Following On - A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket

Emma John

Publisher: Wisden

Summary

It's one thing to be 14 years old and a loser. It's one thing to be the  class swot, and hopelessly infatuated with someone who doesn't know you  exist. But what kind of teenager is besotted with an entire sports team –  when the players are even bigger losers than she is? 
 
In 1993,  while everyone else was learning Oasis lyrics and crushing on Kate Moss  or Keanu, Emma John was obsessing over the England cricket team. She  spent her free time making posters of the players she adored. She spent  her pocket money on Panini stickers of them, and followed their progress  with a single-mindedness that bordered on the psychopathic. 
 
The  primary object of her affection: Michael Atherton, a boyishly handsome  captain who promised to lead his young troops to glory. But what  followed was one of the worst sporting streaks of all time – a decade of  frustration, dismay and comically bungling performances that made the  English cricket team a byword for British failure.  
 
Nearly a  quarter of a century on, Emma John wants to know why she spent her  teenage years defending such a bunch of no-hopers. She seeks out her  childhood heroes with two questions: why did they never win? And why on  earth did she love them so much?

Available since: 04/21/2017.

Print length: 272 pages.

Sports

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