This hilarious story of one man's lifelong obsession with cricket takes readers from the early awkward days as a fat boy growing up in a Brighton sweet shop to his years running a team of dysfunctional inadequates still chasing the sweet spot. In this story, cricket offers a shelter from life's irksome realities and a place in which to quietly dream. That place is a peculiarly English arcadia of occasional wondrous beauty, forests of comforting statistics, and the endless life-affirming rituals of defeat, humiliation, and disappointment—the perfect net practice for life.