A LOT OF HARD YAKKA

A LOT OF HARD YAKKA

This is not a catalogue of wickets taken and runs scored, but a story about people. 'A Lot of Hard Yakka' is a series of warts-and-all vignettes about the stars and characters of the cricket world, such as Brearley, Gooch, Boycott, Botham and Imran, and how they relate to the nobody Browns, Smiths, Jameses and Sidebottoms. How much does Mike Gatting actually eat during a match? What does Ian Botham rant and rave about? Can you see the ball when Malcolm Marshall lets go of it? What does Graham Gooch discuss between overs? Why was the young Phil Tufnell called 'The Cat'? What the hell is 'yakka'?

Beneath county cricket's tedious, poorly paid routine is a soap opera of diverse characters living together through their professional ups and downs. In a way no other book has done, this one takes you behind the scenes for a fascinating insight into how the household names of the last two decades survive their turbulent ride.

Simon Hughes clung aboard for fifteen years, surfing the peaks and troughs with the great, the good and the ghastly, observing their idiosyncrasies, sharing their emotions. He played in triumphant Middlesex sides of the 1980s, and struggling Durham ones in the 1990s. This is a portrayal of hopes and fears, the dull and the ordinary, the outrageous and the bizarre. It is a bumpy voyage between dead-end 2nd XI matches and dramatic Lord's finals that charts English cricket's emergence from the remnants of sixties amateurism to the reality of nineties commercialism.

Written in a candid, wry, sardonic style, 'A Lot of Hard Yakka' is the most revealing, entertaining and honest book about county cricket, and cricketers in general, ever published.