A Lot of Hard Yakka
| Author | Simon Hughes |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Headline Book Publishing |
Publication date | 1998 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 978-0747255161 |
| Preceded by | From Minor to Major (1992) |
| Followed by | Yakking 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 fêted. 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) [.... I]t 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
- Thomas, Leslie. "Cricket Books, 1997." In Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1998, 1387-1401. St Ives: John Wisden & Co., 1998.
Notes
- ^ Previous William Hill Sportsbook of the Year Winners.
- ^ Thomas 1998, p. 1392.
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