It is, it seems, compulsory for professional cricketers to write an autobiography (usually ghosted) but Diary of a Cricket Lover is the autobiography of a spectator. Vernon Coleman's diary of the 1984 season has become a classic. (Three extracts from it appear in `All in a Day's Cricket', Brian Levison's 2012 `anthology of outstanding cricket writing'.)
In a hard-hitting, straight from the shoulder book Vernon Coleman tells why he thinks modern cricketers are mollycoddled and why he thinks cricketers' benefits should be abandoned. You can read the truth about the Worcester Pork Pie Fiasco, the Edgbaston car park problem, the story of the day when a committee member nearly got thrown off the balcony at Lords and the perils of spectatorship in the 1980s. Dealing with every aspect of cricket from sponsorship to scorecards Vernon Coleman reminds us that cricket is too important to be left to the experts.
