Writing from the middle

Earlier this year Michael Atherton became the cricket writer of the Times. As a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph previously, Atherton had already displayed a combination of authority, detached involvement, and an ease with words that put him in the Mike Brearley class as a cricketer-writer. Atherton's journey is in the reverse direction from that of a typical cricket writer - from columnist to reporter - and he is prepared to live the life of the daily hack (although he continues to write columns too).

He thus joins the ranks of professional journalists such as Jack Fingleton and Richie Benaud. Fingleton, later a political journalist, began as a copy boy on the Daily Guardian in Sydney, while Benaud started his career as a police reporter on the Sydney Sun. Atherton's autobiography, Opening Up, must rate as one of the best in cricket; it is, as one reviewer pointed out, ghost-free - rare in the over-produced genre of the sports autobiography.

Do Test-class cricketers automatically make Test-class cricket writers? The answer, sadly, is no. Most cricketers sound like the greenest cliché-spouting cub reporters when you ask them about their game. Batsmen and bowlers speak platitudes and wrap their thoughts in the routine words of the laziest reporters or commentators. This is unfortunate because out in the middle, players experience the game in a manner that is denied to the most perceptive critic in the press box.

That is why there is a touch of envy in Neville Cardus' tribute in the foreword to Cricket Crisis: "Fingleton writes from the middle; he feels the game and every action as a player who has acquired that professional 'extra sense' which sends him to the root of the matter with no need to go round and round by way of the layman's necessarily inferential way of approach."

Since 1970, when the Cricket Society gave away its first Book of the Year award, only two Test players have won it - Ian Peebles and Brearley (the latter twice, including for The Art of Captaincy). Peebles, a legspinner who troubled Bradman, later became the cricket correspondent of the Sunday Times, bringing to his job a mix of humour and deep understanding that has seldom been matched. He won for Spinner's Yarn, a wonderful autobiography.

This year Marcus Trescothick won sportswriting's richest award, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, for his autobiography, Coming Back to Me. The award is worth £20,000, but how much of that will go to Peter Hayter, the ghost writer? The book won for its insight into the mind of an international sportsman grappling with problems unique to his profession. The carpet was lifted and things normally swept under it were brought to light.

Those who both played for their countries and had no need to "go round and round" are a surprisingly small number. To the names mentioned above, I would add Trevor Bailey (who has written the best biography of Garry Sobers), Tony Lewis, and from an earlier generation, Plum Warner. Test players have written books on coaching (Don Bradman: The Art of Cricket, or Ranji: The Jubilee Book of Cricket), autobiography (Arthur Mailey's 10 for 66 and All That) or tour books (Steve Waugh's West Indies diary), but the best haven't written nearly enough, while the worst have written too many.

The most interesting (and varied) of the lot is Ed Smith, who announced his retirement from international cricket recently, at the age of 31. His three books so far, a comparative study of cricket and baseball, a diary of a cricket season, and a collection of essays on the philosophy of sport, show him to be a writer who happened to be a Test cricketer rather than the other way around (although with some luck he might have captained England). He has already spoken of writing a book on Wagner, and as a reviewer of fiction he probably has an unfinished novel tucked in among his papers somewhere. His oueuvre will be the most fascinating.