Books For Christmas: Fans chronicle the game from top to bottom

It would appear to be a natural law of sporting literature that after the fanzine, the "fantome" should follow - the thoughts of cricket nuts, buffs, bores, duffers, stattos and anoraks in book form. And in 1997 there has been a veritable explosion. Even the excellent, award winning A Lot Of Hard Yakka, by Simon Hughes, claims to have taken into consideration the needs of the supporter.

But leading the way is Ashes 97, by Norman Geras and Ian Holliday, both lecturers in Manchester University's Department of Government. They decided to attend every day of the six-Test rubber between England and Australia and write about it. Rhodesia-born Geras a fanatical Australia supporter, the less demonstrative Holliday a fervid home fan.

The result of their travails and travels is intriguing. Each author gives his version of the goings-on, Geras first; the scorecards for each Test precede their writings. As they moved into the summer their characters emerge. The superstitious Geras clearly borders on the obsessive and is resolutely single-minded about reporting the action in the game, although at the same time allowing himself to be lured into romanticising about matches past.

Holliday is as interested in the peripheral goings-on as he is in the on-field action. He it is who chronicles other happenings in the world of sport and in the world in general. Geras, though, voices what many fans must feel - an intolerance of boorish behaviour from minority groups who allow themselves to ruin a good day's cricket with racist and generally childish chanting. There are amusing sketches of fellow spectators and an almost childish delight in snaffling better seats than their tickets allow.

It is an enjoyable read and the fluctuating fortunes of the pair with the saga of their side-bets and excursions, when rain allowed, for bridge, help to make this as fascinating a documentary of an Ashes summer as you could hope to have.

Ashes 97 is nothing if not accurate though in its regurgitating of facts, which is more than can be said of Mark Bussell's Linseed and Fishpaste. You want to enjoy its sardonic wit and barrelful of belly laughs, but when the author, a self-confessed cricket nut cannot even get Devon Malcolm's bowling figures against South Africa right (he took a career best 9-57, not 9-45 as the author states in his introduction) and calls former Gloucestershire player Dean Hodgson, Gordon, there is an understandable reluctance to enter into the spirit of the fan thing wholeheartedly.

All in all it is a very laddish book, but the wit and the observation is generally cute and acute. For example: the difference between football and cricket supporters: "Football fans... jump and down , spit and urinate in people's pockets; cricket fans... doze off, dribble and urinate in their own pockets."

David Hopps is full-time cricket writer on the staff of The Guardian, but as his contribution to the Ashes summer reveals, he too is a fan; but not just a fan, or a scribe; he is captain of Thorner Mexborough CC, a village on the north-eastern fringes of Leeds, which plays in the Wetherby League.

His hilarious We're Right Behind You, Captain! follows the author's fortunes in parallel with those of the England captain, Michael Atherton. Hopps and his men suffer indignity on tour in Sri Lanka and lose more than their fair share of League matches. Hopps records moments of pure slapstick (left-hander, right-hander) in his wry way at village level, wittily interfacing it with Atherton's tribulations, but there is too a core of gravity as he records the vagaries of the game at the top and the bottom.

A must for the shelves.

As is Hughes' book. Thoroughly readable, extremely amusing and plenty of behind the scenes titbits to satisfy. It has humour and humility and provides insight into the lot of the county cricketer.

A more serious pair is Stephen Chalke's Runs in the Memory: County Cricket in the 1950s, and the more introspective Caught England, Bowled Australia by David Frith, the former editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly. Frith's lengthy book seeks to entertain. As editor first of The Cricketer, then of WCM and also a big fan, Frith has a wealth of tales to tell. It's prickly, pricey, but at times thoroughly entertaining, provided you are not a target of the author's wrath.

Chalke's effort - he is another fan - is altogether more gentle. Using players of the era and the fulcrum of a particular match, the author evokes an atmosphere which manages to fall short of the out-and-out sentimental, yet leaves one awash in nostalgic thoughts.

There is every chance that Ashes Summer (yes, yet another), a personal diary kept jointly by Australia's Steve Waugh and England's Nasser Hussain will be acknowledged as one of the better books of its type. At least it does not linger any longer than is necessary on the already well-documented action out in the middle and there are numerous insights and asides, particularly from Waugh.

A Lot Of Hard Yakka by Simon Hughes (Headline, pounds 16.99); Ashes 97 - Two views from the boundary by Norman Geras and Ian Holliday (Baseline Books, pounds 9.99); Linseed and Fishpaste by Mark Bussell (Headline, pounds 14.99); We're Right behind You, Captain!, The Alternative Story of an Ashes Year by David Hopps (Robson Books, pounds 16.95); Runs in the Memory: County Cricket in the 1950s by Stephen Chalke (Fairfield Books, 17, St George's Road, Fairfield Park, Bath BA1 6EY, pounds 15.95 post free); Caught England, Bowled Australia by David Frith (Eva Press, 17 Lyon Road, London SW19 2SE, pounds 19.99 inc. p&p); Ashes Summer by Nasser Hussain & Steve Waugh (CollinsWillow, pounds 14.99).