Best cricket biography/autobiography title?

Cricketing autobiographies - I suppose most sports autobiographies? - are notorious for their ghost-writing. As the pace of life has generally increased over ten decades, this trend to contracting out a version of someone's life & career - or worse, just getting a possible star's moniker down on a contract (Ponting's supposed "auto"biography being a flagrant example) - appears to have become much more common. I have read more than once that, before World War 2, if an autobiography appeared at all - much rarer back then - it was usual for the player to be essentially in charge of the writing of his own book (albeit often with some editorial assistance.)

True, it has always been asking a lot of a cricketer of unusual sporting achievements also to have high-quality skills as an author & storyteller (unless perhaps he has become at least as good a journalist as a player).

But in the 3rd Millennium, it sometimes appears that almost any old ministar or microstar may have a megasuperstar book associated with him after retirement. Or if the controversy level is high enough, even a few books ... and even while that career is alive and in some way kicking. Provided some editor or publisher somewhere has calculated a decent few copies may be flogged through the mysterious channels of the internet, a smallish print run of a ghostwritten cobble on a virtual nonentity may be added to the now cavernous (but quietly shrieking) storage rooms of autobiographical history.

Here are just a few. Starting very late, in 1951. And it seems wiki may have given up by 2014 (jk):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cricketers%27_biographies_and_autobiographies


So, this thread.

What is/are the best title/titles - just the title/s, I mean - of cricketing autobiographies you know? Or cricketing biographies, since often - see above - that amounts to exactly the same thing: only with less use of the first person, and more of the third.

Autobiography titles that venture beyond "My Life" or "The Auobiography" usually try for something catchy, clever, like a significant pun.

Fortunately, book titles cannot easily be copyrighted. So Mike Atherton's "Opening Up" simply repeated one of G Boycott's autobiography titles of 20 years earlier. And Matt Prior's recent "The Gloves Are Off" stands in a proud tradition of snappy wicketkeeper autobiography titles initiated (I think) by Godfrey Evans, in 1960.


Here then are the top three I can think of, of those I know.

3. Arthur Mailey - "10 For 66 And All That".
[reflecting one of his many feats, and Sellers/Yeatman's version of a history of England. Typically pretend-casual.]

2. CB Fry - "Life Worth Living".
[Not "A life ...", as it is often misquoted. Fry wasn't boasting about his bewildering range of achievements, but describing what to his mind was valuable about life, what sort of pursuits and experiences made life very worthwhile. Including cricket, in a prominent place.]

1. Ian Peebles - "Spinner's Yarn".
[Peebles was a legspinner &  - briefly - the best-disguised googly bowler in the world. (Bradman could not make head or tail of him for a while.) The textile metaphor is perfect. And the fact that Peebles passes off his account of his career as a "yarn" is - I think - modestly likeable, in an unhurried, hassle-free old-fashioned way. The title is as artful as his open-handed but cunningly disguised bowling.]

Rod Marsh - The Gloves of Irony

Ranji: The Strange Genius of Ranjitsinhji (Simon Wilde)

Speaking of Ian Peebles, his book on chucking is nearly impossible to find.

Hard to go past Mailey.

KP.

For its simplicity.




coat. hat. whoosh ...

Ian Meckiff - Thrown Out? Would've been nice if Murali had called his 'Thrown In'.

Dominic Cork - Uncorked?

Weirdest, to me, is 'Third Man to Fatty's Leg' by Steve James. But then, there's probably something I'm not getting.

Merlin wrote:KP.

For its simplicity.




coat. hat. whoosh ...

KP's first title was a handy pun.

Marsh had a couple of good titles as I recall.

Prior pinched (rescued?) his title from Tim Zoehrer FFS.

From Godfrey, more like!


One of the worst (contorted, but perhaps pointless) is G Swann's "The breaks are off".

It's ok for a keeper to say "The GLOVES are off" (as several have done - see above). That has a meaning, and an eye-catching appeal. "What frank disclosures, dished dirt, etc.", thinks the intended reader.

But the BREAKS are off? The spins are top?

And if it is trying to carry the extra pun - about "brakes" - what does that mean? He's careering into the nearest ditch with his Ferrari?

Just a silly title. For a silly billy.

Brass Monkey wrote:Ian Meckiff - Thrown Out? Would've been nice if Murali had called his 'Thrown In'.

Dominic Cork - Uncorked?

Weirdest, to me, is 'Third Man to Fatty's Leg' by Steve James. But then, there's probably something I'm not getting.

Noice.

embee wrote:Rod Marsh - The Gloves of Irony

Oh the iron.

JGK wrote:Hard to go past Mailey.

Taking It From Behind, Richard Blakey (wk)

Oh my word.

Not so much Gloves, as "The Pants Are Off"?

Andrew Strauss:

'C*nts that I don't trust'

It's a work in progress.

Lindsay no.2 wrote:Andrew Strauss:

'C*nts that I don't trust'

It's a work in progress.

Could be a long book.

furriner wrote:

JGK wrote:Hard to go past Mailey.

Taking It From Behind, Richard Blakey (wk)

Shit, yes! I forgot about that mofo... awesome.

"No Holding Back" was not bad, but not quite a "Fire in Babylon".

And definitely better than all-purpose-celeb Amanda HolDEN's autobiography of 2103. Which was called "No Holding Back", for some reason. Wonder where her agent got the idea from?

"Cricket. My Destiny" was a bold title. Like a huge off drive.

How many books by retired players use the title "(insert age) not out"?

Someone would have to do a stastistiscal analasticks.

"Hitting Across the Line" - a supposed autobiography of Viv Richards - is another fine title, however ghostwritten the book must be.

1) the fearless Masterblaster trusting his eye and going for it: T20 tactics in Tests, before T20 was invented

2) proudly/stubbornly striking against orthodoxy - not least that of a (white) British establishment and its established ways of thinking.

PeterCS wrote: I suppose most sports autobiographies? - are notorious for their ghost-writing. As the pace of life has generally increased over ten decades, this trend to contracting out a version of someone's life & career - or worse, just getting a possible star's moniker down on a contract (Ponting's supposed "auto"biography being a flagrant example) - appears to have become much more common.

My sister was the editor of Ponting's book. Her interest in cricket is virtually nil, although she knows a little bit due to growing up in a cricketing family.

At one point I was going to be brought on to the editing team as a fact-checker because Ponting actually declined to read the book that had been ghost-written for him.

In the end they managed to deal with it in-house, but Ponting walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars for a book he didn't read let alone write.

Brass Monkey wrote:Ian Meckiff - Thrown Out? Would've been nice if Murali had called his 'Thrown In'.

Dominic Cork - Uncorked?

Weirdest, to me, is 'Third Man to Fatty's Leg' by Steve James. But then, there's probably something I'm not getting.

And how did Dean Jones miss 'Thrown Up'?

Border Protection? (describes most of his career)

Miandad made Lillee Livid (tour book)