Description
SCOTT OLIVER
Hardback, 336 pages
Publication date: 24 March 2025
A follow-up to 2023’s Wisden Book of the Year winner, Sticky Dogs and Stardust: When the Legends Played in the Leagues – The Second Innings is another cache of fascinating and – in many cases – previously untold stories documenting the experiences of superstar cricketers playing for recreational teams.
The stars featured include Australian heavyweights Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head and Dennis Lillee, West Indian icons Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Joel Garner, cult heroes such as Jesse Ryder and even the leading Test wicket-taker of all time, Muttiah Muralitharan. Fittingly, there’s also a foreword by one of England cricket’s most iconic and best-loved figures, David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd.
Unlike other sports, cricket – and especially the club cricket of England and the British Isles – allows recreational players to rub shoulders with international stars and even superstars in a fully competitive context, providing them with some of the most cherished memories of their lives. These magical stories are unique to cricket. And yet no one has collected them in one place. Until now.
About the author: Scott Oliver turned to freelance features writing in 2012 after completing an arduous PhD on Peronist Argentina – mainly about sport, although he has written on culture and politics for the Guardian, the New European, New Statesman, VICE and others. A regular contributor of football longforms to The Blizzard, Mundial and The Ringer, cricket is nevertheless his first love. He has written hundreds of pieces on a multitude of topics for ESPNcricinfo, Cricbuzz, the Cricketer and Wisden Cricket Monthly, for whom he has been club cricket correspondent since its 2017 re-launch, compiling the much-loved “Club Cricket Hall of Fame” series. This is his second book, a follow-up to 2023’s Sticky Dogs and Stardust.
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PRAISE FOR STICKY DOGS AND STARDUST – THE SECOND INNINGS
“A second innings for Scott Oliver’s series (a third is already in the works) which is building into a magnum opus of love from and for the leagues, that rich yet unexplored stratum that lies just below the professional game and occasionally bursts up into it. Oliver is sharp enough to understand that speaking to the pros themselves most likely won’t yield what he needs … Those that recall with the necessary vividity of detail are the ones who, for a brief summer’s crossing, shared the stage and their lives with the future greats. It’s from Oliver’s intense focus on detail that the magic arises.”
Jon Hotten, WIsden Cricket Monthly
“Scott Oliver has followed his original book of the same title with another of similar quality. It is a rollicking read, choc-full of wonderful stories, players who left a lasting impression with their feats on the pitch and their ‘talents’ off it … it is hugely entertaining from cover to cover … I was left in awe at the depth of research undertaken by the author, the number of people he has spoken to and the tales that he has unearthed … [these] stories should be in the bag of everyone heading to cricket matches this summer. There will be lunch intervals and of course periods of rain. This book and its predecessor will be your best friends at that point. Every cricket fan needs these on their bookshelf. It is as simple as that.”
Steve Dolman, Peakfan blog
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