'This could be the first existential book about cricket I've ever read. It's certainly the most ambitious, and by turns the most beautiful...It's both sweeping and meticulous all at once....I can only say, truly, that my connection to the game feels deeper for having read it.' All Out Cricket
After England's cricketers famously lost to Australia at the Oval in August 1882 a mock obituary notice was published in the Sporting Times, announcing that 'the body [of English cricket] would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia'. It was this announcement that brought 'the Ashes' into existence.
Scyld Berry has been covering England cricket tours since 1977, initially for The Observer and since 1993 for The Daily Telegraph. In that time he has seen more England Tests than anyone else, nearly 500. He is also the only person to have won the top awards for both cricket journalism and cricket books. Here, he takes us deep into the heart of each of the nine Test-playing nations he has visited, recounting tales of tours gone by, as well as his own non-cricketing encounters off the beaten track.Fascinating, funny and forthright, Berry’s talent is in not making you swear jealous revenge for the life he has lived, following cricket around the world, but instead enjoy that you can sit alongside him for an afternoon, at least in print, and hear stories that no-one else could tell.