Is it acceptable to run out a team-mate? Should you bet on your Captain's downfall? Would you tamper with a cricket ball to gain an edge? Do you think girls can bat, or would you send down your fastest ball? Have you ever dreamed of hitting the winning run only to have your bails removed and your stumps flattened? Are you a pie chucker, or a natural tail-ender? Are you superstitious? Do you believe in the power of a mystical bat, or essential piece of kit? What would you do if a cricket ball kept landing in your greenhouse? Or someone messed with your box?
MT Sands teases and delights with Ten Naughty Cricket Stories that echo with summer laughter and the sound of leather on willow.
WHY READ THIS BOOK
Me and my Pommie mate, Beef wanted to say a few words about cricket. First off, even if you do not know anything about cricket, we think you should read this book because it tells you about life. To coin a phrase cricket is about life, and life is exactly like the cricket, innit. Secondly, Mary Sands writes like she plays cricket. She has all the best shots. She can hit you for six, or stroke you for four. Not only does she write funnily and well about the cricket, but she gives it all a wicked spin of her own. Finally, there is something magic about a cricket field whether it is a dusty strip in the African veldt, an Indian gulley or Jamaican Beach, the finest lawns of Melbourne or the lovingly trimmed squares of the English shires. We hope these stories will tell something about the magic and the love so many of us feel for this special game.
GO WELL,
Lance and Beef
Henderson, Tony: - Tony was born in Winchester, Hampshire. His father was a businessman, author and publisher of books, and his mother a theatrical actress, giving him a life-long love of books, theatre and story-telling. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Tony has trodden the line between liberal arts and technology through spells in the music industry, television and digital innovation. Tony also runs a thought leadership network in Oxford. He has written a book about business and technology, The Leopard in the Pinstripe Suit (2013) and a book of comic poems, Flat Squirrel (2015).
Proctor, Sedley: - "Sedley was born in Poole, Dorset and grew up in West London where visits to the local library instilled in him a life-long love of books. Sedley always loved writing and English. In fact, when he was eleven, he began a historical novel, now lost to posterity, but, if memory serves, in the style of Henry Treece and Ronald Welch. At school in Winchester he started to dream about a writing career, and was even lucky enough to win a prize for a short story, the title of which he has now forgotten. For some reason, however, the final line sticks in his mind. Was it a living or waking dream? - No, she must be dead. After a brief flirtation with archaeology, he studied English at Nottingham University where he was tutored, for a term, by the Northern Irish poet, Tom Paulin. In the 1990s, he worked in fringe theatre and was involved in productions of Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities. His own play, Salt Lake Psycho about the notorious murderer, Gary Gilmore was put on at the now defunct Man in the Moon theatre in Chelsea. Salt Lake Psycho was directed by Sean Holmes, current associate artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe. For the best part of two decades, Sedley lived and worked as a teacher and translator in Southern Italy. Here he collaborated with French writer, Claude Albanese on the screenplay of Dirty Waters. Dirty Waters, which is a political thriller, written with Italian blood, English sweat and French tears, received a commendation at the 2003 Montpellier Festival. In Italy Sedley continued to experiment with his writing, devising an invented dialect for a novel about a young female brigand of the Risorgimento. He also experimented with performance poetry, accompanying local blues band, Big Daddy Lawman on their tours of Apulian taverns, churches and bars. Returning to Britain in 2013, Sedley wrote The Half Days (2015), an ex-pat adventure set in Southern Italy. He struck up a writing partnership with Tony Henderson. Together they quickly published two books: Over & Under i (2015) and Over & Under ii (2016), a series of naughty tales, inspired by the tales of the Arabian Nights. The Over & Under Series has subsequently morphed into the Naughty Stories Series. The first in this series, Ten Naughty Stories was published in 2019 under the pen name, M. T. Sands. Sedley has also published the sequel to The Half Days under the title, Accidental Death of a Terrorist. Accidental Death of a Terrorist (2019) is the second part of the Mezzogiorno Trilogy. Sedley and Tony have written a children's book, The Wolf Garden, under the alias F. M. Frites: A Totally, Completely, and Utterly Bodacious Adventure with Unicorns and Gnomes."
Sands, M. T.: - "M.T. Sands grew up in southern England. She ran away from school when she was sixteen and lost her virtue in a field in Burgundy, under the vines of Clos de Tart, to a mystical and long-haired young German who claimed to be able to divine the kabbalah from a rather weathered notebook which had H. H. inscribed in fading, gold leaf on the cover. For several days she followed him on her bicycle until she ate some Pierre che Rire cheese and realized she was being an absolute fool. Thereafter her career began. QUOTES from the M.T. Sands Interview (As Told to Kurt Brown) - I always had such a wonderful time in the bazaars. You know I once hid in a carpet shop. - Darling, I merely record. I don't judge or criticise. It's so ghastly when everyone starts wagging their fingers. And shouting each other down. I must say, I don't like all that shouty writing that's telling you what to think or do. We have to make up our minds about that ourselves, don't we? - Sometimes one has to do what one has to do, especially to take one's mind off one's predicament."
