The Worst of Cricket 2

You do well to love Cricket , said Lord Harris, for it is more free from anything sordid, anything dishonourable, than any game in the world. Harris, who captained the first England team to do battle with the Australians in this country, obviously never got his hands on a copy of The Worst of Cricket. If that volume, published four years ago, failed to totally convince you that the sport is designed to disturb, dismay and disgruntle in equal measure, then maybe it was because it only scratched the surface. The Worst of Cricket 2 we are happy to say - completes the job. If a week is a long time in politics, as Harris, later an under-secretary for war, would have probably acknowledged, four years has proved to be an eternity in cricket an eternity in which umpires, players, bureaucrats and even spectators have played their disagreeable parts. So, sit down and celebrate, in the company of prime offenders Harbhajan Singh, Andrew Symonds, Darrell Hair and a cast of thousands, another dose of all that s bad about the game: there are the usual suspects - more dubious umpiring decisions, confrontations, tantrums, mistakes, dismissals and off-field misdemeanours, backed up by plenty of new faces - the worst collapses, the worst fielding, and the worst run-outs, all, once again, from the first-class game.