Interesting idea. I do remember ready some kids' books about cricket myself, actually - all I remember about them is that the captain of the team involved was called Harry Knight, nicknamed "H
awk" because his initials were HAW Knight, and they had a player whose nickname was Ohbert, because he was rubbish and used to get sent to the far corners of the boundary to field, and respond with "Oh, but....." and then tail off as he walked away. That was all he ever said. They also had a token girl in the team, whose name I can't remember, and I'm pretty sure they had a token Indian and a token West Indian kid in there, too, but I'm not sure.
The books were pretty good, and they provided me with a lot of the early knowledge I gained about the game - they had diagrams of the names of fielding positions at the back, and things like that.
From what I can remember, most of the characters were fairly loosely based on real players - or at least stereotypes of players that have always existed. There was the dynamic, inspirational captain, all-rounder and all-round good egg, there was the rubbish guy who ends up being a hero, there was the talented but unpopular batsman from an "exotic" country (I think they might have even made him Spanish in these books - the name Da Silva is ringing a bell
), there was the big, angry fast bowler, there was the token Indian spinner, the token West Indian who batted like Sobers and bowled like Marshall.....ah yes, it's all coming back to me now.
I think the concept works well if kids can make parallels with current players - chucking in a few similarities with Fred/Vaughan/Harmy/Pietersen might not go amiss.
