Customer Reviews

Cricket for Americans: Playing and Understanding the Game (Sports and Culture Series)

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This book is without doubt the best introduction to cricket for readers unfamiliar with the game. Not only does the author present a clear, easy to follow explanation of the basic rules, he does this from the standpoint of a baseball familiar readership. But the book offers much more. It has chapters on basic strategy, umpiring, reading statistics even termonology. Also has a chapter on how to watch a cricket match and how to teach it to Americans. Can't imagine how anyone can do a better job than this.

As one of this book's target audience, I can testify that it is a first-rate primer on the ancient game of cricket. After reading it, I now know that bowling a maiden over is not salacious, how to distinguish a silly point from a frivolous argument and why it is disgraceful to make a duck. While the Daily Telegraph's cricket columns are still not an easy read, they at least no longer resemble pages of Swahili.

Tom Melville, an Englishman transplanted to Wisconsin, is a proselytizer for his favorite sport. In expounding its tenets, he is clear and concise, explaining the rules of the game, its inbred vocabulary, its organization in its strongholds (England, of course, but also India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, South Africa - indeed, practically every former British possession outside of North America) and its history. For the thoroughgoing student, he reprints the complete Laws of Cricket, as promulgated by the venerable Marylebone Cricket Club, and includes an extensive glossary.

What is lacking in this exposition is a vision of what makes cricket attractive to its devotees. Mr. Melville proclaims his love of the game but fails to impart it. He comes closest in a chapter describing the twists and turns of a one-day "limited overs" match, which conveys some feeling for the opposing strategies and shows how tension can mount as small gains and losses accumulate. He does not, however, extend the picture to multi-day matches. The out-of-place chapter on how to give cricket lessons to neophytes could profitably have been replaced by, say, an account of a test match.

Anyone who knows nothing about cricket and has a reason to learn should track down this volume. No one else is likely to be interested.

If you are an American who wants to learn about cricket, this book is for you. I checked it out from my university libary and I liked it so much, I bought it. Could use more in-depth instruction on acual bowling and batting techniques.

This has to be one of the most boring and uninteresting books I have ever read. If the game is as boring as the book then at least it has helped and persuaded me to take up hockey instead.

I tired of this book very quickly, it was so boring to read that I didn't even finish it.