Jump to content

A Lot of Hard Yakka

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Lot of Hard Yakka
AuthorSimon Hughes
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHeadline Book Publishing
Publication date
1997
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Pages320
ISBN978-0747255161
Preceded byFrom Minor to Major (1992) 
Followed byYakking Around the World: A Cricketer's Quest for Love and Utopia (2001) 

A Lot of Hard Yakka, subtitled "Triumph and torment: a county cricketer's life," is the first volume of autobiography by the cricketer-journalist Simon Hughes, and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 1997,[1] making it the first volume on cricket thus to be feted. Its success, as surmised by Leslie Thomas in a review for Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, "came more than a little to the author's surprise":

I mentioned to Hughes that I had enjoyed his tale of a cricketer's beginnings, his life in and out of the game, and his eventual departure from it, but that I thought it was a terrible title. Amiable chap that he is, he agreed. Yakka is an Australianism, meaning work, endeavour, experience (I think) [.... ] it makes a breezy and irreverent read.[2]

Written in a droll and self-deprecating and often colloquial style, the book is now widely esteemed a genre classic, having earned kudos from such critics as Michael Parkinson and Ian Wooldridge, and served to promote Hughes's now-established career in sports journalism. It has a sequel entitled Yakking Around the World.

References

[edit]
  • Thomas, Leslie. "Cricket Books, 1997." In Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1998, 1387–1401. St Ives: John Wisden & Co., 1998.

Notes

[edit]