What I Love About Cricket, By Sandy Balfour

Sandy Balfour has a deep love of cricket, both as a spectator and an amateur club player (his 2007 batting average was 19), and in this book he does his best to share and spread that love. The descriptions of great cricketing moments are vivid (his six-page account of Collingwood's catch of Hayden off Harmison's bowling at Lords, 2005, is so good I had to YouTube it) and remind you what a brilliant game cricket is. There are humorous anecdotes about the highs and lows of Sunday cricket, and nuggets of curious information, such as that "Trescothick" is an anagram of "cricket shot".

Intercut with all this are accounts of family life in north London, especially Balfour's distrust of his eldest daughter's new boyfriend and his attempt to interest this skateboarding youth in the noble sport of cricket. For my money these bits are less successful, bordering, indeed, on the twee. As a whole it's an amiable enough read: the sort of book you'd pluck off the shelves for a bit of undemanding bedtime reading when staying at a friend's house.