ility than in just writing your own stuff - I knew that Simon would most likely tell his story only once, and I knew how much it meant to him. Ultimately, ghostin

Even now the sight of it brings a Proustian rush. The full-colour cover with its title in three decks of acid-yellow type: The Barry Richards Story, those magical words followed by - as if anyone would require further incentive to purchase - with a foreword by Colin Cowdrey.Most writers will tell you about their favourite books, about how at the age of 12 they were sailing through Ulysses or digging David Foster Wallace or producing reverent imitations of Murakami for their English homework. I never believe them. My favourite book when I was 12 was The Barry Richards Story. I read it so often, I remember passages from it, and my favourite picture from the plate section - of Barry offering Gordon Greenidge a strip of chewing gum while they were standing in the slips - had me fervently imagining that one day Id be standing there next to the great man myself. Quite often Id reach the end of the appendix (BA Richards Career Analysis by Victor H. Isaacs & Peter A. Sichel) and turn immediately back to chapter one (Reflections of an Exile) to start again.My Richards obsession had taken full hold when, in 1977, the summer before the books publication, he had played a benefit match at my club, Fleet CC, and scored an indelible (or more likely for him, instantly forgotten) 60-odd, an innings that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, but that lives still in the memory, sweet and bitter, transient and sad.In all of the times that I read the book as a kid, it never occurred to me that Richards might not have actually written it. Or perhaps not actually read it. (Although I sensed he probably hadnt read it as often as I had, and that was okay. He was Barry Richards. I just wanted to be.) After all, there it was in black and white on the title page: The Barry Richards Story by Barry Richards. It was only many years later, pulling it out of the box in which it had remained throughout the three-year period Id spent living in Australia, that I saw and absorbed the note on the following page: I should like to thank Martin Tyler for his help in writing this book and the enthusiasm he brought to the task - B.A.R.I should like to thank…That mannered phrase is an indicator of time and tide. The Barry Richards Story is a traditional autobiography from the era of traditional autobiography, a story told in what we would recognise as the language of autobiography, a kind of standard authorial voice; modest, measured, never too revealing, never too damning. I would read many more cricketers autobiographies that used the same tone, almost as if their careers demanded to be viewed through that filter.The big autobiographies of this English winter are very different to The Barry Richards Story. First, theres the matter of size. In 1978, books took up less space. Pull any 60s or 70s paperback from the shelves of a second-hand shop and youll be confronted by a tight, tiny typeface crammed onto the page, the book itself easily able to slide into a jacket pocket. The Barry Richards Story, published by Faber and Faber, is a hardback of not much more than paperback size, and retailed for a princely ￡3.99. Jonathan Trotts Unguarded and Ben Stokes Firestarter are behemoths by comparison, twice the heft and four times the price. Their covers are not action pictures but carefully commissioned studio portraits. It is as hard to imagine Stokes book being called The Ben Stokes Story as it is Richards being named after a Prodigy song.Unguarded and Firestarter are particular types of autobiography: sub-strains, genre spin-offs. Trotts is a kind of confessional, a state-of-mind book that talks with candour about the anxiety that brought his international career to an end. Stokes is a newer phenomenon still, an autobiography by someone whose career has barely started. Its title, its cover image leave little doubt that it is aimed at the young - or at least the younger - Stokes fan. It is the cricketer as rock star.Each demands a particular tone. Trott has worked with George Dobell, ESPNcricinfos senior correspondent, who has proven to be one of crickets most empathetic writers, in tune with the age. Like Trott he is a Warwickshire man, and his writing career has more or less spanned Trotts England one. Stokes was entrusted to Richard Gibson, perhaps the most widely read cricket author in the country. His name may not adorn the covers, but if you have read David Lloyds bestselling The World According to Bumble or Last in the Tin Bath, Graeme Swanns The Breaks Are Off, James Andersons Jimmy: My Story, or Joe Roots Bringing the Ashes Home, then you have read Gibson. For publishers investing considerable sums in such books, the right ghost is more than a comforting presence; its a key commercial decision.Matt Phillips was the editorial director of Yellow Jersey, the giant Random House groups literary sports imprint, before moving to Blink Publishing to head a new sports division. He understands the perils of the marketplace. For me, for any sports autobiography, I am looking for a big name with an interesting story thats well told, he says. A failure on any of those terms will probably mean that the book will not be a commercial success.The big name is not expected to understand the requirements and niceties of the publisher that has just cut their agent a sizeable cheque. They may even be wondering why a fair few percentage points of that cheque (typically between 10% and 30%) is finding