A Lot of Hard Yakka, subtitled "Triumph and torment: a county cricketer's life," is the first volume of autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 by the cricketer

Cricketer

A cricketer is a person who plays the sport of cricket. Official and long-established cricket publications prefer the traditional word "cricketer" over the rarely used term "cricket player"....

-journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 Simon Hughes

Simon Hughes (cricketer)

Simon Peter Hughes is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor, Peter Hughes, and the brother of the historian Bettany Hughes.-Cricket career:...

, and the William Hill

William Hill (bookmaker)

William Hill plc is one of the largest bookmakers in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters is in the north London suburb of Wood Green and in Leeds, West Yorkshire. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.-History:...

 Sports Book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

 of the Year

1997 in sports

1997 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.-Alpine skiing:* Alpine Skiing World Cup** Men's overall season champion: Luc Alphand, France** Women's overall season champion: Pernilla Wiberg, Sweden-American football:...

 for 1997

1997 in literature

The year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Clancy signs a book deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. , giving him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books . A second agreement gives him another US$25 million for a...

, making it the first volume on cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 thus to be fêted. Its success, as surmised by Leslie Thomas in a review for Wisden Cricketers' Almanack

Wisden

The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the The Wisden Cricketer magazine, Cricinfo – the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the Hawk-Eye computerised...

, "came more than a little to the author's surprise":

I mentioned to Hughes that I had enjoyed his tale of a cricketer's beginnings, his life in and out of the game, and his eventual departure from it, but that I thought it was a terrible title. Amiable chap that he is, he agreed. Yakka is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

nism, meaning work, endeavour, experience (I think) [.... I]t makes a breezy and irreverent read.

Written in a droll and self-deprecating and often colloquial style, the book is now widely esteemed a genre classic, having earned kudos from such critics as Michael Parkinson

Michael Parkinson

Sir Michael Parkinson, CBE is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his interview programme, Parkinson, from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007.- Early life :...

 and Ian Wooldridge

Ian Wooldridge

Ian Wooldridge, OBE was a British sports journalist. He was with the Daily Mail for nearly 50 years. He died from cancer...

, and served to promote Hughes's now-established career in sports journalism

Sports journalism

Sports journalism is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events.While the sports department within some newspapers has been mockingly called the toy department, because sports journalists do not concern themselves with the 'serious' topics covered by the news desk, sports...

. It has a sequel entitled Yakking Around the World.