Duelling Phytoids! Drew Forrest and John Young on Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket
Who on Earth is Helen Moffett? That’s what Deputy Editor of the Mail & Guardian Drew Forrest wants to know – and he won’t be satisfied with Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket until he finds out.
Forrest’s displeasure with several less-than-instantly-apparent details to do with the book formed into a little ball of bile in the pit of his stomach as he read it – which bile he then regurgitated in the form of a stick on the pages of his newspaper. I’m sure Ms Moffett will be able to answer his quibbles point by point – have at ‘em, Helen!
Meanwhile, Forrest’s stick is counter-balanced by a whopping great gold-plated carrot* from a certain John Young, who starts off, one senses, with more knowledge of Woolmer and his life’s passion than Forrest did, and who counts, among the elements which make the book a true all-rounder, “the lucid writing of Helen Moffet”:
The foreword claims that Bob Woolmer had just finished writing this weighty tome when he died during last year’s Cricket World Cup. The spine is more equivocal, giving the joint authors as Woolmer, sports scientist Tim Noakes and someone called Helen Moffett.
While reading, the questions constantly came to mind: how many of these 642 pages did Woolmer in fact contribute and to what extent is this really his account of the “art and science” of cricket?
The reader’s unease is heightened by the repeated references to him in the third person and the fact that some of the anecdotes — notably one by Moffet about Pakistani players pumping themselves up before play — did not come from his pen.
In an interview Bob Woolmer once said he was puzzled when he heard former players saying they wanted to put something back into the game. “I would go further,” he said. “I would like to add something to the game.”
The scope of Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket shows just how much he added.
This is a big book. Within its 656 pages, Woolmer and his fellow authors have covered every conceivable aspect of the game of cricket. The selected bibliography provides evidence of extensive research. Thankfully there is a detailed index, which makes navigation very easy.
The navigation reference is appropriate in a broader sense, because this is a great ocean of a book, big in ambition and big, too, in the sense that it is an important book.
Book Details
- Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket by Bob Woolmer and Tim Noakes with Helen Moffett
EAN: 9781770076587
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* Moffett’s phrase, lest I be accused of plagiarism!
Apr
