Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer - passionate, obsessive, technically inept, and hopelessly deluded. This title sets off on an odyssey across the counties of England in search of that golden time in his youth when his passion for the game was first kindled.

Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer - passionate, obsessive, technically inept, and hopelessly deluded. When an injury rules him out of an entire season, not only might it spell the end of his long career, he is faced more immediately with a summer aimlessly wandering garden centres and listening to “The Archers”. He decides instead to set off on an odyssey across the counties of England in search of that golden time in his youth when his passion for the game was first kindled. It's a journey that begins in May in light drizzle at the birthplace of cricket, takes in the burial site of his favourite ground (now a Marks & Spencer) and even stops along the way to flirt with the love child of WG Grace and Kerry Katona that is Twenty20. It ends with the ultimate cricketing zenith - returning to the field of play to bowl an over to Freddie Flintoff in fading light in front of a capacity crowd. So can cricket still bring comfort and meaning to his life or is Old Father Time about to call for Michael's bails?

Michael Simkins is a respected author in the field of Ancient History, and he has written several titles for Osprey. He has a particular interest in, and knowledge of, the Roman Army in Britain, and is a keen re-enactor of this period. His interest extends to having personally recreated many of the weapon and armour pieces that the Roman leggionaire would have worn and used at this time.