Caught Yapping

‘I do not want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there; one is trying to play cricket; and the other is not.’ ‘There is a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. What is your price?’ ‘Thank you for making my tournament a success.’ ‘Girls don’t play cricket.’ Bodyline, World Series Cricket and IPL—all seminal events in the game’s history and succinctly captured in the quotes above by Bill Woodfull, Kerry Packer and Lalit Modi, respectively. And a casual comment made by a policeman to Rachael Heyhoe, which spurred her on to become a cricketer and eventually organize the World Cup, two years before the men’s! Caught Yapping takes a never-trodden before route to narrate the history of cricket, using the medium of quotes to do the talking. Why quotes? Cricket has inspired considerable literature and continues to do so. Then there are words the people of cricket have spoken on the field, in press conferences, in commentary boxes and elsewhere. These are tales that scorecards do not tell, stories of heroes and villains, rises and falls, temptations and resistance, inclusions and exclusions. This book chronicles the history of cricket, and history means little without the people. And what better way to tell the story of the people than in their own words?