"What are the Butchers For?": And Other Splendid Cricket Quotations - Tapa dura

'This wide-ranging collection of some of the finest and most memorable cricket quotations taps into cricket's richly quirky history while keeping pace with the fast-changing nature of the modern game...An excellent publication - one of the best publications of its kind.' The Egalitarian Fortnightly, Ludhiana (January 1-15, 2010) "This is a magnificent collection with delights - well-known, half-remembered and newly discovered - on practically every page. Lawrence Booth, the former Guardian journalist now writing for ...the Daily Mail, deserves enormous credit for approaching the task with real vim and vigour and not just assembling a cast list of the usual suspects." The Wisden Cricketer '...its appeal lies in the fact that it is attractively produced and well laid out, many of the quotations shedding light on one another, with the generally expert hand of Lawrence Booth providing context and other relevant asides.' ACS Spring Journal (2010)

'What are the butchers for?' And other splendid cricket quotations is a collection of some of the finest and most memorable quotes about the sport. It contains a mixture of timeless quotations and up-to-date ones that bring the format into the twenty-first century and reflect the fast-changing nature of the sport as well as its great history. The quotation in the title is attributed to the US actress Pauline Chase who, catching sight of the umpires at her first cricket match, was somewhat baffled. Groucho Marx: 'Has it started yet?' Harold Pinter: 'I tend to believe that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth ...certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either.' Andrew Flintoff: 'That's 1-1, you Aussie bastard.' CLR James: 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?' Lord Mancroft: 'Cricket is a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity.'