The Meaning of Cricket: Or, How to Waste Your Life on an Inconsequential Sport

Cricket does strange things to you. It is a team game that is almost entirely dependent on individual performance. Its combination of time, opportunity, and the constant threat of disaster can drive its participants to despair. To survive a single delivery propelled at almost one hundred miles an hour takes the body and brain to the edges of their capabilities, yet its abiding image is of the gentle village green, and the glorious absurdities of the amateur game.

In The Meaning of Cricket, Jon Hotten attempts to understand this fascinating, frustrating and complex sport. Blending legendary players, from Vivian Richards to Mark Ramprakash, Kevin Pietersen to Ricky Ponting, with his own cricketing story, he explores the funny, moving and melancholic impact the game can have on an individual life.

Jon Hotten is the author of four books, including Muscle and The Years Of The Locust, and writes the popular cricket blog The Old Batsman. He co-wrote the award-winning documentary Death Of A Gentleman, and his collaboration with the former England bowler Simon Jones, The Test, won the Wisden Almanack's Book Of The Year award in 2016.