'A charming book,' Mike Atherton writes in his foreword. 'In the chapters on his playing days there is something of a lost world that intrigued me. This was a time when county cricket was allowed to be itself, to meander along without the apparent need to justify itself to the bean-counters. A kind of joy and schoolboy fun infuses most of these pages. But there is a serious tone, too. John's account of his demons is less in-your-face than Marcus Trescothick's but all the more moving for that. All the emotions we go through in life are here: the adolescent worries and fears; the hopes and dreams of youth; the joy and discovery of young love, both imagined and real, and the pain and utter despair of losing the person you have loved. What emerges from the book is that cricket is important, but only as a medium for development of the human spirit.'