THE 2005 season was one of the most tumultuous for Surrey cricket club, and for Mark Ramprakash in particular. The club’s vice-captain was forced to take up the skipper’s mantle after an early season injury sidelined Mark Butcher for what would regularly be termed ‘four more weeks’, hence the book’s title. In the event, the damaged wrist would keep Butcher out for most of the season, leaving Ramprakash in charge of a side in transition, and one that would be relegated for the first time in the club’s history.

Now aged 36, the master batsman knows his cricket and has the T-shirts to prove it, playing in 52 Tests for England and scoring more than 26,000 runs in first-class cricket. By taking over from Butcher in 2005, he became the first player to captain Middlesex and Surrey.

He pulls no punches in his descriptions of Surrey’s shortcomings and takes us behind the scenes in the dressing room. Throughout the five months this book addresses — May until September — he highlights the valiant, admirable performances by England’s cricketers in the Ashes series as a contrast to the dismal showings of the men under his command. In a season of calamity he is sidelined for a month with a broken thumb and frequently has to tear into his under-performing team, on one occasion telling them: ‘I don’t think we are working hard enough at our game, our fitness is not good enough and the way we’re looking after ourselves in terms of nutrition and recovery is not good enough either.’

Ramps even admits that the idea of a lie-detector test was floated after nobody owned up to a ball-tampering charge during the County Championship match with Nottinghamshire — an incident that led to Surrey being docked eight crucial points. On a wider scale, he concedes that he does not like Ian Botham, who often criticised him during his England career, and Aussie coach John Buchanan, who he considers failed when they worked together at Middlesex in 1998. Ramprakash also contends that his England career could have been more fruitful if he had enjoyed the ‘security’ today’s Test heroes enjoy: ‘Under Duncan Fletcher, there’s a pecking order and once you earn your chance you are backed for a run of games.’

The only niggle about the book concerns its diary-style format, which means you get too much padding alongside the genuine reflections and analysis. Maybe a tough editor could have cut back on the flimsy filling and kept Ramps focused on the main job at hand: the cricket. But overall, this is a lavish, often controversial read about a season of crisis at Surrey — and the consequent growth of one of cricket’s most honest and endearing characters.

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