Becca impresses with 'Cricket - Lovely Cricketers'

• Title: Cricket - Lovely Cricketers: The Best of My Time
• Author: Tony Becca
• Publisher: Wilson Franklyn Barnes
• Reviewed by: Robyn Miller

"Cricket, lovely cricket

At Lord's where I saw it ..."

- Lord Beginner

Few people can pen a story brilliant enough to capture my imagination and passion for cricket beyond the infectious melodies of that Lord Beginner tune which gave West Indies bragging rights on their first-ever whipping of England at Lord's in 1950.

C.L.R. James is one of them. And then there's Tony Becca - that unflinching cricket commentator/writer who seemed to have followed the game in every nook and cranny.

Not one to leave a stone unturned in his near 30 years of writing about the game for the Grand Old Lady of North Street, like a defiant batsman at the crease, Becca's form is unwavering in this, his latest spell, Cricket - Lovely Cricketers: The Best of My Time.

Told with compelling planks of history, many of them first-hand experiences, the book positions the best cricketers of all time, through the eyes of Becca, somewhat like a Wisden top 100-cricketer listing, in an impassioned yet honest and spot-on manner that makes it an intensely enjoyable read.

"... the best of my time is weighted in favour of the artists of the game - those batsmen whose gift of stroke play has entertained me so royally over the years, those batsmen whose elegance has hypnotised me over the years," says Becca of his selection process.

Conjuring up beautifully the images of the range of impressive bowling by his top bowlers, Becca transports you to the sights and sounds of Sabina Park, or even Queen's Park Oval, as the bowler does his run-up to the batsman at the other end of the wicket to a boisterous chorus of shouts only capable by West Indian cricket fan.

Predictable picks

For his bowling picks, it's "... those who were so fast that sometimes it was difficult to see the ball from the boundary's edge, those bowlers who swung the ball so prodigiously that it appeared to move in the air like a boomerang ... those bowlers who had the ability to spin the ball both ways and to disguise the spin ... so well that it bamboozled even the best batsmen in the best conditions and on the best pitches."

The overall picks for the best of his time are, for the most part, predictable, and readers will have little objection to India's Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Australia's Ricky Ponting; Pakistan's Imran Khan and Wasim Akram; West Indies' Garfield Sobers, and my absolute favourites, Sir Viv Richards and Brian Lara, and Michael Holding making the impressive list.

But it is the non-selection of the world's highest wicket-taker, Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan, with over 800 wickets to his name, and Australia's Glen McGrath that readers will find questionable.

The fielders are few but no less worthy, as everyone knows that, in cricket, 'Catches win matches'.

Becca impresses with his knowledge of the game, though not entirely surprisingly, as there are enough accounts of him rubbing shoulders with everyone - from players to administrators - ever since his baptism way back in 1953 when his father took him and twin brother Lloyd to "Sabina".

The book largely delivers on content but fails to capture in pictures the exploits of the cricketing giants on the field of play, and in colour. Instead, it relies on headshots which, in some instances, have nothing to do with the players' association with cricket.

Still, Cricket - Lovely Cricketers: The Best of My Time is bound to resonate in a big way with real fans of the game.