Nick is an ace wicket-keeper who loves to play cricket. He greatly respects his primary school coach who believes in the spirit of cricket and trains the team to play fairly. As the end of primary school draws near, Nick decides to join a local club so he can keep improving at the game. With the encouragement of his father, Nick joins his dad's old club and earns a spot as wicket-keeper. Unfortunately things don't go to plan and Nick's dreams turn sour. The team members are unfriendly, being more interested in personal achievements than team effort, and as far as Nick is concerned they don’t play by the rules. Torn between his mother's sense of fair play and his father's dreams that his son would play for his old cricket team, Nick becomes increasingly unhappy as the true nature of his new team mates comes to light. Sledging the opposition, tampering with the ball, ignoring the captain and refusing to 'walk' are behaviours that Nick does not agree with. His first reaction is to leave the club and, when he walks after being given not out, anger builds between him and the team. It is time to get out or make a stand. From Raewyn Caisley, the acclaimed and established author of TOP MARKS, IN UNION, HOT SHOT, TENNIS STAR, QUEEN’S CUBBY, FREE STYLE and GREAT LEAD, comes another book in the popular Junior Sports Series.

Cricket, law and the meaning of life ... In a readable, informed and absorbing discussion of cricket’s defining controversies – bodyline, chucking, ball-tampering, sledging, walking and the use of technology, among many others – David Fraser explores the ambiguities of law and social order in cricket. Cricket and the Law charts the interrelationship between cricket and legal theory – between the law of the game and the law of our lives – and demonstrates how cricket’s cultural conventions can escape the confines of the game to carry far broader social meanings. This engaging study will be enjoyed by lawyers, students of culture and cricket lovers everywhere.

The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother. Available from all major eBook retailers, Wisden's digital version includes the influential Notes by the Editor, all the front-of-book articles, reviews, obituaries and all England's Tests from the previous season. Brought together for the first time, here are the first five editions of The Shorter Wisden, distilled from the Almanacks published between 2011 and 2015.

Included are the imaginative reconstruction of the 1882 England and Australia test match to Cardus's descriptions of village cricket, accounts of the great players that Cardus watched play (from Donald Bradman and Harold Larwood to Wally Hammond) to examples of his 'Shastbury' writings. Chosen and introduced by Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, Cardus on Cricket features a range of writings from 'Cricket', 'Days in the Sun', 'The Summer Game', 'Good Days', 'Australian Summer' and 'The Manchester Guardian'.

Looking at the inter-war period, this work explores the relationship between cricket and English social and cultural values.

Cricket has changed dramatically in recent years and now can claim to be a truly global game, thanks in large part to new media technologies which bring a global audience for World Cups and other major competitions. However, the globalization of cricket has not followed a pattern familiar in other sports: concentrations of wealth, media, and marketing leading to the domination of Western countries over the rest, and this fact alone makes it interesting for scholars of the globalization of sport. Cricket has followed a very different global path; the non-Western countries (former British colonies) have begun to dominate and have taken control of the economics and politics of the game. In short, cricket has been “Indianized”. The globalization of cricket has received a massive boost from the popularity of the newest form of the game (Twenty20) which is helping promote cricket as a mass TV sport. The rise of Twenty20, particularly the Indian Premier League (IPL), is transforming the way cricket is organized, played, and watched all over the world. This development both reinforces the globalization of cricket and also underlines that the “movers and shakers” within cricket are no longer the traditional elites in metropolitan centres but the businessmen of India and the media entrepreneurs world-wide who seek to shape new audiences for the game and create new marketing opportunities on a global scale.

Gambling is a fascinating account of gambling through history, from Greek mythology and the ancient role of lots, dice and cards, to the high profile cricket and football match throwing and 'super casinos' of today. Mike Atherton explores this controversial and captivating phenomenon and the way that many present day sports provide the most popular focus for gambling, why so many of today's sportsmen become fervent gamblers and how in some cases this has led to corruption, addiction and ruined reputations. With recent high profile incidents involving the likes of Mohammad Amir and Joey Barton, gambling in sport is a topic that remains at the top of the sporting agenda. Scandalous cases such as the Cronje and Grobbelar incidents are analysed in detail, as well as an investigation into why such a high proportion of the of the world's population have always sought out risk, and how this trend has encompassed all social classes and cultures.