THE AUTHORS XI
The modern-day Authors is a team organised along similar lines. In 1981, Australian captain Kim Hughes dismissed his Ashes counterpart Mike Brearley with the line, ‘He had nothing going for him except that he was intelligent.’ This line is truer of us than it was of Brearley, who was a fine batsman, if not quite of the highest class. And so we adopted it as our motto, once it had been translated into Latin – Praeter Ingenium Nihil – by the team’s resident classicist, Tom Holland.
In preparation for our first match, the Authors had a few nets sessions at the home of cricket. As all cricketers know, winter nets do not remotely prepare you for the rigours of cricket in April… But we wanted the team to spend time together before our first match and Nick organised a final nets session at the indoor school in Edgbaston, under the expert eyes of Darren Maddy and Neil Carter.