The Cricket Statistician No 195

50 If you respect traditions and scorn ‘maximums,’ this book may well be for you. Apart from the lack of an index, my only serious gripe is with the statement on the back cover which claims that the Minor Counties have ‘for the past one hundred and twenty-five years… positioned themselves as a stepping-stone between the regional leagues and first-class county cricket.’ Firstly, the original relevant ‘regional league’ in Norfolk was not formed until as late as 1971. Secondly, we in Norfolk have never ‘positioned’ ourselves anywhere – as a Minor County we are a free-standing entity, whose primary aim has always been to provide the best local cricketers with the opportunity to showcase their ability at the highest level possible. Stephen Musk The Breath of Sadness By Ian Ridley, Floodlit Dreams, pp304, £13.99, ISBN9781838030001 Appropriately enough, perhaps, the review copy of this thoughtful study of personal grief arrived with me on the day HRH The Duke of Edinburgh died and national life was touched with ‘the breath of sadness’. How does one react to the loss of a beloved wife or husband? There is no rule book for such a scenario, and in a society that often shies away from the thought of death, there is a sense of embarrassment in both the bereaved and those around him. When at the beginning of 2019 sports writer Ian Ridley lost his wife and soul-mate, fellow- journalist Vikki Orvice, he had to chart his own way through his deep sense of loss. A friend of his suggested that some county cricket would provide some solace, and acting on this suggestion Ridley visited a number of county grounds during the season, although to begin with he was unable to face being away from home for more than a couple of nights and his plans to watch an entire match did not come to fruition. Not a cricket book as such, this is therefore not just the latest in a run of books on the 2019 season; while there are some descriptions of the play, the matches Ridley visited during the season are merely the backdrop to the central theme, which is the author’s emotions at each stage of his journey. So if you want a book describing the county game before Covid and the Hundred, this is probably not for you. But as a study of personal grief, in which the gentle demands of county cricket and the slow burn of a four-day game allow for both distraction and reflection, this is an immensely rewarding read. Think C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed structured around One Long and Beautiful Summer , and you will have some idea of the scope of the book. Richard Lawrence