its way into the pocket of the pale and uninteresting sap who spends their days behind a Dictaphone or at a keyboard. A publisher will be quick to impress the importance of the ghost once a deal is done.A good ghost needs to be a good listener, quick to bond with people and gain their trust, brave enough to ask difficult questions but open enough to receive difficult answers, says Phillips. They need to be rigorous, punctual, and have a good sense of the story - where the drama is, how to get interesting nuggets from people who may be unused to questioning what they do.Stylistically, I like it when the ghost captures the voice of the star - but I think that the tone of a book should be much more considered, intimate and polished than a standard interview. For some projects its good to have a writer with no ego, happy to drop into the background, and on others its best when the writer is more central and apparent.Gibson was thinking of quitting his job as a cricket writer for the Press Association when David Lloyd asked him if hed be interested in collaborating on a book. He leapt into the unknown.It was as simple as, Lets put a back cover and a front cover on it and see where we go, Gibson remembers. Make it as madcap as he is. But then you realise that having something with no structure needs some sort of control...The World According to Bumble begins with a list of Lloyds 50 Favourite Things (favourite album: Imperial Wax Solvent by The Fall) before a very funny opening chapter about all of the people hes been mistaken for (Tony Blair, Alan Titchmarsh, one of the Proclaimers, Duncan Fletcher, Paul Arlott, Darrell Hair, Bruce Yardley, Mike Brearley, Tony Greig, and - admittedly during a phone interview - Clive Lloyd).We gave HarperCollins half of the book, says Gibson, and they said, We really like what youre doing. Weve just signed up Graeme Swann, would you be interested in working with him?Such was Englands and Swanns popularity as they won the Ashes in Australia and became the top-ranked Test team, the deal was gazumped by another publisher, Hodder and Stoughton. It got quite messy, says Gibson, but Swann said he wanted me to stay on the project, so it went ahead.Gibsons second career was launched.Jimmy Anderson phoned me and said, I know youre ghosting Swanny, but I thought youd be the one to do my book. Wed always been pals, so I said, Yeah, of course. I knew Joe Root vaguely. Id toured the world with England for ten years, and I live in Leeds, so he knew who I was. Same thing with Stokes. I got to know him through Anderson and Root really.Gibson has spent much of the last five years as a ghost to these cricketers, teasing out their stories over the kitchen table or in spare hours at games or training. Each book contains probably a days worth of talking - as in 24 hours (and imagine how much someone can say if they speak for 24 hours; thats a lot of words and a lot of transcribing).So what is the secret?The number one is to establish the voice. This is why I say to them: You have to tell me everything, because these words have to be 100% yours. They cannot be mine. The voice comes out naturally if you are faithful to those sessions. The first thing you have to do as the ghost is [to remove] the self, the ego. There cannot be anything of you.Voice is easier to establish when the subject has a deeply familiar one, like Lloyd, or Geoffrey Boycott. Nick Hoult ghosts Boycotts Daily Telegraph column and did his most recent autobiography, The Corridor Of Certainty.If you cannot capture Geoffreys voice then you should not be a ghost. Hoult says. He is a total professional who respects the journalistic skills a ghost can bring but ultimately knows it is his responsibility to produce the copy.The Corridor Of Certainty also told the story of one of the most harrowing periods of Boycotts life, when he almost died from throat cancer.He was very clear that he wanted to go into great personal detail about his cancer treatment and had prepared extensive notes before each session, says Hoult. For those chapters his wife Rachael was heavily involved. Geoffrey did not remember all the details because he was so sick at the time. Rachael added a lot of information about the treatments he had, his battle with the doctors to give him dairy-free liquidised food, and the evening when he was nearly killed by an accidental morphine overdose. I think at times it was difficult for both of them to go over what was obviously a very painful period in their lives.The ghost must walk such lines with delicacy.Sports publishing has become more confessional. It has followed a trend begun by reality TV stars, who have been proven to possess the kind of commercial catnip to seemingly publish an autobiography a year, scantily filled with matey tittle-tattle and tearful retelling of the latest pregnancy or divorce. Hence Stuart Broad, at 30, has published three (including one immortally titled My World in Cricket) and Root and Stokes were in print at 24 and 25 respectively. Gibson agrees there are differences with mid-career books, and with players who have had a lifetime of media training in order to say nothing controversial.The first two sittings with Joe and Ben were, I wouldnt say worthless, but they were exercises to establish the trust, to realise that youre not being interviewed, youre chatting as mates, says Gibson. Its an interesting question. They wouldnt necessarily want to do a book at the point at which theyre asked, but if theyre asked Would you like X-thousand pounds to do a book? theyre pretty unlikely to say no.But once engaged in a