A Century of Cricketers - A G Moyes

(From inside dust jacket flap)

Mr Moyes gives in this book brilliant pen portraits of those he considers the greatest hundred cricketers of the past century or so. He has himself played cricket with many of his ‘choices’, and has engaged in a great deal of research where both his contemporaries and the players of an earlier era are concerned. His successful biography, Bradman, was produced under the Harrap imprint last summer.

In his foreword, Sir Donald Bradman pays tribute to Mr Moyes’ great knowledge and appreciation of cricket, and he points out that although the selection might not always be his own, the joy of discussing cricket lies largely in the differences of opinion which can be expressed upon its features and personalities.

The author is not so much concerned with figures and statistics as with each player and his methods, and he has concentrated on an attempt (a successful one from the reader’s point of view) to bring every one of his subjects to life in words, rather than to present the analyses which can be culled from other sources.

Much interest will attach to the illustrations, which are reproduced from photographs of both past and contemporary heroes of cricket.

John Arlott, the famous cricket commentator, in a postscript to the work, writes: ‘Mr Moyes has a nice sense of discrimination in his judgements, based on records and their contemporaries, of players he never saw… and has balanced periods, countries, batsmen and bowlers. For these studies the English reader must be grateful to Mr Moyes.’