Final Innings is the story of five tumultuous years in the life of a successful and internationally admired Indian cricketer, Ramdas Upreti. It explores the depths of human desire and disillusionment, hope and regret, love and longing, and deep passions. Above all it is a story of extraordinary courage in the teeth of danger and adversity. A combination of extraordinary circumstances and coincidences on and off the cricket field conspire to rekindle Ramdas’ obsessions with contemporary global and subcontinental gridlocks. Three complex relationships add their own piquancy: with Anne, his ex-girlfriend, with Pakistani nurse Nargis, and the bond he develops with Nargis’ father, the Pakistani umpire Khalid Azam. Events now begin to overtake him, and his life slowly begins to unravel. These multiple strands eventually converge to create a stirring and memorable crescendo. Final Innings brings to life our world: the reality that subcontinental teams tend to struggle in the SENA countries, the fraught India-Pakistan relationship, the powder keg called Kashmir, terrorism, climate change and the environment. The plot unfolds over four ‘Innings’ like the build-up to the climax of a cliff-hanger Test Match. The action swings across India, Australia, England, Pakistan and the UAE. ‘Final Innings’ is a voyage deep into dark, choppy and uncharted waters. It is not about about the T-20 leagues, nor about corruption and match-fixing. It is a thought-provoking and deeply moving human story which happens to be set in the world of cricket.
"The Last Nine Innings is the last word on the inside of baseball. It's full of wonderful revelations and perceptions that help us understand the game in ways that we might never have imagined. Charlie Euchner has done a marvelous job in getting players to talk, simply, about how they play, and we're the wiser for it." —Frank Deford "Charlie takes an unorthodox approach to an emotional week and succeeds at finding the heart of both the tension of the World Series and the technical foundations of the baseball profession. This is a different book, in a very good way." —Howard Bryant, the Washington Post, and author of Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball "The lengthy description of game 7 makes for dramatic reading, and the interviews with key players from that game add a human dimension." —Booklist "I enjoyed Charles's book. It's an interesting read, rich in thought-provoking detail and context, in the manner of Malcolm Gladwell. He deftly pulls off a difficult double play: educating the serious fan while entertaining the casual one." —Tom Verducci, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated "The Last Nine Innings is entertaining, engaging and enlightening. You'll never watch a baseball game the same way." —Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime and Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College "Memo to ESPN analysts, FOX color announcers and daily baseball scribes: stop telling us about who had a haircut, who didn't have a haircut and who collects stamps. Rip out the red thread on the baseball, peel back the cowhide and talk about all the stuff that's wound up inside the game. That's what Charles Euchner does in The Last Nine Innings and it's fascinating." —Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams, Biography of an American Hero and Why Not Us?: The 86-Year Journey of the Boston Red Sox Fans from Unparalleled Suffering to the Promised Land of the 2004 World Series The Great American Pastime has changed. For the first time in the history of the game, the three major forces that drive the evolution of modern pro baseball-The Triple Revolution-is revealed: The Triple Revolution: (1) Globalization of Recruiting and Business (2) Scientific Analysis & Reduction of Physical Baseball Movements (3) Evolution Effect of Modernized Stat-Crunching Charles Euchner uses a dramatic moment-by-moment narrative of the seventh game of the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks to display the Triple Revolution; and to reveal the hidden dimensions of the "game within the game": From pitching motions to batting styles, from fielding and base-running, to training and strategy. Euchner uses extensive interviews with all the players from this modern classic to produce a comprehensive view of the game that will fascinate casual fans, and stimulate baseball experts. The insider narrative includes Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Luis Gonzalez and Curt Schilling, along with the game's coaches, managers, support staff, even medical researchers and top game stats experts. Among the questions answered: What is the ideal pitching motion? How can we judge defensive performance? What makes managers succeed and fail? What changes the odds over the course of the game? And much more. Whether a recreational fans, or serious student of the game, The Last Nine Innings enlightens; as baseball author Andrew Zimbalist writes, "You'll never watch a baseball game the same way."
In the future the outcome of baseball games means everything... Mysterious aliens have visited human worlds and now they too request to play. The rules have changed, the stakes have increased. Americans have but one last hope to save their country from falling.
