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Morning Everyone: A Sportswriter's Life: An Ashes Odyssey
In A LOT OF HARD YAKKA, Simon Hughes provided a remarkable insight into the way that county cricket worked, and the people who lived their life in that world. Now, in MORNING EVERYONE, he follows on by revealing what really goes on in cricket broadcasting and, from his unique viewpoint, assesses how the game is changing. As with his previous books, there are brilliant portraits of those he works with, from Richie Benaud and Geoff Boycott to Mike Atherton and Mark Nicholas. He shows how the life of a sportswriter is rarely as easy or as glamorous as it seems. As a former player himself, he has a fascinating insight into the current generation of stars, and highlights their achievements in the context of the battle for the Ashes - a true test of England's improvements in recent years. Funny, revealing and insightful, this is a book no cricket lover can be without.
- GenresSportsNonfiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Simon Hughes
56 books29 followersSimon Peter Hughes is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor Peter Hughes, and the brother of historian Bettany Hughes.
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 7, 2025
It had been a long time since I'd given up on his book on the history of cricket, but I was interested in the aspects of sportswriting and goings on behind the camera. Although it has 'Ashes' in the title this was mostly a memoir and in that sense it was what I was hoping for. Unfortunately I was reminded why I didn't finish the history book, as I found his writing style immensely irritating.
This book is now 20 years old, apparent mostly through the importance of print journalism and the numerous references to attractive women. The relative standing of each newspaper, and the staff on each paper, was a big focus for Hughes and looks quaint compared to today, when no tabloid has a full time cricket correspondent and there is little attention paid to calls from print titles for players or coaches to be moved on. There was already a slight decline, but the relative merits of each paper were the reasons given for a good or bad perception, rather than the industry as a whole.
The inside baseball aspect was interesting in its own right and as a comparison to today, and the book was let down by Hughes' style, which is for terrible jokes that should have been binned before even written down in a draft let alone printed (an African club should have been called Aids, not Maids, because AIDS is prevalent on the continent), and frequent reminders that men are interested in women. This was again illustrative of a change in atttudes in the past 2 decades but there were two anecdotes about zooming in on women's chests in the crowd using the TV cameras, and it fell on the wrong side of gratuitous to me.
Hughes was also partial to an asinine piece of social commentary, or cliched accounts of footballers and cricketers that ignores the relative wealth and class of the two groups, despite being well aware of the gap in earnings and attention as he referred to it frequently. It turns out that the down to Earth Flintoff bought many fast cars since this was published, as did Pietersen, but the cod psychology of what motivates cricketers, both within the game and compared to other sportsmen, became wearing quite quickly, as did the banter about Michael Atherton's clothes.
This book illustrated the difficulty with rating non-fiction, because it had many useful things to say about various personalities in the press box and the reverence Hughes had for Benaud was endearing and a fairly rare example of sincerity. It was frank and critical when it needed to be and was more than merely a collection of anecdotes from the commentary box. Yet it had a lot of that too and the laddish humour detracted from the good aspects of the book. For someone that took writing seriously, Hughes had some truly awful, lowest common denominator jokes.
This book is now 20 years old, apparent mostly through the importance of print journalism and the numerous references to attractive women. The relative standing of each newspaper, and the staff on each paper, was a big focus for Hughes and looks quaint compared to today, when no tabloid has a full time cricket correspondent and there is little attention paid to calls from print titles for players or coaches to be moved on. There was already a slight decline, but the relative merits of each paper were the reasons given for a good or bad perception, rather than the industry as a whole.
The inside baseball aspect was interesting in its own right and as a comparison to today, and the book was let down by Hughes' style, which is for terrible jokes that should have been binned before even written down in a draft let alone printed (an African club should have been called Aids, not Maids, because AIDS is prevalent on the continent), and frequent reminders that men are interested in women. This was again illustrative of a change in atttudes in the past 2 decades but there were two anecdotes about zooming in on women's chests in the crowd using the TV cameras, and it fell on the wrong side of gratuitous to me.
Hughes was also partial to an asinine piece of social commentary, or cliched accounts of footballers and cricketers that ignores the relative wealth and class of the two groups, despite being well aware of the gap in earnings and attention as he referred to it frequently. It turns out that the down to Earth Flintoff bought many fast cars since this was published, as did Pietersen, but the cod psychology of what motivates cricketers, both within the game and compared to other sportsmen, became wearing quite quickly, as did the banter about Michael Atherton's clothes.
This book illustrated the difficulty with rating non-fiction, because it had many useful things to say about various personalities in the press box and the reverence Hughes had for Benaud was endearing and a fairly rare example of sincerity. It was frank and critical when it needed to be and was more than merely a collection of anecdotes from the commentary box. Yet it had a lot of that too and the laddish humour detracted from the good aspects of the book. For someone that took writing seriously, Hughes had some truly awful, lowest common denominator jokes.
March 11, 2010
A good read if you are a cricket fan and especially if you are of that age to remeber Simon and the games he refers to,
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews