Cricket Biography

In 1960, Frank Worrell was appointed the first Black captain of the West Indies cricket team. Within three years he was knighted; within five, the West Indies were the champions of the world and would come to dominate cricket with their wicked bowling and electrifying play. Yet two years later, in 1967, Worrell died of leukaemia and cricket lost its 'ideal cricketer'. But Worrell wasn't merely an extraordinarily talented and record-breaking sportsman. By the time he died he was a founder of the University of the West Indies and a Jamaican senator.

Fatty Batter is the story of one man's lifelong obsession with cricket. From his earliest awkward days as a fat schoolboy, to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates, cricket has offered Michael Simkins a shelter from life's irksome realities and a place in which to quietly dream. That place is a peculiarly English arcadia of occasional wondrous beauty, forests of comforting statistics and the endless life-affirming rituals of defeat, humiliation and disappointment - the perfect net practise for life.

Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer - passionate, obsessive, technically inept and hopelessly deluded. When an injury rules him out, he decides to set off on an odyssey across the counties of England. It's a journey that begins at the birthplace of cricket, takes in the burial site of his favourite ground and even stops along the way to flirt with the love child of WG Grace and Kerry Katona that is Twenty20. It ends with the ultimate cricketing zenith - returning to the field of play to bowl an over to Freddie Flintoff in fading light in front of a capacity crowd.

Reminiscing about his long life and career at the BBC, Brian talks about many of the diverse occasions and programmes with which he was involved. He also indulges in his well-known love of (rather bad) jokes and puns.

Seventy-five minutes of laughter, anecdotes, and memories from cricket's best-loved umpire. Now collected for the first time on one audiobook, here are the brilliant highlights from Dickie Bird's three best-selling recordings: My Autobiography, White Cap and Bails, and An Evening with Dickie Bird. From his childhood in Barnsley to his hilarious experiences with Test cricketers, here are the best stories from cricket's favourite storyteller.

'If you carry on like this, you'll do nothing but play football and cricket all your life.' These were the exasperated words of Mike Brearley's mother, as he once again trod mud into the family home after a long day playing outdoors. They were also an unwitting but half-accurate prediction, for Brearley would become one of the most successful sportsmen of his generation by playing cricket for Cambridge, Middlesex and then becoming one of England's finest captains. But for Brearley, cricket wasn't just a physical activity, it was also an intellectual game.

When England beat Pakistan to become T20 World Champions in November 2022, they crowned an extraordinary rise to the top from the depths of 2015, and became the first male side to hold the 20-over and 50-over titles at the same time. This is the story of how they got there. From early failure, to the building of a golden generation, and a look to the future, this is the must-listen story from the key protagonists about building one of England’s most successful sporting teams from rubble.

Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team.

Hallo—I'm Mark Wood. As an England and Durham cricketer who was born, raised and refined in Ashington, Northumberland, my life has been quite unique. Over the course of my career so far, I've won an Ashes and a World Cup in an international career that at the time of writing is going on seven years and counting. Being a fast bowler like myself is up there with the toughest of all sporting pursuits, like being Tyson Fury's punchbag or working behind the bar during the darts at Ally Pally. Being a cricketer? There's nothing like it.

The '80s was a colourful period in English cricket. As a member of the most successful team in Essex's history and an England side capable of extraordinary highs and lows, Derek Pringle was lucky enough to be in the thick of it. Now, with the perspective of more than 20 years as a journalist, he lays bare the realities of life as a professional cricketer in a decade when the game was dominated by a cast of unforgettable characters whose exploits became front-page news.

Highlights of a career in cricket from Britain's favourite umpire.Hardly a week goes by without Dickie Bird visiting a county or Test match arena where he can keep up to date with all that is happening in the cricket world, while at the same time taking the opportunity to reflect, in the company of old friends and acquaintances, on his own colourful contribution to the sport that lasted for over half a century. Dickie remains the most famous umpire of them all and is still highly respected throughout the world.

Ben Stokes is not cast in the same mould as the vast majority of English cricketers. Fiery, combative, gladiatorial - he plays the game hard and with great gusto. He is an all-rounder who bats, bowls and fields at full throttle. Some opponents feel threatened by his physical stature and aggressive brand of cricket. Stokes simply doesn't back down, smashing the next ball for six, bowling his 90 mph 'chin music' or taking a breathtakingly full-stretch catch at backward point.

It seemed a simple enough idea at the outset: to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe. Except…that's not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, cunning Bajan drug dealers, overzealous American anti-terrorist police, idiotic Welshmen dressed as Santa Claus and whole armies of pitch-invading penguins, you quickly arrive at a lot more than you bargained for.

For Michael Parkinson it was never really in doubt that he would spend his life in sport. His father, a fearsome fast bowler himself, indoctrinated young Michael from an early age into the Yorkshire cricket tradition and supporting Barnsley FC. All he ever wanted was to play cricket for Yorkshire and England. My Sporting Life is Sir Michael's love letter to sport, to the heroes and legends of his Yorkshire youth, to the characters of the international games he watched and wrote about, and to the very idea of sport itself.

Sir Stanley Jackson captained Harrow School, Cambridge University, and England in a golden epoch of English cricket. It is no bad thing to place the man and his age in perspective before the telling of his story. Our subject played his cricket in an age lost to us forever, an age wreathed in legend.

In this book, Suresh Raina takes us through the challenges he faced as a young cricketer. He was bullied in school and at cricket camps, but he always punched above his weight, overcoming every adversity life threw at him and never giving up. This is the story of the lessons he learnt and the friendships he built.

Listen to a cricket pundit's memoirs, featuring articles from his time as the Daily Telegraph cricket correspondent. But this audiobook also includes some surprisingly vivid and poignant accounts of his life as a Japanese prisoner of war - all read in his "brown, treacly voice".

Hawke first captained Yorkshire in the Championship in 1883. He was also the man who sacked Bobby Peel, the greatest left-arm bowler of his era, and infamously declaimed "Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England", sentiments that very nearly damned him forever. A man of contradictions, strong convictions, more often than not his own worst enemy, this cricketing biography goes behind the myth of the man looking to paint a picture of one of cricket’s great men.

Green grass, blue skies, white flannels and the gentle thwack of leather on willow: the quintessential image of Englishness that heralds the start of the cricket season. A so-called gentleman's game developed with the principle of fair play at its hearts. All well and true - unless you're a person of colour living in Britain today. Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire cricketer and England youth captain, learnt this the hard way.