John Grinstead’s Reviews > Finding The Edge: The Autobiography > Status Update

He lives in stubborn denial of age, pushing himself further, time and again, accruing record numbers of wickets along the way. He is an extraordinary athlete with seemingly endless resilience to the inevitable questions about when he’s going to retire.

Suffering and joy, with little in between, appears to be the way Jimmy experiences cricket and, to a lesser extent, life.

Having suffered a stress fracture in his back, turned his ankle the day before a Test, he nonetheless comes back strongly, eschewing the attempts to get him bowling faster in favour of doing what comes naturally to him.

There’s quite a lot of references to sulking and kicking a jumper down to fine leg - perhaps too many - but they provide a contrast to the elation he clearly feels when the ball comes out of his hand just right or when contemplating his life with Daniella.

Some of the reminiscences are a bit over the top - “I remember the commentary during his [Daley Thompson’s] pole-bolting heroics at the LA Olympics in 1984” Aged two? And the there’s an awful lot about how well trained in losing he was - “…it had been baked into me…that England lost to Australia” - and initially at least some imposter syndrome.

This ghosted autobiography starts well - at the end of a superb sporting career - before we hit the well trodden route of turning back to where it all began. By Chapter 13, we are 5 years on from Jimmy playing truant from school to him walking out at the MCG, where he makes his ODI debut for England. Cricketing stardom was never pre-ordained - as a slight teenager, he freely admits his mates were better than him.