Butch teaches batting... and more

Teach Yourself Cricket by Mark Butcher and Paul Abraham (teach yourself), 205pp, £9.99

Mark Butcher's book is not, as you may first expect, a confessional tome. Rather, it's a teach-yourself-cricket book.

Why do it? "I remember when I was a kid I had so many of these books, they had diagrams in and all that stuff," he says. "There probably hasn't been one like that since the 1970s.

"It's not a thrilling read by any means but for anyone who wants to learn the game, like I did when I was a kid, then hopefully it will be useful."

That sort of confession makes it a shame that he's not writing an autobiography. He admits he started one two years ago - which, for his openness, and general story - would make for fascinating reading. But he put it on hold because it was during the post-Ashes book-glut in 2005.

"It's not something I had a burning amibition to do," he says, "but if I did it I would have to be brutally honest about the things that have happened to me and in life. I'm quite happy to remain reasonably private."

Offering tips on batting skills is uncontroversial, of course, but that's not all that's in this book. It has, he says, "everything", by which he means batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy, nutrition and fitness. It's a very modern take on the seventies' concept of coaching books - with up-to-date scientific jargon. There's even a section on scoring, rather oddly.

The prose itself is very unButcher - it lacks flair, and just plays down a solid line - but then again he didn't write it, nor does he pretend to have done. "It's a how-to-do such and such, written by a guy called Gareth James," he explains. "The bits I've had the most input in are the little boxes on each category where you have professional tips. The rest has been information from the coach, Paul Abraham, and Gareth who wrote the text."

In fact, the book hardly trades on Butcher at all: his picture is on the front in no more than thumbnail size, while his name is barely legible, in smaller-than-normal type. The design in general is far-from-easy on the eye, albeit straightforward: it looks like a school book, and indeed reads like one. Then again, it is a coaching manual and doesn't pretend to be anything else.

As coaching books go, it's a textbook example of how to play a sturdy forward defence. It's not breathtaking, but the basics are important.