Close the nominations. Unless someone publishes proof of Shergar pulling a plough in the Yemen, it must be a good bet for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011.
Twirlymen is the absorbing maiden work by Amol Rajan, a journalist at the Independent. His aim is to celebrate spin bowling’s impressive survival in the face of change and the often unjust machinations of cricketing authorities; to remind us of spin bowling’s past dominance; to explode myths; to raise off-spin, ‘an ugly ducking in cricket’, to its rightful plinth; to extol the mastery of the basics over the capriciousness of mystery; and to celebrate the great Twirlymen. It is a sweeping and exciting manifesto from an author with a deep knowledge and merrily uninhibited love of spin bowling.
Nevertheless, its incongruous introduction got me off on the wrong foot.
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