As Liverpool F.C. reach their 125th anniversary, amidst the celebrations, doubts persist. Are they still elite? Can their prolonged title drought be ended? Foreign owners say they came to win but the trophy cabinet lies bare. Where to next for the reds? Lost? explores the gloried past, the moneyed present and the uncertain future of both Liverpool F.C. and the English game at large. Have they lost their way? Liverpool F.C.’s most famous manager, Bill Shankly, declared that the club ‘exists to win trophies’ and for many years this maxim proved true, as Liverpool became one of the most successful clubs in European football and dominated the scene in England for over two decades. Yet recently, the victories have dried up and Liverpool have not won the league title in over a quarter of a century. Football is also in a state of flux as major TV deals have made the Premier league the wealthiest in the world, but the gap between the elite clubs and those striving to catch up widens. Has the game lost it’s soul? Who will rise and who will fall as a new uncharted era in football unfolds? Lost? captures exclusive interviews with key figures including former Liverpool managers, Brendan Rogers and Roy Evans, the Shankly family and a whole host of footballing legends, past and present. The book also includes reflective pieces on an array of Premier League clubs from both a sporting and cultural perspective, looking not just at the team in isolations, but also at the communities and landscapes that shape them
Until now Hugh Butterworth was just one of the millions of lost soldiers of the Great War, and the extraordinary letters he sent home from the Western Front have been forgotten. But after more than ninety years of obscurity, these letters, which describe his experience of war in poignant detail, have been rediscovered, and they are published here in full. They are a moving, intensely personal and beautifully written record by an articulate and observant man who witnessed at first hand one of the darkest episodes in European history. In civilian life Butterworth was a dedicated and much-loved schoolmaster and a gifted cricketer, who served with distinction as an officer in the Rifle Brigade from the spring of 1915. His letters give us a telling insight into the thoughts and reactions of a highly educated, sensitive and perceptive individual confronted by the horrors of modern warfare. He was killed on the Bellewaarde ridge near Ypres on 25 September 1915, and his last letter was written on the eve of the action in which he died. REVIEWS Jon Cooksey has produced a splendid work and produced a detailed account of the build up to the attack, the assault itself and the aftermath. The Long, Long Trail 7/2015
The Book of Seconds reveals the exciting, intriguing and heroic runners-up who until now have been kept in the shadow of the firsts. Did you know that the winner of the second Tour de France rode 25 miles on two flat tyres? Or that the second crew to land on the Moon danced to a pop song in zero gravity? Step forward all the nearly-men and nearly-women, the nearly skyscrapers, nearly-LPs and nearly deserts. Your time in the spotlight has come at last.
Magical book about Bert Sutcliffe, the magical batsman who put New Zealand cricket on the map. This book is a tale of two men: one who became the first hero of New Zealand cricket, and one whose lifelong dream was to write his biography. Bert Sutcliffe, a stout-hearted giant of the post-war cricketing world, never did get to see his long-awaited story hit the press. He died in 2001 aged 77, leaving behind a trail of re-written record books. And what records those were: whether it's the stories about Sutcliffe's brace of centuries for Otago against the MCC in 1947, about his two triple centuries in the Plunket Shield, his heart-wrenching partnership with Blair at Johannesburg, or his heroics at Kolkata during his comeback tour, there were no shortage of highlights. It's not hard to understand Rod Nye's desire to write Sutcliffe's biography. Quite apart from the sheer enormity of Sutcliffe's influence on New Zealand cricket and his massive popularity as a player, a full biography of his life and career had been long overdue. Tragically, Nye, who had been nearing the completion of his life's mission, died in 2004, leaving behind a treasure trove of research on the remarkable batsman, much of it never before heard. In The Last Everyday Hero, highly regarded cricketing writer and commentator Richard Boock joins the talents of these two men and completes the story. Many of those who have contributed to this book have also since departed; it is New Zealand cricket's field of dreams.
Baseball is the only major team sport that doesn't feature a clock, and there's a familiar saying among fans that as long as outs remain, the game can, theoretically, go on forever. Every now and again, it nearly does, as author Phil Lowry demonstrates. The product of more than four decades of research, this book catalogs baseball games from around the world and throughout history that lasted 20 or more innings, stretched five or more hours, or ended after 1:00 am. Lowry also examines probability models to predict how often games of unusual length will occur.
Culling the most pertinent, newsworthy, and just plain curious stories from newspapers and periodicals, and putting each into context, Sullivan constructs an informative and entertaining account of Major League baseball from 1972 through 2008. The 105 essays cover key topics such as George Steinbrenner's purchase of the Yankees, the first free-agent draft, the coming of lights to Wrigley Field, the cancellation of the World Series in 1994, and the BALCO steroid probe. They also bring to light lesser-known gems like the rise of sabermetrics and the federal injunction against team owners in 1995. This book offers a you-are-there view of the events that made baseball into the game we know today.
