by Tanya Aldred
Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Slowly the summer is dying. The Ashes are dead. The days are getting shorter. As surely as day turns to night, Mark Nicholas turns into Des Lynam.

But for a few weeks yet, the beach beckons. And what you need when lying back self-consciously in your best bathers is the distraction of a good read. Sometimes, shamefully, a good beach book isn't always the classic – a brain sizzled by sun and sangria easily malfunctions when faced with words of more than three syllables.

Cricket books should be ideal summer companions – not too tricky and containing heart-warming moments of glorious patriotic victory or general bitchiness about troublesome team-mates. This summer we've had 500-1- the Miracle of Headingley '81, The Art of Captaincy (2001) and Dazzler among others. Each in its own way well reviewed, each in its own way addictive, but each lacking that essential beach ingredient of mindless sex with random hunk.

This is where Linda Taylor hit the jackpot. In Rising to the Occasion she has woven a good old-fashioned romantic bonkbuster around the cricket season, in the same way that Freya North did (in Cat) around the Tour de France. She concentrates on the Ashes. Which, in her fantasy world, England regain in the final Test at The Oval.

The action surrounds heroine Cathy Gordon, 28, a buxom redhead who turns heads at every boundary. During the course of the book, she discovers a grandfather she never knew existed, has an affair with a well-proportioned blond statistical fanatic, and turns from cricketing virgin to fan whose heart palpates erotically as Andy Flintoff blasts his way to his first Test century at Old Trafford and Chris Schofield walks to the wicket at The Oval.

It was a brave move to base a book around The Ashes and publish it just before the series started. It doesn't matter of course, as the book is fictional, but Australia's domination has been so overwhelming this summer that a story of England victory makes her look a bit foolish. But then again, only as foolish as the majority of us England fans, who were similarly optimistic six weeks ago.

At times the situations seem a bit contrived and explanations about the origins of the Ashes and the tactical thinking behind declarations just slip into conversation in a way that would seem rather extraordinary in real life. And the entire story is predictable from about the second page.

But it is a gloriously easy read, a Shane Warne hat-trick does inspire a seduction and it did inspire a reviewer on Amazon.com to write that Taylor had "turned cricket into the sexiest sport under the sun". It also contains the ultimate feel-good summer paragraph: "Hussain dropped to his knees and hammered the ball. It flew behind the wicket. Two slip fielders dived for it – and missed. Steve Waugh, sprinted after it. The grass was dry and flat. The ball raced away. Waugh ran. The ball hit the boundary rope. England had won the Ashes."

Read it and weep. Or go and get some more sun.

Rising to the Occasion (Arrow, paperback, 515pp, £5.99) is available at amazon.co.uk

Tanya Aldred is assistant editor of Wisden.com

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