Product Description
Learn about the history of crickets greatest contest, The Ashes with iMinds insightful knowledge series.

The Ashes is a test-cricket series played between England and Australia. Throughout its long history, winning the Ashes has been seen as a matter of national pride for the two sporting rivals. Today, there is an Ashes series in both men’s cricket and women’s cricket. But the Men’s Ashes series is more widely known.
Any knowledge of the Ashes requires knowledge about the sport of cricket. Cricket is played between two teams of eleven players. They play on a field that has a pitch in the middle. On the pitch there are two wickets which are 22 yards apart. One team bats and has a team member standing in front of each wicket. The other team bowls and fields.

iMinds brings targeted knowledge to your eReading device with short information segments to whet your mental appetite and broaden your mind.

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Amazon.co.uk Review
The Spirit of… series is quickly establishing itself as one of the leading sports photography collections and The Spirit of Cricket more than upholds the standard. Beautifully packaged in a panoramic format and packed with full colour photography, this is an essential companion to the sport of gentlemen, with highs and lows, moments of drama and calm all captured in its pages. It is impossible to describe in detail all the many wonderful and breathtaking shots that can be found within the book, but highlights include a feelgood picture of jubilant fans celebrating England’s historic victory over Australia in the Third Test at Headingley in July 1981 and a triumphant Australian team lifting the World Cup after beating Pakistan in the final at Lords in June 1999. The book also takes the reader on an atmospheric tour of the world’s cricket grounds and includes seven articles by respected cricket writer Frank Keating.

Put simply, this book is a delightful gem and delivers as much as it promises not only for the ardent fan, but the occasional supporter. If you have only a passing interest in cricket then you must own this book. If cricket is your life, then it should be made a crime not to have it on your shelves. –Jonathan Weir

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Product Description
Intended for cricket-lovers of all ages, this quiz book covers various 2005-2006 test matches, including the 2005 and 2006/7 Ashes series.

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Amazon.co.uk Review
In My Autobiography, Aussie leg-spin maestro Shane Warne, perhaps the outstanding cricketer of his generation–and one of the most consistently newsworthy characters in sport–takes stock of a phenomenally successful career, and gives his account of the scandals and controversies that have sent the media into spasms of delighted indignation.

From his days as a frustrated teenage wannabe Aussie Rules star, who decided he might as well try his hand at cricket, Warne has almost single-handedly taken the gentle, studious art of spin-bowling and turned it into a thrilling gladiatorial spectacle–on the way gathering career stats that rank him in company with the game’s all-time elite.

Warne crashed into the world spotlight in 1993, when his first-ever ball in Ashes cricket made seasoned England star Mike Gatting look like a floundering buffoon:

In the second or so it took to leave my hand, swerve to pitch outside leg stump, fizz past the batsmen’s lunge forward and clip off stump, my life did change … Ian Botham said he hadn’t seen the same look of wide-eyed horror on Gatting’s face since somebody had stolen his lunch a few years before.

And he has hardly looked back since–on the pitch at least. Outside the boundary rope it has been a different, though no less sensational story. The media has revelled in tales of extra-marital phone-sex, match-fixing controversies, and bust-ups with the game’s authorities and fellow professionals–sparking endless nonsensical speculation as to whether this hard-drinking, smoking “yobbo” was too fat, too loud, too arrogant or just plain too much for cricket to take.

This is a candid chronicle of his side of the story, and along the way there are some wonderful revelations about the mysteries of spin-bowling, the professional art of “sledging”, and a fascinating insider account of Australia’s rise to world dominance. A frank observer of others; an insightful assessor of his own achievements and motivations–and rarely descending into bland PR-consciousness–The King Of Spin has once again confounded all expectations and served up a peach. –Alex Hankin

