Book Review: Daffy - the Autobiography of Phil DeFreitas

Phil DeFreitas was a very good cricketer. Perhaps not quite at the very highest level, but 44 Test appearances and 103 one-day internationals suggest that he had something going for him, as do 1200 first-class dismissals, together with ten centuries and 54 half-centuries.

Off the field a quietly spoken man, on it he was aggressive and combative, often with something to say to batsmen who dared to confront him. This book is one of the better cricket autobiographies I have read of late and the player is honest throughout, especially in reference to the difficult relationship that he endured with his father.

He broke into an England side that contained more than its fair share of strong-willed characters - Edmonds, Gower, Lamb and Botham feature in plenty of anecdotes, a number of them suggesting that the off-field times were every bit as interesting as those on it. What comes through is that the young player was fairly insecure, especially in his younger days and had his eyes opened wide by the time he spent in their company on his first tour to Australia.

His international career naturally gets the lions share of the coverage, but for me the non-international sections of the book are the most interesting. His experience of racism, especially in South Africa, is shocking, though not altogether surprising, while he is remarkably honest about his personal life and his fathering of a child outside of his relationship with his wife.

That he left Leicestershire for Lancashire to effectively double his salary comes as no real surprise, but it is the section about his time at Derbyshire that will interest most fans of the county. That he moved for family reasons is well documented, but his enjoyment of the summer under Dean Jones is clear, while the background to the fragmentation and eventual break up of a very talented side is very interesting. It would have been nice to get a greater insight as to the reasons why a dressing room that pulled together in 1996 fell apart a few short months later, but this is a picky and parochial note.

What is clear is that the chairman of the time, Mike Horton, failed to handle a group of disparate, strong personalities and that things were allowed to happen that really shouldn't have. None of the main protagonists come out of it especially well and it is still disappointing that arguably the strongest group of players that the club have had since the Second World War was allowed to fester and fragment through a lack of strong management. The signing of Jones should have heralded a golden era for Derbyshire cricket, but rather signalled the start of a period of in-fighting that took years from which to recover.

I would recommend this book for its honesty in many areas, especially when recounting the player's battle with depression. There are errors - a South African barbecue is a braii, not a brie (a cheesy mistake to make?) but there is enough within the pages to make it a worthwhile purchase without question.

Like many other who followed him, Phil DeFreitas suffered from unfair comparison to Ian Botham, but he was a very, very good cricketer and at the end of this book you come to appreciate him as a decent, honest man.

Daffy - the Autobiography of Phil DeFreitas is published by Apex Publishing and is available through all good book shops (online through Amazon at £11.19)