I became a cricket fan at 2 in the morning during a hot June in the second decade of this century. My then-newborn son was a terrible sleeper and would only settle by being held, which meant staying up with him late into the night with something on TV so I wouldn't fall asleep (I was terrified of crushing or smothering him). I didn't have the brain to watch something with a plot, and there weren't any live sports on in the middle of the night....except cricket. So as I rocked my son to sleep I fell in love with cricket. Cricket is a great sport, so I was looking to this book to read an argument about who the author (a cricket stats guru) thought was the best cohesive team.

Unfortunately, this is Not so much an argument for the best team ever but instead a compressive list and biographies of great players at every position. As someone who grew up with baseball, this was a great education on the lives and skills of many of the best players ever, but I really wanted to see someone make an analytically-informed argument. Good for what it is, just not what I wanted.

This was a fascinating read. Being an American that is slowly learning about cricket, it is nice to read about the history and stats of the best players of all time. I found it interesting that the book picked players from all over the world, not just the UK. I did find it a little numbers heavy, which is to be expected with stats, it just felt that the content was 75% numbers and 25% words.