Another book review

Wickman likes a book from time to time. And not just the Joy of Sex or the Kama Sutra. And he’s not counting his specially bound copies of er ahem Playboy either. No, Wickman will, from time to time, take to the Airport bookshop and buy good old fashioned books.

Given that Wickman quite likes cricket he is often given cricket books too. From the obvious (three copies of Summers Will Never Be the Same ), through the obvious at Christmas (Steve Waugh autobiography, Michael Atherton autobiography) through to cricket “comedy”.

A couple of them are really good. Anything about Botham is genius because he did such incredible things. Anything about anyone who still has a career (legendary series excepted) is rubbish.

Cricket “comedy” books are nearly always dodgy. Even the good ones. Let’s face it, how many times can you describe the “characters” in the game before rigor mortis sets in? Recently Wickman was leant a copy of Rain Men which was a case in point.

Rain Men, if you haven’t attempted it, is a humorous (sic) book about the history of a team called Captain Scott. It was set up by some enthusiastic but crap cricketers at Oxford. Some of these people (like Marcus Berkmann – who is the author) have gone on to become reasonably famous as writers, sages and satirists amongst others.

Berkmann attempts to get us to share in what they set out to do. They weren’t particularly good at cricket, but they wanted to create a unique team which would play at villages around the South of England without taking it too seriously. He tells us what it is like to travel long distances to games. He tells us what it is like to lose lots of friendlies. He tells us that girlfriends and wives are a hindrance to cricket. He tells us what its like to have a bad average, no idea how to get runs and describes the politics of captaining mixed ability teams.

He tries to make it funny. But it’s not. So what if someone is tight and never buys a round? So what if someone is a statto? So what if someone always gets lost on the way? It’s not enough. Cricket books, to be funny, have to really draw you in to the team. You have to care about the people, the results and have some suspense to want to turn the page. Above all, as we are part of a great club, the funny things that happen to their team have to be funnier than the funny things that happen to our team. At worst the author has to write amusingly so that even if his stories are crap, we at least laugh at his style.

Berkmann’s Rain Men is a dull book. Don’t be fooled by the drool on the cover from reviewers. It’s really dull. Wickman started it three months ago and it’s not quite finished and mostly used for preventing tea rings from forming on Wickman’s bedside table.

Okay, you are saying, Wickman’s lost it. I’ve read that book and I liked it. You have offended me etc. Well, Wickman has cast iron proof that it’s crud now. It comes in the form of a book by Harry Thompson called Penguins Stopped Play.

Entirely un-coincidentally it’s a book about exactly the same cricket team from Thompson’s perspective. It charts many of the same games, people and events (before Berkmann and Thompson largely separated with one becoming Saturday skipper and other Sunday, one wanting the cricket to get better, the other wanting to find ever more tedious ways of losing and having japes). It also describes a series of tours undertaken by the Saturday side culminating in an attempt to play cricket on 5 continents in one tour.

This is a disaster for Berkmann. It’s like Matthew discovering that Mark, Luke and John are all writing about the life of the same carpenter fella and then realising that they’ve done a better job. (Before anyone writes in Wickman knows they didn’t all live at the same time, and no, Wickman hasn’t read all four versions and decided which one is best).

It’s beautifully written and laugh out loud funny where Berkmann is pedestrian. Really funny things happen to them and Thompson has a way with words which Berkmann can only dream of. Wickman purchased it at 6pm on Monday and had finished it by 1.30am on Tuesday have guffawed, chortled, snotted down his front, weed a bit in his pants, laughed uproariously on a very quiet plane down to London from Edinburgh disturbing other passengers who thought he was a nutter about to leap up and open the doors at 30,000 feet and 600mph and generally wept in amusement. Dear oh dear it’s good.

Thompson, of course, was one of the creators and writing talents behind Have I Got News For You. He probably wrote loads of stuff for Private Eye too. He came up with Buzzcocks. It’s Wickman’s type of humour granted. His obituary explains his many talents. And his death is one more reason why his book is even better than Berkmann’s. Because you realise on the last page, as his wife describes his death from cancer, and his funeral, that he has made you care enough about the people in his fantastically funny book, and his description of them, to shed a tear and privately wonder whether the team can be the same without him there to describe it. Berkmann? Can’t even remember a single anecdote.

So along with Fletcher’s crummy book, shun Berkmann. Buy Thompson. Wickman says it must be so.