Book Review: The Following Game

“You’re just one score away from happiness.” – Jonathan Smith

It’s very rare that I turn back to the first page of a book the second I read the last word on the last page, but that’s exactly what happened with Jonathan Smith’s The Following Game.

Or rather by writer, teacher to acclaimed writer Vikram Seth, coach, and ardent literature lover Jonathan Smith. But apart from that, or maybe even above all, by the father of writer and retired England cricketer Ed, an equally ardent cricket lover, a supporter, an aficionado, a follower.

Confronted with a cancer diagnosis and questions over what’s essential in life, looking back at his own career as a teacher and coach, as well as a follower of cricket, Smith concedes quickly that sport matters far more than it should anyway already, worrying about the consequences of sport ending up mattering more than anything. He himself tried (as he called it) “displacement therapy”, tried to heal himself by focusing on his other great loves like reading and writing. But at the same time he always knew that, like an addict, he’d never be able to kick cricket and the hold it had over him, over us, into touch.

Maybe some of you have asked yourselves whether you’ve been taking cricket way too seriously too, but have also found yourselves unable to read less, to watch less, to care less. Despite the agony and the hurt and the seemingly never-ending failures of those eleven men our hearts have taken to, despite Smith’s own struggles with watching his son play the game on the most public of stages, nothing will ever feel as great and as fulfilling as watching your hero (in Smith’s case, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire batsman Tom Graveney), as being taken on the short and sweet journey of success with your team, with that one player you adore the most.

Quite easily, I let myself be convinced by Smith that great Greek tragics, Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides would’ve been cricketers had they been born in the modern age, while the great Samuel Beckett actually excelled at cricket, because only cricketers – or cricket followers – can really feel that level of hurt, can understand why we keep going back for more, why we willingly and gladly cross that line from being “just” a fan to being an addict; an addict unable to exist without the gut-wrenching pain of seeing his team crushed nor without that rare and precious rush of victory.

But more than that, I found myself in this book. It felt as if the author wasn’t writing about himself and his own relationship with cricket, but as if he was talking about me, as if he was asking the same questions I’ve been asking myself for quite some time now. Am I a masochist? Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why does it feel like I’m taking pleasure in watching my men go down? While the book itself didn’t tell me that this was a good way or the right way to be, I now know that I’m not alone, and that there was no saving me. That once I’ve felt that exquisite ache of disappointment and failure by men in whites for the first time, I was in it for life.

With the end of the year approaching, I can easily recommend this as an excellent gift for Christmas – or any birthdays you may haven’t bought presents for either. And it’s not just a perfect book for your allegedly cricket-loving cousin, but literally for everyone, whether that’d be your football fanatic best mate or your biography-devouring mother. You don’t need to be a quick reader to go through this book in the space of one or two days, because you will find yourself unable and unwilling to put it away.

While being exceptionally well written, it will also touch you in a way you may not have expected from a “sports book”. Yes, it is about cricket, but most of all it’s a book about life as a follower of writers and sportsmen, about life as the father of an England cricketer and talented writer himself, with Smith providing us with incredible insight into his beliefs and superstitions, passions, fears and joys. In his refreshing and sometimes brutal honesty, he will make you laugh, make you think and will help you accept yourself and your passions, regardless of whether you’re a cricket tragic like me, a football nut or a die-hard Radiohead fan.

Because we all have our heroes, we are all followers.

Rated *****

You can buy The Following Game for £11.79 on Amazon UK

Jonathan Smith: “The Following Game”, 322pp, published by Peridot Press, 2011.