2: Following On

A book by Emma John

“He was out for 14 when he edged to third slip.” To any cricket fan, that sentence reveals plenty. An unnamed batsman made 14 runs in his innings before he was dismissed when the ball flicked the edge of his bat and was subsequently caught by the fielder standing three away from the wicket-keeper before it hit the ground.

But to anyone not au fait with cricketing vernacular, it’s largely gobbledygook. All the words are recognisable, but the way they have been put together makes little sense. “He was out for 14…” Out doing what? Does that just mean he was out of the house? And 14 of what? Beers? Maybe it means he was out getting drunk then. But what about “when he edged to”? Isn’t “edged” an adjective (gilt-edged, round-edged, etc.)? Ok fine, as a verb it could also make some sense. He’s edging slowly towards something. After 14 beers, it’s hardly surprising he’s having to be cautious when moving. But what’s that he’s edging towards? Third slip? Ah ok! He’s so drunk he’s struggling to stand and has already fallen over twice and the writer is telling us he’s about to fall for a third time, and perhaps has failed to insert a clarifying “his” before “third”.

It’s all quite obscure, but it would be a perfectly legitimate assumption from a non-cricket fan that the sentence is describing a drunkard heading for an accident.

Therein lies the beauty of being a cricket fan. It has to be earned. The sport's many enigmas are only decoded after years of playing and watching and reading and questioning. And if you haven’t put in the hours, it looks and sounds a bit like this:

Slips, wides, tailenders; silly mid-on, square leg, cover point; yorker, doosra, googly; these are all shibboleths, and useful for identifying, and then conversing at length with, a fellow worshipper.

So to Emma John’s Following On, a delightful memoir “of teenage obsession and terrible cricket” that will immediately chime with any cricket fan, but should charm non-believers too. The set-up is simple. John chronicles the teenaged inception and development of her cricketing obsession alongside present-day conversations with the objects of that idolatry: the woefully underachieving England team of the 1990s.

I was predisposed to enjoy Following On (itself an obscure cricketing pun). John is a little older than me, but my love of cricket similarly bloomed in the ‘90s and the players she talks to and about (Alec Stewart, Phil Tufnell, Graham Thorpe, Dominic Cork, Nasser Hussain, Michael Atherton, to name a handful) were my heroes too. As an exercise in masochistic nostalgia, there are many joys to be found in John’s memories of following that hapless group who promised so much but delivered so little.

Alongside the book’s many laughs, there are several moments of poignancy. John’s chat with Jack Russell—largely concerning his heroic 119-run, match-saving partnership with her idol Atherton in Johannesburg in 1995—ends with the former wicket-keeper’s admission that although he “ain’t got any friends, really…when you talk to Athers and Angus [Fraser] and Stewie and those guys…I’d trust them”.

At its best, Following On reveals some significant truths behind cricket’s very particular brand of fandom and settles on the conclusion that, though it requires great toil to uncover the sport’s secrets, the effort is worthwhile. The shibboleths are worth learning.