Given the vast numbers of books written about cricket (the game is, after all, the first organised team sport), it seems surprising that “no one in modern times has attempted a comprehensive account of the England national team”.
But then Simon Wilde, the long-standing cricket correspondent of The Sunday Times, goes on to admit, he discovered why: the amount of recorded information is intimidatingly extensive. So at times he struggles to reduce England: The Biography to a readily digestible form.
For this reader, that’s no problem. Like other cricket tragics, I read books about the game in the bath. This tome of 35 chapters is ideal for dipping into over a period of months.
In this context, the pages that will detain readers long after