A new hero

Well if Peter Roebuck's diary of a cricket season is among the best 10 cricket books ever written Ed Cowan's must be too because it's better. Hope he scores a pile of runs in the boxing day test match.
References to Moneyballs ( don't think I'll watch the film - in my mind's eye the hero Bean has to be ugly or at least weird looking and he's played by a pretty-boy actor) and to 'Foxy' Fowler's season-diary ( where he's expecting to break into Test cricket but has a car crash season which leads to his relationship breaking up ) makes for familiar territory.
Somehow it also reminded me that I received my first ever cricket book 50 years ago today - Jim Laker's Australian Tour of 1961. I'll need to re-read that one next, if only for the passages describing the first tied Test and Tom Graveney's gardening leave when he moved from Gloucestershire to Worcestershire.

Happy Christmas.