Book Review: Getting Out by Jonathan Campion

Before reading this book, I had no idea that cricket was played in Ukraine. 

Yet by 2020 there were 2,000 Ukrainians playing regular cricket, much of it down to a South African named Kobus Olivier, who had travelled the world as player and coach before settling in the Ukraine in 2018. 

An opening bat not quite good enough to do it for a living, he had fielded as 12th man for Western Province, Derbyshire and Kent in the 1980s before becoming a teacher.

Ending up in Ukraine, he encouraged private schools in Kyiv to put cricket on the curriculum and it took off, in a manner that reminded me of my introducing cricket to a state school in Scotlsnd in the 1980s - batting in the centre circle of football pitches.

This is a complete history of cricket in the country. With eyewitness accounts of the start of the war with Russia, the book manages at the same time to be heartening and sad. There are many light-hearted stories, including the team where no one in it wanted to bat or bowl, yet the final chapter, a guard of honour of sports people who have died in the ongoing conflict, shows the sad reality of life in that country.

A recognised national team from it may never take the field, but they were taken to the brink by individuals whose love of the game took it into new areas. 

You might not look at this book as your first choice of cricket reading. But you will be very pleased if you do. 

I finished it feeling inspired and motivated. That is quite an achievement, for any book and any author. 

Jonathan Campion has done a sterling job here and again Pitch Publishing are to be applauded for getting this book into print. 

Getting Out: The Ukrainian Cricket Team's Last Stand on the Front Lines of War is written by Jonathan Campion and published by Pitch Publishing