Slogging the Slavs: A Paranormal Cricket Tour from the Baltic to the Bosphorus

Very, VERY good. I had not thought to ever see someone combine cricket with Eastern Europe - two things which fascinate me, and I had long assumed that they were mutually exclusive!
Angus Bell writes well, whether descriving an unlikely cricket match in Vilnius, hostel shenanigans or border-crossing mayhem in a clapped-out Skoda. One of those travelogues which one can read safe in the knowledge that you never quite know what's going to happen next.
More, please.

Funny, moving, and about cricket - a dream (5/5 people found this helpful)

I loved this book! I'm cricket obsessed so have a natural bias to any book about it, but this book is much more than that. It describes the writer's travels through eastern Europe to places where you would never imagine cricket being played, and the stories of how the players found the game and fell in love with it are really quite moving. If anything there's almost too much story to pack in - I wouldn't have minded more detail about the games or about the places - which shows how rich the story is. And how much fun the writer must have had.

A welcome spin on the travel book genre (8/8 people found this helpful)

To label this book as simply about 'cricket' is to do it a great disservice. It's first and foremost a travel book, from its wonderfully bizarre beginnings in the world of Montreal psychics to a Skoda-powered odyssey across the lesser-travelled paths of eastern Europe.

The difference-maker with this book is not only its once-in-a-lifetime subject matter, but its intensely witty sense of humour. It's side-splittingly funny throughout, but it's also painfully honest in its painting of the Balkan underworld in all its dodgy-dealing glory.

From the uniqueness of its achievement to the pantomime cast of characters we meet along the way, Slogging the Slavs is a must for anyone interested in travel off the beaten track. Cricket fans from pitch to armchair will lap it up, but then again so will anyone who's ever had a hard time crossing the border into parts unknown.

Nothing to do with the paranormal (0/15 people found this helpful)

At first I thought this was to do with parapsychology and then found it wasn't. A great read if you're a cricketing fan but less so if you're not.

It's just not cricket - it's about more than that. (6/6 people found this helpful)

Angus Bell's travelogue of his 8000km journey through some of the lesser visited parts of Europe are linked by one common goal - the search for cricket in far flung outposts untouched by snooty old colonial boys. That he manages to find as much as he does is a remarkable feat.

But to me, to restrict this book to a "cricket" book removes some of its rewards, the search for exotic and interesting characters which turns up a few memorable ones indeed.

My personal favourites are the madly enthusiastic guy in an out of the way village in Serbia who has decided that he would form Serbia's 2012 Olympic cricket team, despite it being neither a current Olympic sport nor one that he has had any previous knowledge of. Or the bunch of humourless customs / immigration officials whose sole purpose in life seems to be in making certain that life is difficult as possible for everyone else in the universe, or some of the colourful hitchhikers Angus meets along the way. This is what the journey is really about, meeting those who don't fit in or belong to any fixed stereotype. This is always going to be found in places like this on a cricket field as many of the characters bringing cricket to these parts have joined-in-but-yet-still-sit-on-the-edge of the societies they now choose to make their lives in. Whether they be Nepalese medical students studying in the midst of Belarus or wanderlusting Aussies who end up in all corners of the globe, this book is about the newcomer, the stranger, the ones who do things a little differently in their new homes with their funny sports.

Oh and rather importantly it is also extremely funny in places too.

So buy it, read it, enjoy it and tell someone else to do the same. Go on, you know it makes sense.

Slogging the Slavs: A Paranormal Cricket Tour from the Baltic to the Bosphorus

Angus Bell

Reader Reviews:

Travel and cricket combined to excellent effect (3/3 people found this helpful)

Funny, moving, and about cricket - a dream (5/5 people found this helpful)

A welcome spin on the travel book genre (8/8 people found this helpful)

Nothing to do with the paranormal (0/15 people found this helpful)

It's just not cricket - it's about more than that. (6/6 people found this helpful)

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