady days when Richards and Botham were young men yet to unleash their talents on the world stage while he and Roebuck looked on in awe. After the high-octane dramas of Somerset, playing for England was almost an anti-climax for Marks, who became an unlikely all-rounder in the mercurial side of the 1980s.
Moving from the dressing room to the press box, with trenchant observations about the modern game along the way, Original Spin is a charmingly wry, shrewdly observed account of a golden age in cricket.
In this irresistible memoir of a life lived in cricket, Vic Marks returns to the heady days when Richards and Botham were young men yet to unleash their talents on the world stage while he and Roebuck looked on in awe. After the high-octane dramas of Somerset, playing for England was almost an anti-climax for Marks, who became an unlikely all-rounder in the mercurial side of the 1980s.
Moving from the dressing room to the press box, with trenchant observations about the modern game along the way, Original Spin is a charmingly wry, shrewdly observed account of a golden age in cricket.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 8, 2020
I'm not sure if it's because I struggled somewhat with his writing style, or if it's just because I'm the wrong age group (definitely my Dad's teen/young adult era), but there was something about this that felt a little unaccessible to me. Still a thoroughly enjoyable book, though.
August 28, 2019
One of the gentlest, most genial books I’ve read, though it rather limps to the finish. The first two-thirds is minor but rather lovely: witty, self-deprecating, sun-dappled reminiscences of summers past, as Marks graduates from Oxford University teams to play cricket for Somerset and England (emerging as a one-day specialist).
His memory isn’t the greatest, which leaves holes and means that sometimes the book merely skids along the surface, but anyone who has read Marks’ Guardian pieces or heard him on TMS will know what a funny, perceptive and insightful chronicler he can be, casting light here on contemporaries like Botham, Viv Richards and Peter Roebuck, and arguing forcefully about the current state of the game, from TV coverage to The Hundred.
The anecdotes here can be divided fairly evenly into those that raise a chuckle and those that raise a shrug, not really getting anywhere, but Marks has a wonderful turn of phrase, and his ability to laugh at himself is one of his great virtues. That extends to quoting from archive match reports underlining his own shortcomings. “I don’t know what Marks read at Oxford,” pondered the Observer after he was humiliated by bowler Abdul Qadir, “but it certainly wasn’t wrist spin.”
It’s when the book turns to Test Match Special that it begins to drag. Listening to TMS is my favourite pastime, and has been for years, but I’m not sure that I want to see the workings behind it, and the two chapters dealing with the programme – past and present – consist mostly of Marks just saying how much he likes working with all the individual people there, which is laudable and reflects well on him, but isn’t very interesting to read.
The final chapter, ‘Loose Ends’, inevitably takes the book into darker territory, as Marks wrestles with the fate of Roebuck, the best man at his wedding, who committed suicide in 2011 while under investigation for sexual assault. Given Roebuck’s significance to the wider story, it feels necessary, but it’s also difficult to read, sincere without really being illuminating, and ill-at-ease alongside these largely light-hearted reminiscences.
I liked the book, and Marks comes out of it well, but it could have done with a better editor: someone who could have sifted the gold, tidied the chronology and dug a little deeper now and then. Whether they could have avoided such a lurch in tone as that caused by Roebuck’s fall from grace remains to be seen.
His memory isn’t the greatest, which leaves holes and means that sometimes the book merely skids along the surface, but anyone who has read Marks’ Guardian pieces or heard him on TMS will know what a funny, perceptive and insightful chronicler he can be, casting light here on contemporaries like Botham, Viv Richards and Peter Roebuck, and arguing forcefully about the current state of the game, from TV coverage to The Hundred.
The anecdotes here can be divided fairly evenly into those that raise a chuckle and those that raise a shrug, not really getting anywhere, but Marks has a wonderful turn of phrase, and his ability to laugh at himself is one of his great virtues. That extends to quoting from archive match reports underlining his own shortcomings. “I don’t know what Marks read at Oxford,” pondered the Observer after he was humiliated by bowler Abdul Qadir, “but it certainly wasn’t wrist spin.”
It’s when the book turns to Test Match Special that it begins to drag. Listening to TMS is my favourite pastime, and has been for years, but I’m not sure that I want to see the workings behind it, and the two chapters dealing with the programme – past and present – consist mostly of Marks just saying how much he likes working with all the individual people there, which is laudable and reflects well on him, but isn’t very interesting to read.
The final chapter, ‘Loose Ends’, inevitably takes the book into darker territory, as Marks wrestles with the fate of Roebuck, the best man at his wedding, who committed suicide in 2011 while under investigation for sexual assault. Given Roebuck’s significance to the wider story, it feels necessary, but it’s also difficult to read, sincere without really being illuminating, and ill-at-ease alongside these largely light-hearted reminiscences.
