Brian Booth is one of the lesser known former Australian cricket captains and I hoped "Booth to Bat" would give us an insight into Booth, Australian cricket in his time and his thoughts on the game. Of course, the fact that Booth is probably the only former Australian cricket captain to be a Born Again Christian left me cautious about whether the book would be a proselytising attempt.

As it turns out, this was a somewhat odd book. "Booth to Bat" doesn't really come alive and give us a look into his life outside cricket and religion (he never mentions his mother by name and his father only by his nickname).

On top of his career in cricket, Booth also represented Australia in hockey at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and later unsucessfully ran for parliament and while he does talk at length about his hockey career one isn't really gripped by it and his brief fling at a political career hardly gets mentioned. As with other cricket books I have read that are either partly written in collaboration with a professional or ghostwritten, perhaps the co-writer is too concerned with noses getting out of joint to delve deeply into certain grey areas of a cricketer's life.

On the plus side, I picked up theis book at a used book sale for $4.00 and found it was signed by Booth. Nice one. ( )