project, I say to them to give me everything. Every question I ask, you tell me the answer honestly. If that answer does not sit comfortably with you at a later date, then it doesnt remain in the book, but I cant add things in. I can only take things out. At the end of their career theyve got a lot less to risk. After all theyre talking about people that they play with and players that they are going to play against in the future. They have to be selective in what they say.At the heart of every successful piece of ghosting is the writer-subject relationship. Back in 2000, Saad Shafqat wasnt a writer at all - he was a neurologist. He was also a devoted fan of Javed Miandad and wanted to read his autobiography. The only problem was, Miandad hadnt published one, so Shafqat decided to do something about it. After qualifying in the US he moved to Karachi, where a remarkable relationship began remarkably: I began hunting for Javeds telephone number. Luckily a family contact had known him in Sharjah, and this gentleman came through. I remember dialling the number with my heart pounding and throat dry. The conversation did not go well. I hadnt published anything and he had never heard of me. He dismissed the idea outright.The path cleared only when Shafqats wife suggested writing a sample chapter and approaching Miandads wife with it.Javed has married into one of Pakistans wealthiest families; he was living in Lahore at the time, at an address that is a local landmark. I flew to Lahore and rang the bell at 1 Canal Bank Road. Javed was touring New Zealand as the national coach but Tahira Miandad was home. She was kind enough to call me in and we had a convivial chat. She kept the chapter and told me she will be in touch. Leave it to me, I remember her saying.A few weeks after that, I got a call from Javed. He was visiting his mother in Karachi and asked if we could meet. I dropped everything and rushed over, buying a cake along the way. When he came to the doorway, I handed him the cake and complimented him on his unforgettable 114 at Georgetown - something I had dreamed of doing for years. Javed took the cake and gave me a strange look. Come inside, he said. And with that the project began. As it progressed, our friendship developed. He became very amiable towards me and started calling me his little brother.Yet telling the story of a figure so central to his countrys sporting history brought a responsibility that perhaps a more seasoned writer may have blanched at.Javed has been a polarising figure, within Pakistan as well as outside, and this book was going to be the first proper articulation of his side of things. I was very conscious that his authentic voice must come through, says Shafqat.I would pose the questions to him, and to an extent directed the interviews, but beyond that I was careful not to introduce any spin of my own. I certainly left nothing out. Javeds is a quintessentially Pakistani story, and as a Pakistan fan I wanted to do justice to it.I can clearly remember where I was when I became a ghost. I was standing in the frozen-foods aisle in Morrisons. The phone went and it was my friend Charlie Campbell, a literary agent. What do you reckon about Simon Jones? he said. I knew hed taken Simon on as a client and from somewhere - and who knows where these things come from - an almost fully formed idea dropped into my head. We could do it as five chapters about the five Ashes Tests in 2005, and then put five other chapters in between them about the rest of his life…A week or so later, I was pitching the idea to Simon. It wasnt entirely one way. The decision on how to tell his story and who to was his, but I knew the approach I was planning would need him to be able to remember and express exactly what it was like to be in the middle of the intensity of a Test match, to be able to put across the small details that no one who wasnt playing would ever know about. He described the first morning of the first Test, what it was like to walk through the Long Room, how Rudi Koertzen had told him off for not appealing when he got Damien Martyn out with his first ball; small details about how it felt and sounded that only he could have known and articulated. I knew then that the idea would work.I wrote a proposal and Charlie got us a deal (with Matt Phillips, then at Yellow Jersey) and we had just over two months to get the book done so that it could be published in the summer of 2015, ten years on from that glorious series. Simon and I met once a week for ten weeks, for between two and four hours each time. He had a friend at the Celtic Manor golf course near Cardiff, so we got to spend each session in the Ryder Cup clubhouse, in front of the fire. Before the first session I asked Simon to watch the DVD of the series, but when he turned up he said it was in his dads loft and he couldnt get hold of it. Instead he had a commemorative book, mainly of photos, that hed been looking at. When I tried to berate him about being underprepared, he smiled the little smile Id get used to, and I saw a glimpse of the tough single-mindedness of the international sportsman.I neednt have worried. Once we began talking, the memories flooded through him. He had wanted to be utterly honest about the realities of a cricket career wrecked by injury, and he was - remembering the financial worries and his desperation in signing a pay-as-you-play contract even as his knee swelled and wouldnt stop swelling.When I sat down to write, like Gibson and Hoult and Shafqat, I felt that odd sensation of inhabiting someone elses life and trying to express