Many a Slip

Every summer weekend, in every village and local park, thousands of amateur cricketers don their whites and turn out for their club. The weather may be threatening rain, the wicket treacherously green, the team composed of too many last-minute selections, but a day of fiercely contested club cricket is a timeless, indestructible tradition. Gideon Haigh is one such cricketer. As well as being the author of critically-acclaimed and award-winning cricket biographies such as Mystery Spinner he is, as readers of the Guardian know, not only a keen member of the Yarras Cricket Club in Melbourne Australia but also chairman of the selection committee for its Fourth Eleven. Now, the columns he has written have been collected to form a humorous diary of the Yarras' season, and a portrait of club cricket that weekend cricketers the world over should recognize.