#478 - Diary of a Cricket God

by Shamini Flint and illustrated by Sally Heinrich

“Diary of a Cricket God” by Shamini Flint and illustrated by Sally Heinrich. Published by Penguin. A hilarious story of a boy trying to learn cricket and the (mis)adventures he ends up having.

Marcus Atkinson narrates the story through his cricket diary. He starts off with what seems to be his worst day ever. Worse than the day he scored his own goal with his bottom and someone took a picture of that for the school magazine. He didn’t want to play soccer after that. Worse than the time the school bully hid his clothes after swimming and he was forced to go to class in his speedos :| How else would he feel when his dad has decided that he has a gift for sport and therefore a future in it. He wanted Marcus to start playing cricket of all things. A game named after an insect! How could he expect that from Marcus?

Marcus finds cricket quite intriguing. It is a game of confusions for him. How can someone bat or bowl? What does that even mean? He is picturing bats as creatures and bowls as the cutlery ones. How to spin and bowl? He just can’t understand. And the ball is a joke of course. It looks like a round brick more than a ball. With an understanding of this sort and no real gift of sport unlike what his dad thinks, Marcus has a hard time trying to play cricket. He pours out all his experiences in his diary. However his dad has no intentions of letting him stop playing. He convinces the coach of allowing him to play in a match. What is Marcus going to do now? Will he be able to strike at least one run? Will he finally figure out how to play cricket? Read his diary to find out all his antics while having a hearty laugh.

The humour and witty word play is spot on. We couldn’t resist laughing out loud as we read the book. At the expense of poor Marcus of course! Given that my nine year old has been bitten by the cricket bug finally, and is on a binge watching spree of the biopic of M S Dhoni in the last few days, I felt that he would appreciate the book more now and read it with him. We read it within two sittings. The book is a part of a series written by Shamini about different sports and feature the likes of soccer to taekwondo and so on. Thank you Vidya Mani of Funky Rainbow for recommending this lovely series in one of the buzzars. We look forward to reading more books from the series.

Recommended Age

The book is apt for children aged 7/8 and above.

Reasons to Read

For a delightful mix of humour and cricket presented in an engaging manner.