Reviews

Do They Play Cricket in Ireland?: A 25-Year Journey to a Test Match at Lord's by David Townsend

_jpmh_'s review

2.0

I was really looking forward to this, but sadly, I'd struggle to recommend it. "Written in diary format, in a chatty, humorous style" notes the blurb (or should that perhaps be warns). The diary format, while at first working OK, once you've ploughed a fair way into the book becomes a little hard to follow as you jump from date to date and place to place (which confusingly sometimes seems to be given as where the writer is, but at others is where the team is playing while he's watching on TV or following by some other means). That informal style also means the use of nicknames, and given that the book is covering 25 years worth of players, officials and associated others, you soon feel completely overwhelmed with the avalanche of diminutives and related scores and stats.

The bigger problem for me was the tone. Townsend is obviously a journalist of some pedigree, but he certainly lets his personality shine through here and that most definitely won't be to everyone's taste. The book comes to a juddering, bizarrely abrupt halt in the middle of the test match at Lord's that the book's 25-year, 350-page span has all been building towards. Perhaps a fittingly strange end to what feels a bit of a confusing book.