A Lot of Hard Yakka

In the words of Terry Malloy, “I could've been a contender” - or at least those were my delusional thoughts back in the late70s. As a teenager I was obsessed with cricket and harboured big ideas of making it into the cut-throat world of the professional county cricket circuit. In reality, I had neither the talent nor the aptitude, and had actually already found my metier at village green level. At the same time 200 miles south of me, Simon Hughes shared my aspirations. He was cutting a swath with his fast swing bowling whilst juggling his education at Durham University

By 1981 I had disappeared to university, and cricket was backgrounded in favour of other pursuits, some of which even included academia. Playing cricket would never figure so prominently again which in many respects was a blessing. Simon Hughes' entertaining autobiography, A Lot of Hard Yakka, tells of a time when eking a living out of cricket was precarious and fraught. The game was not awash with money during the eighties, and there was a wide chasm between the haves (test players such as Ian Botham) and the have-nots (Simon Hughes and his cohorts). Botham had become enormously wealthy on the back of the game, but Hughes was struggling on season-long £8k contracts with Middlesex. The contracts lasted from April to the end of September, after which a player would be presented with a P45 and an airy “Keep yourself fit during the winter” - that is if the player had been offered a new deal for the following year. Many of Hughes' colleagues were released unceremoniously with no training towards finding a job outside of cricket.

Hughes' book is a diary of the mundane day in day out grind of the county circuit. Hughes captures the essence of the locker room, of players bags stuffed with pornography, of eschewed fitness regimes, gluttony, drunken binges, womanising, tedium, insecurity and petty minded club politics. The book is not short on humourous anecdotes – Hughes tells of a players' meeting in the committee room of Lords, after which the players had to walk over to the Nursery End for training. Not spinners John Emburey and Phil Edmonds – they jumped into their car and drove the 150 yards around the ground!

There are many similarities to Mike Atherton's Opening Up: My Autobiography and they share a couple of anecdotes. Atherton scaled the heights and became England captain before being mired in controversy. Hughes' career followed a different arc – there was no controversy, no England call-up, but the two authors both give a wonderful insight into the characters inhabiting the game and either book would be an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to gain an appreciation of the life of a professional cricketer.