Product Description

There are many cricket books, and they are all the same. 'Don't Tell Goochie', autobiographical insights of nights on the tiles in Delhi with Lambie and the boys; 'Fruit cake days', a celebrated humourist recalls 'ball' - related banter of yore; and Wisden, a deadly weapon when combined with a thermos flask. Rain Men is different. Like the moment the genius of Richie Benaud first revealed itself to you, it is a cricketing epiphany, a landmark in the literature of the game. Shining the light meter of reason into cricket's incomparable madness, Marcus Berkmann illuminates all the obsessions and disappointments that the dedicated fan and pathologically hopeful clubman suffers year after year - the ritual humiliation of England's middle order, the partially-sighted umpires, the battling average that reads more like a shoe size. As satisfying as a perfectly timed cover drive, and rather easier to come by, Rain Men offers essential justification for anyone who has ever run a team-mate out on purpose or secretly blubbed at a video of Botham's Ashes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23231 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'The Fever Pitch of cricket. Very funny.' Daily Telegraph 'Many thousands of cricketers will be able to identify with Marcus Berkmann's marvellous Rain Men. A masterpiece.' Sir Tim Rice 'A very funny book about some very sad men' Ian Hislop 'It captures splendidly the many dazzingling facets of the truly atrocious cricketer' Observer 'For addicts with a low batting average - i.e. most cricket lovers' Guardian

About the Author
Marcus Berkmann is the author of Zimmer Men (SBN 0 316 72838 1) the sequel to Rain Men. He writes regularly for the Oldie, Private Eye and The Spectator

Customer Reviews

If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club!
I remember being escorted from the canteen at work whilst crippled up with laughter, the first time I read "Vintage Stuff" by Tom Sharpe. This was worse!
Having played at "The Gibbon" and some of the other grounds exquisitely described by Marcus Berkmann I woke up in intensive care and knew life was never going to be the same again. If an ex-cricketer does nothing else this winter, he should read this book.

I'M ONLY 14! AM I ALREADY THIS SAD!
As I say I'm only 14 and I play Cricket. Everything in this is the absolute truth. When I first read Rain Men it made me cry and my stomach hurt with laughter over a hundred times. It is Hilariously funny and frightenly accurate, it worries me that I am that sad. I have already read it three times, It is surly the funniest Cricket book EVER!

So good I decided to emulate Berkmann
his book has compelled me to do two things I would never have done before:

1. write a review so evangelical I am about how funny this book is; and

2. set up my own hopeless cricket team with a bunch of rugby, football and hockey players from university with the same levels of success of the team described in these pages.

I can not imagine how anyone but the most hardened anti-sports fan can fail to enjoy this book. I find that there is a lot of drivel written about cricket which seems be in love with its own sense of history and literature but this is a real treat. Don't go and buy the next Beckham, Rooney or Lampard autobiography - read a book about proper sportsmen who really suffer for their love.

... and A Few Good Men Cricket Club are looking for a good fast bowler by the way...