I liked the book, and Marks comes out of it well, but it could have done with a better editor: someone who could have sifted the gold, tidied the chronology and dug a little deeper now and then. Whether they could have avoided such a lurch in tone as that caused by Roebuck’s fall from grace remains to be seen.
March 10, 2024
I like Marks on TMS so I was expecting more from this, especially as he is a decent print journalist as well. However this autobiography just didn't engage me and it touched on lots of topics very briefly.
That doesn't make an autobiography dull in itself, but this one jumped between events a bit without dwelling on many of them for too long, although it would probably mean more to people familiar with his 80s Somerset teammates. Marks just seemed to become an England cricketer and then disappear from the scene apart from one final call-up, and I didn't get an idea of whether this caused frustration. Events happened to him, and only missing out on the captaincy seemed to generate a response.
Perhaps it was because they were too long ago and the memories were hazy, as he had clearly fact checked a lot of his career. It wasn't just a list of statistics, and the later sections on some of the details on broadcasting and being a broadsheet correspondent were a bit more interesting to me, along with his musings on the role of broadcasters and the ECB.
Otherwise a long career on and near the cricket field was spread too thinly and I came away feeling a bit disappointed. I might try his book of essays in general, and perhaps that will be more of what I expected, as most of this was more of a classic autobiography than the blurb had indicated.
That doesn't make an autobiography dull in itself, but this one jumped between events a bit without dwelling on many of them for too long, although it would probably mean more to people familiar with his 80s Somerset teammates. Marks just seemed to become an England cricketer and then disappear from the scene apart from one final call-up, and I didn't get an idea of whether this caused frustration. Events happened to him, and only missing out on the captaincy seemed to generate a response.
Perhaps it was because they were too long ago and the memories were hazy, as he had clearly fact checked a lot of his career. It wasn't just a list of statistics, and the later sections on some of the details on broadcasting and being a broadsheet correspondent were a bit more interesting to me, along with his musings on the role of broadcasters and the ECB.
Otherwise a long career on and near the cricket field was spread too thinly and I came away feeling a bit disappointed. I might try his book of essays in general, and perhaps that will be more of what I expected, as most of this was more of a classic autobiography than the blurb had indicated.
December 14, 2024
I always turn up the radio on TMS when Vic is called to the mic. His eloquence and humour pours out through the speakers as it does via the pages of this book. He manages to sound supremely knowledgeable and sagely, yet humble and self deprecating at the same time. His book is characteristically considered and well thought out, always enrapturing to the hopelessly devoted cricket fan. It is a useful insight into that golden era of Somerset cricket, shining a historical light on that astonishing intake of talent of which he was a part, being careful not to equate his talent with that of Botham, Richards and Garner. Perhaps more interesting are the recollections of characters such as Peter Roebuck, a former captain of his beloved club, told sensitively through anecdotes and memories of tours and nights in sub standard hotels. I thoroughly recommend a few hours in the company of Vic, someone I would give a lot to have a pint with and just chew the cricketing cud.
July 28, 2020
Fabulous read
Really enjoyed this. flows really well from early days right up to the present. some great tales told about Botham and Richards. If you're a cricket lover don't hesitate to buy this
Really enjoyed this. flows really well from early days right up to the present. some great tales told about Botham and Richards. If you're a cricket lover don't hesitate to buy this
February 15, 2020
Interesting account by a fine and kind man
This is an enjoyable read about a life well- lived. In places it might have dug more deeply into the psychological aspects of the experience of playing the game, but it flows easily with touches of self-deprecating wit.
This is an enjoyable read about a life well- lived. In places it might have dug more deeply into the psychological aspects of the experience of playing the game, but it flows easily with touches of self-deprecating wit.
January 17, 2021
It’s Somerset - Of course it is.
It’s s Somerset themed book, as you would expect, but Marks threads interesting pieces from the outside world into it.
I glossed through some of it and was intrigued by some of it.
All in all, a good read for a miserable winter week.
It’s s Somerset themed book, as you would expect, but Marks threads interesting pieces from the outside world into it.
I glossed through some of it and was intrigued by some of it.
All in all, a good read for a miserable winter week.
August 22, 2019
Another Somerset county cricket club related book to follow Rosey’s. Viv Marks of course writes clearly and compellingly about my county as well as taking us through the characters in the press and broadcasting boxes of the last 20 years. In a final chapter he nails why the ECB have, at a number of key moments, not acted with the best interests of the game at heart.
October 12, 2019
Simply outstanding. One of the great cricket books.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews