Description
Jeremy Coney has become the standard-bearer of New Zealand’s new place in world cricket.
From the master’s apprentice in the early 1970s when he first joined the New Zealand team to the master of 1986 when he captained the first New Zealand side to win a test series in England.
He is a cricketer’s cricketer and at the same time a great crowd-pleaser and a match-winner . . . and often a match-saver.
The tall, familiar figure of Coney has been in the forefront of the game in New Zealand since the one-day boom projected the sport as prime-time entertainment . . . Coney writes his autobiography the way he plays cricket – with feeling, humour and a keen understanding of fine timing.
He writes, without the need of a ‘ghost’, with the same ready wit that has made him New Zealand’s most in-demand after-dinner speaker.
Coney relates the incidents and the anecdotes that signposted his way to the top of cricket . . . from the days when he could not command a regular place in the New Zealand side until the ultimate honour for a New Zealand cricketer, captain on a tour of England.
He reports from out in the middle, giving a captain’s view of proceedings; takes readers into the players’ dressing rooms and relates the incidents – both memorable and bizarre . from more than a decade of touring . . . the rats and the umpires of Pakistan, the hostility of the West Indies, the off-field adventures in Sri Lanka, Australia, England.
Coney talks about his team-mates and his opponents, and makes pertinent observations on all the issues of modern cricket.
The Playing Mantis is the most perceptive – and the most entertaining – book to be written by a New Zealand cricketer.
Hardcover, 279 pages. In very good pre-loved condition with the exception of a couple of scuff marks on the dustcover.