Travel blog of a world-touring, hearty amateur cricket team. The author died suddenly of cancer before publication. His wife remembers him in a postscript.

Having been brought up on cricket I've been staring at this in bookshops for sometime. However, I know it's the sort of book I'd read once so seeing a BC copy was stood on the shelf ...

I think Mr trollstigen has been a little harsh on this book. So long as you don't open it expecting a travelogue, it is fun to read. The title incident, which opens the book remains one of the funniest. The trials & tribulations of the team's tours are amusingly recounted and some of the more regular players effectively described. I recognised many of the 'characters' and situations from village cricket such as the child player brought on as number 10 or 11 that the opposition are fooled into treating gently only to find him winning the match. What was particularly amusing in this case was to have it immediately followed by a disparaging remark about Ian Bell ... someone I remember as one of those boy ringers in our local league.

RELEASE NOTES:

Brought back to Cardiff to pass on to spike1972 so he can read the bits I haven't read out to him already.

Agolopies all round, CaterinaAnna did indeed give me this book aages ago, and it's now actually my current read (I'm probably over half-way through it - it's fab).

I wanted to read this because I saw CaterinaAnna laughing at it and enjoyed the bits she read out to me. I enjoyed this partly as a non-playing semi-serious cricket fan, and partly as a set of observations of a how a group of disparate people get on (or not, as the case sometimes is!) when brought together through a common interest. Having been on a sporting tour of sorts (sledge hockey, and only to one place at a time) I know some of the highs and lows of doing this. I found parts of this book poignant, others accurate in terms of people, and some very funny. One disappointment is that he didn't take the entire team to the Antarctic at the end: the event I would have considered a fitting grand finale.