A joyless tale

To invest the pages with more bite and, no doubt, more marketability, the player admits to some previously unrevealed trauma, or, in Trescothick's case, a trauma that had been only half-revealed ... Other than moments of dark humour, such as when Peter Gregory, the England team doctor, tried his hand, unsuccessfully, at acupuncture, and when Trescothick was taken in by a fraudster of a hypnotist, this is a joyless book. There is little of the thrill of playing sport at the highest level, none of the humour, nor the fascinating details or character sketches of dressing-room figures that make a sporting life worthwhile.

Geoffrey Boycott had other tactics for staying in all day. The scorer of 151 first-class hundreds recalled the advice of his Uncle Algy, that "when two people get involved in a run-out, one of t'buggers is going to be unhappy. Make sure it isn't you." Amid much knowing laughter, he added: "I followed that advice all my life until I met that bastard Amiss." I don't know how Dennis Amiss, another of the centurions, reacted to being called a bastard. And I couldn't quite see whether the mother and grandmother of a young lad at the table next to mine winced at such salty Boycottian language.