Cricket, lovely cricket? : an addict's guide to the world's most exasperating game

"Cricket, Lovely Cricket" is a sports book with a difference.

It is an original and engaging journey around the perennially curious world of cricket, leaving no metaphorical leg-break unturned and peering at the game from every conceivable angle.

Written by Lawrence Booth, who had little option but to turn a youthful obsession with cricket into a means of paying the mortgage, it seeks to answer the questions that crop up on a daily basis but rarely receive a satisfactory answer.

What are the players really like? What is the secret of sledging? Why get so worked up about the Ashes?Why all the cliches? And when will India take over the world? Fittingly, for a sport that can last up to five days without a result, "Cricket, Lovely Cricket" is rambling but probing, humorous but insightful, sweeping but reflective.

It is underpinned by the essential - and slightly frightening - truth that cricket does not actually matter at all, yet continually finds itself relating the game to the wider world. By examining what cricket tells us about the nations who spend vast chunks of their existence fretting over the fate of a small red ball, it attempts to get to the heart of a sport that seems more capable than any other of bewitching its followers.

Full of stories, observations, jokes and whimsy, this book is a captivating look at the way in which the game has become what it is today - and what, given a fair wind, it might be like in the future.