Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wicketkeepers

Book excerpt: The journalist Suresh Menon once said ‘You don't have to be mad to be a wicketkeeper, but it helps’. Wicketkeeping is one of the great arts of cricket on which seemingly everyone has an opinion and yet few really know what they are talking about; and the wicketkeepers themselves are an eclectic mix of extroverts and introverts all trying to do the same thing every time they walk onto a cricket field – be perfect. Welcome to the Wonderful World of Wicketkeepers is a book written by a wicketkeeper, Luke Sutton, which lifts the lid on what being a wicketkeeper is really like. This is not a dull technical examination of the art but instead a look into the minds of the best who have done it in England. There is humour, sadness and extraordinary insight as Sutton allows the likes of Jos Buttler, Jack Russell, Sarah Taylor, Alec Stewart, Chris Read, Amy Jones and Geraint Jones to tell their own stories about what it truly meant to be a ‘keeper’.