The Wit Of Cricket: Stories from Cricket's best-loved p… (2024)

Gentle fun read

An anthology of cricketing bon mots and funny stories collated by Barry Johnston, son of the late broadcaster Brian. None of them (of course) are new, but some I hadn't read previously. Good harmless fun but probably better recounted verbally than in print.
I won't spoil the fun by quoting the best bits, but John Arlott on a characteristically long innings by Geoff Boycott was memorable: "No man is an island, but he has batted as though he was a particularly long peninsula".
This kind of material is difficult to organise into a book without adding introductory statements like: "so-and-so was a very funny chap/right character", or "a hilarious incident occurred at the Notts v Kent game in 1957.......", which gets a little repetitive and is also sometimes the prelude to a story which is a bit of a clunker. And the padding provided by long quotations from that once-popular genre of amateur cricketers' accounts of their not-terribly-funny exploits on exotic tours is dull and usually irrelevant.
A final irritation for me was the inclusion (yet again) of the "legover" incident - no less than 7 pages devoted to a bit of on-air corpsing from the TMS team which was mildly funny at the time but has grown increasingly stale with repetition. The fact that the BBC devoted a half-hour commemorative article last year to the 30th anniversary of two middle-aged broadcasters snigg*ring over a fourth-form double entendre shows how far TMS has declined from its peak. Can we stop hearing about it now, please ?
A good undemanding holiday read for a cricket enthusiast.

I am passionate about cricket, currently watching the test series between England and South Africa on Sky TV. The Wit of Cricket is a little gem of a book, a bumper collection of the funniest anecdotes, jokes and stories from cricket's best-loved personalities that proves that cricket is a funny game - even when rain stops play! Popular stories from five of the game's all-time great characters - Richie Benaud, Dickie Bird, Henry Blofeld, Brian Johnston (affectionately know as Johnners) and Fred Trueman, all interspersed with contributions from the likes of Michael Atherton, Andrew Flintoff, Darren Gough, Kevin Pietersen, Shane Warne and many others.

My favourite commentary gaff of all time comes from Johnners during the 1976 test match against the West Indies at The Oval. Michael Holding (West Indies) was bowling to Peter Willey (England) when Johnners said (and this is live on air): "Welcome to The Oval where the bowler's Holding, the Batsman's Willey!" It has gone down in folklore...

Hilariously funny. The Botham take at the end brought back memories.

So many different people who have stories and anecdotes from years of cricket had me laughing out loud and having to explain myself to onlookers more than once.
Brilliant compilation of funny situations that only cricketing fans would really relate to, but stories that everyone with a sense of humour will find amusing.
Well worth the read

Disappointing. The best stories are already documented elesewhere, so not new to cricket fans, which is hardly surprising. It is easy to see why the rest of the items are not so well known as they don’t really warrant inclusion, being quite tedious. This book might be of interest to readers who haven’t read about the game very much.

One of the best book ever written in cricket. This is not only funny but also shows the other side of the cricketers, how they are on and off the field. For Indian cricket fans, sadly, there are not enough anecdotes but a fun read with accounts from legends like Benaud and Fred Trueman.

A nice book full of good stories

Wonderful anecdotes.

I enjoyed the modern anecdotes of sledging. Some of the older stories were amusing too but didn't quite capture my attention.

Excellent book

Loved the way the anecdotes were presented and I recommend it to all cricket lovers. I am a great fan of Brian Johnson

Hilarious anecdotes.

Very funny book.

Great book much better than the original one by Brian Johnston which has not aged well with time!

A little gem of very funny anecdotes. Perfect for cricket lovers.

A nice collection of cricket funnies, sledges and quotes.

However, some stories are quite drab (perhaps they sound funnier when spoken out in an inebriated atmosphere), and it's a little too England-centric.

A light, fun, read which should take no more than 3-4 hours. For this reason, I can recommend it to any cricket fan for a quick chuckle or two.

Laugh riot! Grew up listening to TMS and people like Brian Johnston, Trevor Bailey, Henry Blofeld and the likes.

Little snippets of crickets tall tales. Quite good

Some great and funny stories here, as well as some that are a bit more mundane. Did find myself re-telling some of them to friends after reading them!