The Surfer

A fine piece of cricket writing by one of its finest exponents

In his latest book, Scyld Berry condenses decades' worth of accumulated expertise into a highly readable account of the game

Ramachandra Guha, himself an acclaimed cricket writer (to say nothing of his other literary achievements), appreciates a good piece of cricket literature when he sees it. Writing in The Telegraph, Guha waxes lyrical on Scyld Berry's latest work, Cricket: The Game of Life: Every Reason to Celebrate.

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I warmed to Cricket: The Game of Life because of its fine prose and its impressive research, but also because it confirmed my own prejudices. "In every Test-playing country," writes Berry, "the top batsmen are celebrated, but even more so in India. Merchant and Hazare, then Sunil Gavaskar in the 1970s, paved the way for the mass adulation of V.V.S. Laxman, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and, above all, Sachin Tendulkar".