The Cricket Conversations
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 620
Author: Niaz, Nauman
Publisher: Boundary Books
Rating: 5 stars
Having finished reading Heritage & Legacy 1950s I moved straight back to The Cricket Conversations, which was always earmarked to be the next book I would read. It has a sub-title, Story of a Forlorn Convert. Part of the personal history Nauman relates before his conversations start in earnest is how he fell in love with cricket at an early age, so I can see how convert comes in, although I am not entirely convinced about the use of the word forlorn, unless it is a reference to Nauman’s undoubted frustration and regret that a day has only 24 hours in it.
The two books have a similar feel to them. Both are substantial, weighty volumes and both illustrated in the same way, with paintings commissioned for the book rather than with photographs. Dedicating the book to his parents Nauman begins with portraits of them and also presents five of himself. On page 8 he looks very serious and, I venture to suggest, perhaps even a little grumpy. His mood seems better by page 10 when he is seen with copies of his last book before, on pages 16, 17 and 26 we see the smiling, relaxed and almost avuncular Nauman who is familiar to those who know him. On page 16 he stands alone, but on 17 and 26 he is with two of the subjects of his conversations, Sir Vivian Richards and David Gower.
And then he starts talking. His ability to do that is evidenced by the length of his career as a broadcaster, but it is clearly something he was doing very well for many years before that. The first subject in the book is a man that a 19 year old Nauman sought out in his home in South London, the legendary West Indian writer CLR James. At that stage ‘CLR’ would have been 87 years old and had only a year to live, but he certainly seems to have been happy to have a wide ranging conversation with the young medical student that Nauman then was.
What I had not taken a detailed look at when I first skimmed through The Cricket Conversations was its dramatis personae. I had rather assumed it would comprise in the main those who Nauman had encountered in his broadcasting role, and that the era covered would be the end of the twentieth century through to the present day. That may well be something for a future book from Nauman but this one consists in large part of conversations he had many years ago with men who have long since departed this mortal coil and whose memories stretched well back beyond the birth of anyone reading their thoughts today.
Like CLR, not all of those who feature are players. The two contrasting giants of English cricket literature of the post war period, John Arlott and Jim Swanton both feature as do two more authors as known for their broadcasting as their writing, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Brian Johnston. As a self-confessed Arlott zealot even a slightly irritating typesetting error could not put me off concluding that his conversation with Nauman is as interesting as any in the book.
On the other hand I have always been a bit wary of Johnston, who on occasions I felt was a little too flippant at the microphone. His comment to Nauman on that point was what is cricket without laughter? What is summer without joy? Arlott gave the game its poetry, but I perhaps gave it its smile and if the smile remains even after I am gone then I have done my part. With that single observation he certainly puts me in my place.
The first chapter dealing with a conversation with a cricketer that appears in the book has a simple title, The Greatest. By definition that is a title that can be worn by only one man, and there can be no argument with the identity of who it is bestowed upon, Garry Sobers. As with every succeeding chapter Nauman’s narrative is not a simple question and answer session. He tells his reader something of the life of his interviewee, and then works into that his subject’s own words.
Writers and broadcasters apart there are 52 individuals whose conversations with Nauman feature in the book. All bar Kerry Packer are Test cricketers and most of the greatest names of post war cricket are included. There are twelve Australians, nine each from England and West Indies, seven Indians, six each from Pakistan and South Africa and three New Zealanders. Two men, Keith Miller and Walter Hadlee, feature twice.
To what extent should a book like this rely on a verbatim account of the words of an interviewee? There can be no doubt that talented sportsmen are not always the best communicators. Their vocabularies can be limited, unnecessarily colourful at times and on occasion too simplistic. It is of course the function of whoever is asking the questions to tease important detail from their subjects, but is it part of their role to imbue their words with the richnesses that Nauman adds? That is a matter of individual taste I suppose, but I certainly found it a positive feature of Nauman’s work here.
The key question must, as a matter of course, be how successful Nauman has been at obtaining new insights from his subjects, as opposed to merely getting them to repeat what has long been in the public domain. So has Nauman succeeded in that? The answer to that one is that he certainly has, and every chapter contains much of interest. Perhaps the best example is England fast bowler John Snow. One thing I certainly know about Snow is that he has rebuffed at least three men with ambitions to be his biographer in recent years, so the frankness with which he answered Nauman’s questions is refreshing.
I suppose it should be no surprise that, given his broadcasting experience, Nauman should be as adept as he is at getting people to talk. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the game’s history coupled with his traditional yet idiosyncratic writing style is ideally suited to this sort of project and The Cricket Conversations is something he can be justifiably proud of and the status of those involved certainly means that there will never be another book that bears comparison with it. A five star rating is the only possible verdict.
The Cricket Conversations is, like Heritage & Legacy 1950s, available in three editions from Boundary Books*.
*A full description of the book appears here, and an update on its availability here.
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