it not in my voice but in theirs. There is a greater responsibility than in just writing your own stuff - I knew that Simon would most likely tell his story only once, and I knew how much it meant to him. Ultimately, ghosting is about that responsibility too, whether it is to Lloyds love of the Fall, or Boycotts illness, or Miandads meaning to Pakistan cricket fans.The only time Ive ever been peed off with a review, says Gibson, was when a chap in the Cricketer said I didnt capture Joe Roots voice - thats the only time Ive been stung by a review. Its the major criticism that could be levelled at you.There is a famous joke about David Beckham and his three (so far) autobiographies, that hes written more books than hes read. It is slightly cruel, but there comes a day when the ghost must present the subject with their book, either chapter by chapter or as a finished manuscript. That is the real moment of truth. Even for people who are used to being written about - and sometimes damned - in the press, it can be a shock to see it all down there in black and white. Hoult knew exactly how Boycott would be. He was meticulous over his copy, he says. I would write up the chapters and send them to him for correction. We would go through two or three versions before we sent it off to the publisher. Boycs is a brilliant sub who picks up typos.Miandad was the complete opposite. I asked him [to read it] a few times, but he couldnt be bothered, says Shafqat. To be honest, I dont mind. He isnt much of a reader, and I could see he just wouldnt have the patience. He said he trusted me and had left it all to me. I suggested we should at least have his wife or another family member go through it, in the interest of accuracy, if nothing else. He called on his sister-in-law and she was the one who read it all.Books come and go. In this new media age, they must be bigger and brasher and fight for some shoulder room in a 24-hour culture. They can never again be as diffident as The Barry Richards Story. But books offer a more permanent experience too. The ones you love stay with you, often in physical form, but sometimes as ghosts. I suppose what every ghost hopes is that their book connects with someone somewhere, and stays with them.For that, of course, I should like to thank Martin Tyler. 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Premier League bottom three Robert Thornton 4 points Dave Chisnall 3 points Michael Smith 3 points James Wade v Gary Anderson Gary Anderson has defeated his last six opponents Anderson continued his red-hot run with his 7-4 win over Chisnall, and will be searching for a seventh successive victory over the returning Wade.The defending champion suffered a shock exit in Germany, falling to a 6-0 loss to Joe Cullen in under 10 minutes, but has shown few signs of vulnerability in the Premier League.Wade sat out last week after a double-header earlier in the campaign, but favourable results mean he has not lost too much ground in the play-off hunt.Michael Smith v Phil Taylor Michael Smith can only survive if he defeats Taylor Smith has been left in a desperate position at the foot of the table following last weeks defeat to fellow struggler Thornton.Bully Boy badly needs a win and favourable results to keep him in the competition, although he can perhaps draw some confidence from his performance at the German Masters, which saw him reach the semi-finals. Phil Taylor hit an impressive 141 checkout during his match with Peter Wright. But Taylor, who decided to avoid the trip to Europe, will show no mercy to Smith as he hunts top spot in the tableDave Chisnall v Peter Wright Peter Wright held Phil Taylor to a draw on night eight Chisnall needs at least a point from the opening clash against Wright to keep alive his hopes of avoiding an early exit.The St Helens man reachedd last years play-off night, but he has failed to pick up a win since the opening week of the current campaign.dddddddddddd Peter Wright and Phil Taylor shared the spoils in Liverpool but one man was more grateful for the point than the other. Wright, in contrast, has maintained a high standard and was only narrowly beaten by Van Gerwen in this Mondays German Masters final. Robert Thornton v Adrian Lewis Robert Thornton climbed out of bottom two after picking up four points Thornton dramatically changed his fortunes last week, claiming his first win of the campaign against Smith, and then held Van Gerwen to a battling draw.Those precious three points could be good enough to spare Thornton, who can watch drop rivals Chisnall and Smith before his match with Lewis.Jackpot boosted his hopes of a top-four finish with a narrow win over Raymond van Barneveld, leaving Lewis just two points off top spot.Raymond van Barneveld v Michael van Gerwen Raymond van Barneveld won an epic encounter with Michael van Gerwen at Alexandra Palace Van Barneveld claimed a memorable 4-3 victory over Van Gerwen when the two Dutch stars shared the stage at Alexandra Palace in December.There was more title success for Mighty Mike this week when he retained the German Masters trophy, but the world No 1 has been held to back-to-back draws in the Premier League. Watch as Van Barneveld caused an upset by beating Van Gerwen to reach the quarter-finals of the World Darts Championship Barney relishes the big-match atmosphere and the 48-year-old will be determined to produce another vintage display against Van Gerwen. Watch Judgement Night in the Premier League this Thursday, from 7pm on Sky Sports 1. Also See: Fixtures/Results On Sky TV Prem Table Darts betting Get Sky Sports ' ' '