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Product Description
-When the Australian team talks about playing aggressively, we are committing ourselves to playing hard. There-s nothing given and there-s nothing asked to be given.- – RICKY PONTING, OCTOBER 6, 2007 The Australian cricket team-s program for 2007-08 was as hectic as ever, featuring the ICC World Twenty20 and matches against ?Sri Lanka, India, New Zealand and the West Indies. As well, many of the Australian players were involved in the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League. Yet when the season began, no one could have imagined it would generate the headlines it did. Much of this coverage came from the acrimonious battles between Australia and India, both in a one-day series in India and then in the Tests in Australia that followed. Ricky Ponting was confronted with a series of controversies that none of his predecessors as Australian captain had faced, and now, in Captain-s Diary 2008, he explains his side of the story. Many players, including Ponting, who are more used to being treated as heroes, were suddenly cast as villains. Did they really deserve the level of criticism that came their way? The Australian team has changed greatly in the past two years. Having lost a number of champions in 2007, a few more stars — most notably Adam Gilchrist — retired in 2008, and here Ponting pays tribute. He also traces the astounding rise of Twenty20, and offers his view as to where this exciting new form of cricket might take the game he loves.

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Product Description

The sport of cricket has particular political connotations as it embraces an ethos that is symbolic of a wider-held belief system. Sport is subject to influences far beyond the playing field. Politics is also subject to the same social and economic influences. The popular and widespread view that sport and politics do not mix emanates from conservative ideology. Focusing on the sports boycott as a political strategy, Jon Gemmell analyses the relationship between sport and politics through an historical analysis of South African cricket. He argues convincingly that cricket assisted the reform process by undermining the legitimacy of the apartheid regime.

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Product Description
A study of the great Indian cricket player

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Product Description
Covers the splendidly diverse world of the limited overs game from an Indian perspective. This volume traces the origins of the shorter version of the sport and records various Indian appearances, as well as each semi-final and final, of all World Cup and Champions Trophy competitions.

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Amazon.co.uk Review
“No one likes him,” friends would taunt me, “they don’t even have a nickname for him in the dressing room.” –Simon Hattenstone, from Me and Hicky

Cricket, the new rock’n'roll? Well, not quite, but Unlimited Overs, the third volume of new cricket writing in The New Ball series, certainly captures the resurgent interest and dynamism that has invigorated the game in recent years.

There’s no denying that multi-coloured pyjamas, limited overs, and the dominance of the mercurial South Africans and remorseless Australians, have given the game a tremendous boost of late–or as this collection might have it–”an almighty kick up the arse”.

With contributions from well-known writers like Colin Shindler, author of the best-selling Manchester United Ruined my Life and former Wisden editor Graeme Wright, it plays a pretty solid straight bat. But it’s the flashing stroke play of relatively new faces like the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, on his strange passion for Graeme Hick, and Radio 5 Live’s Mark Steel, on the view from the beer tent, that lifts this series above the ordinary.

Those who think coverage of the sport reached its zenith with Brian Johnston spotting buses “trundling down the Walworth Road”, may find some of the writing a trifle vulgar, but there is a vibrancy and freshness to the voices in this collection–backed up by some shrewd, witty analysis–that brings the sport to life.

Recommended reading for those who can appreciate a leg glance, but prefer to see a short one thumped away through the covers. –Alex Hankin

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Amazon.co.uk Review
Not many sports books could retain a freshness and topicality almost 50 years after their first publication. Next Man In, revised and expanded to take in the many changes that have come to cricket during the 90s, does just that. It is still compulsive reading for fans, perhaps more so now than ever before. If you haven’t read it and think you know and understand the laws of cricket, then think again.

It is the complete cricketing education. Each of the laws of the game is listed by chapter but then brought to life through anecdotes and illustrations that both inform and, more importantly, entertain. Not a few of the restrictions and regulations we would pass off as being mandatory for a civilised game of cricket to be played today are shown to have been drawn up only after blatant gamesmanship or the mischievous antics of players. The story of Dennis Lillee trying to get away with the use of an aluminium bat against England is legendary but how many people know he was once no-balled for bowling an apple in his first over against Sussex. Thankfully the powers-that-be resisted the temptation of including a “Thou shalt not bowl apples” clause. Surely, however, the umpires ruled incorrectly when a New Zealand fielder was not allowed what appeared to be a legitimate catch off a Pakistani batsman in Dhaka because. In his other hand, he was holding a banana that had been pelted at him from somewhere in the crowd. Such are the issues which Gerald Brodribb tackles in a book that, with its newly written appendix considering one-day cricket, is as relevant now as it always was and is always likely to be. –Thrasy Petropoulos.

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