Books of Cricketers

Cricketers love to play their games and many of them love to write about them. Fans always love to hear things from the horse's mouth. Cricket autobiographies had a head start with Sunny Days - Sunil Gavaskar's own Story, which he followed up with Idols and Straight Drive. All these are available in The Sunil Gavaskar Omnibus. Erapalli Prasanna's One more over: An autobiography was also popular. Kapil Dev'sStraight from the Heart: An Autobiography came close to the popularity of Gavaskar's books. Sujit Mukherji's Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer is another popular book.

Shane Warne's Century: My Top 100 Test Cricketers is the Australian bowlers view on other cricketers. Images of Waugh: A Cricketer's Journey is Steve Waugh's take on his life. All rounder Michael Bevan's The Best of Bevan: The World's Finest One-Day Cricketer Recalls His Most Memorable Moments (Armstrong, Geoff) is an interesting read. Ian Chappel's CHAPPELLI is every cricket fan's delight.

English cricketrs have penned a lot of autobiographies.Fred Titmus: My Life in Cricket, Colin Cowdrey's M. C. C.: Autobiography of a Cricketer (Coronet Books), Harold Larwood's THE LARWOOD STORY, A CRICKETER\'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Botham's Head On: Ian Botham: The Autobiography to name just a few. On captaincy Mike Brearley's The Art Of Captaincy is respected by lovers of the game.

From Pakistan comes Cutting Edge: My Autobiography, former captain's memoir about his cricketing days.

Then there are autobiographies by lesser known cricketrs like Jamaican Eaton Swaby in The Firing Line - A Cricketer's Memoirs, English spinner Udal's Shaun Udal - My Turn to Spin: The Incredible Story of a Cult Cricketer, English county cricketer Simon Hughes' A Lot of Hard Yakka: Triumph and Torment - A County Cricketer's Life. and so on.
From the all time great Sir Richard Hadlee's pen comes his autobiography Rhythm and Swing: An Autobiography and a thoughtful analysis of the finer points of the game in Cricket: The Essentials of the Game.

Cricket biographies are many. But to get a bird's eye view of lives of most of the famous cricketers one should pick up World Cricketers: A Biographical Dictionary.