Third Man in Havana - Tom Rodwell

Finding the Heart of Cricket in the World's Most Unlikely Places
An uplifting tale of cricket – but not as you know it – making a difference in far-flung parts of the world.
When the author Tom Rodwell embarked on a cricketing tour of India, he had only thought of the game as great fun. But the simple joy of the local street kids when his team donated their kit to them made him realize that it could be more than that.
For six years Tom Rodwell ran cricketing programmes from Cuba to Zimbabwe, attempting to soothe the world’s ills with the curiously English balm known as cricket. 
Touching, amusing and imbued with a deep love of the game, Third Man in Havana documents the characters and experiences Rodwell encountered, such as Guantanamo Cricket Club opening bowler, Stalin, who perhaps unsurprisingly didn’t take kindly to his LBW appeal being rejected in Cuba’s first ever match against an England XI. 
From Beersheva Cricket Club pavilion in Israel – a converted nuclear bomb shelter, useful in the face of Hamas’ regular rocket attacks – to a game of ‘tapeball’ cricket with ex-Tamil Tiger child soldiers behind barbed wire in Sri Lanka, Rodwell discovers that the heart of the game is beating fast in countries more used to conflict than cricket.  
Third Man in Havana is a wonderfully positive story, revealing that the spirit of cricket is alive and well.
[Based on the book description on the book jacket and  Amazon.com]

 My Comments: 
Entertaining book written in a humorous vein. The impact of cricket matches on the communities could have been more elaborated upon. Nevertheless a good book to read for cricket lovers and people with the sense of social responsibility.


Goodreads Rating - 3.17 out of 5 ( 6 Ratings)
 
 
Buy the Kindle book version.
(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)

Bat, Ball and Boundary - A Cricketer's Companion

Compiler:   Shelley Klein
Published:   2001
Publisher:    Michael O'Mara Books Limited
Hardcover: 180 Pages


Cricket over the years has become a very fast-paced, hectic and commercialized game. This anthology of  cricket writings takes you back to an era when it was a more leisurely sport. It has over 30 odd pieces spanning nearly 175 years (1807-1982) making a very delightful and interesting read for all the cricket lovers especially those in their 40s and above.


The authors featured in this anthology include  - Lord Byron, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, E.W. Hornung, P.G. Wodehouse, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Neville Cardus, Don Bradman.


The three of my favorite selections from this book are:


1. A Bowler's Innings - E.W. Hornung (circa 1900) : A moving story about a dying bowler who was the most popular player doing his prime.
2. The Story of Spedegue's Dropper - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1929) : An amusing tale about a Tom Spedegue and his spectacular and unconventional bowling feats.
3. The Cricket Match (An extract from the book England, their England) - A.G. Macdonell (1933) - A hilarious account of a village cricket match.


 Extracts from some other pieces:


1. 'Life is  simply a cricket match - with temptation as bowler. He's the fellow who takes nearly every boy's wicket some time or other. You see every boy has three wickets to defend. The first is Truth, the second Honor, the third Purity.' - (From Baxter's Second Innings- Anonymous, 1892)


2. 'But one beauty of cricket is that, if you cannot play it, you can at least look on and talk very learnedly, and find faults with the captain, showing how you would order matters if you were consulted.' - (From Introduction to Richard Daft's Kings of Cricket, Andrew Lang, 1893).


3. ' Cricket is a very humanizing game. It appeals to the emotions of local patriotism and pride. It is eminently unselfish; the love of it never leaves us, and binds all the brethren together, whatever their politics and rank maybe. There is nothing like it in the sports of mankind.' - - (From Introduction to Richard Daft's Kings of Cricket, Andrew Lang, 1893).


4. 'Sometimes a conflict may arise between the desire to please the public and the need to adopt an unattractive or unpopular policy. It can be most disconcerting if the public is clamoring for action and the captain feels it necessary to instruct his men to 'dig in'.  It isn't always pleasant trying to please 50,000 spectators, fifty journalists and ten other players. Sometimes I think the public would do well to ponder that captains are normal,sensitive human beings, striving so hard to do the right thing. They are not a race apart. Public support is a great tonic when the going is hard.' - (From Farewell to Cricket, Don Bradman, 1950)

Captain Cool: The M.S. Dhoni Story

Author:        Gulu Ezekiel
Published:     2008
Publisher:     Westland Limited
Paperback:  128 Pages
Readers in India:



While I write this, the performance of the Indian cricket team captained by M.S. Dhoni (the subject of this book) is  not too impressive in this World Cup (though they have reached the quarter-finals).
And same applies to this book. The author is supposed to be one of the best-known sports  journalist. Maybe he should have stuck to it instead of trying his hand in writing books especially a biography. 
A good biography  should paint a very interesting and realistic picture of its subject. You must really get to know the person whose life is being described.
However this book has a feel of some newspaper reports of the  matches involving Dhoni loosely stitched together. We really don't get to know Dhoni as a person.
This is one book which I will not recommend to anybody except may be to die-hard  Dhoni fans, who may lap it up. 
Ignore the Buy Buttons in this post ! I just retained them to maintain the consistency of my blog posts !
Actually I ordered this book from India Plaza recently  when they offered it for just Rs. 1 as a special World Cup offer.  Maybe they wanted to get rid of the huge inventory of this book which hardly anyone would have bought otherwise.