The best books about cricket

Inspired by Aravind Adiga's Selection Day, we've chosen a few of our favourite books featuring cricket.

Inspired by Aravind Adiga's Selection Day, we've chosen a few of our favourite books featuring cricket. 

Fiction

Netherland

by Joseph O'Neill

Book cover for Netherland

A novel set in the thriving but almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play a beautiful, mystifying game on the city's most marginal parks.

England, Their England

Book cover for England, Their England

An affectionately satirical inter-war comic novel first published in 1933, particularly famed for its portrayal of a village cricket match.

The Go-Between

Book cover for The Go-Between

The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world and an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society.

Murder Must Advertise

by Dorothy L. Sayers

Book cover for Murder Must Advertise

The elegant, intelligent amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is one of detective literature's most popular creations.

Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man

by Siegfried Sassoon

Book cover for Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man

George was born into a world of village cricket matches and fox-hunting, but his failing income and the onset of war threatens his way of life. A touching depiction of pre-First World War Britain.

Psmith in the City

by P. G. Wodehouse

Book cover for Psmith in the City

When Psmith finds himself working in the City for the pompous Mr Bickersdyke, he makes it his mission to bring a little sweetness and light into the bank manager's life.

Life, The Universe and Everything

Book cover for Life, The Universe and Everything

Stranded in a damp cave on prehistoric Earth, Arthur Dent is suddenly hurled through an eddy in the space–time continuum. He lands on Lords Cricket Ground – swiftly followed by a gang of robots who steal the Ashes before departing.

Non-fiction 


Beyond a Boundary

by C L R James

Book cover for Beyond a Boundary

C L R James was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it.

The Art of Captaincy

by Mike Brearley

Mike Brearley is one of the most successful cricket captains of all time. In The Art of Captaincy, his treatise on leadership and motivation, he draws directly on his experience of man-managing a team to explain what it takes to be a leader on and off the field.

Coming Back to Me

by Marcus Trescothick

Book cover for Coming Back to Me

A true-life sporting memoir of one of the best batsman in the game who stunned the cricket world when he prematurely ended his own England career.

Following On

by Emma John

Book cover for Following On

In 1993, while everyone else was learning Oasis lyrics and crushing on Kate Moss or Keanu, Emma John was obsessing over the England cricket team. Nearly a quarter of a century on, Emma John wants to know why she spent her teenage years defending such a bunch of no-hopers, so she seeks out her childhood heroes.

AB de Villiers - The Autobiography

Book cover for AB de Villiers - The Autobiography

AB de Villiers is one of the finest batsmen ever to play cricket. This is the story of a modern sporting phenomenon, in his own words.

The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

A tribute to the finest writers on the game of cricket, including P. G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and V. S. Naipaul.


Selection Day

by Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga's Selection Day, a novel of boyhood, Bombay and batsmanship is out now.

A moving and beautifully observed new novel, of adolescence, ambition and self-realization, of fathers and sons, set in contemporary Bombay, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger and Last Man in Tower.

'The most exciting novelist writing in English today' - A. N. Wilson