I couldn’t resist. When this post was first written (June 2015) England and Australia faced each other to battle it out for the urn containing the ashes of English cricket. It has since been updated.
Cricket’s a game you either love or hate, although it seems that even within the sport there are strong opinions: you either love the 5-day test and detest 20/20 or vice versa. The one-day or limited over 50-ball game seems to be firmly in the middle, having moved up in the rankings of Test specialists. Coming to the game late, I understand those who have little time or interest in it. But there are some wonderful benefits to a day at the cricket. Think sun shine and a patch of grass to sit on (and a good book in the bag in case…).
TSL has been lucky to sign the BBC Test Match Special Cricket Statistician, Andrew Samson. With Andrew as one of our authors, we just had to feature a post on Cricket.
The most famous books concerning cricket are no doubt the Wisden‘s Cricketers Almanack. Our main interest though is novels or works of fiction, although if you’re interested in what the life of a Cricket Statistician entails, why not read Andrew Samson‘s The Moon is Toast?
Books mentioning Cricket
Prominent on the novel front is Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers (1836) and Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (1857).
The game features on the cover of PG Wodehouse’s Mike (1909) and in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe (1982) the Ashes trophy gets stolen.
Andrew Samson Andrew is a cricket statistician of note. Since 2009 he has worked for BBC Test Match Special.
In 1994 he was appointed statistician for Cricket South Africa having worked for various radio stations providing cricket statistics since 1988. He contributes to Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, South African Cricket Annual and various cricketers’ biographies.
He has been a member of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians since 1980 and was on the committee from 2003 to 2007. He was the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians Statistician of the Year for 2013. He was Official Statistician for the following ICC events in South Africa: Cricket World Cup 2003, World Twenty20 2007 and World Cup Qualifier 2009.
He is co-author of: * “1107 All Out – The Cricketer’s Quiz Book” with Peter Fridjhon. * “The Blue Book” with Andre Odendaal and Krish Reddy. * “South African and International Sports Fact Finder” and SuperSport Fact Finder produced annually between 1992 and 1997 with Anton Berkovitz.
Between 2009 and 2011, he presented Go Figure on Radio 702 in South Africa. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AWSStats.
‘Top Cricket Scorer’ Andrew was interviewed in July 2018 by The Cricket Magazine.
