Rob Smyth's The Spirit of Cricket - nice book, shame about the editing

There are few things in life more annoying than a potentially good book ruined by poor editing.

Take Rob Smyth's The Spirit of Cricket (subtitled 'what makes cricket the greatest game on Earth'). On almost every page, there is something that jars - a mistake, a typo, or something that just seems not quite right.

For example, why is Mike Brearley continually referred to as 'Michael' Brearley? Has he ever been referred to in any other situation as 'Michael' Brearley? Not as far as I know.

Later, we are told that Ian Botham's dismissal by Trevor Hohns in 1989 (you know the one - charging down the pitch before he had even got off the mark, and missing completely) is a good example of the spirit of cricket. Surely most right-minded people would think of it as the egocentric act of an over-the-hill cricketer, failing miserably to recapture the glory days of his past.

Another weird example is Garry Sobers' sporting declaration against England in 1967-68. This is apparently 'infamous', and one of the 'biggest of the few black marks' on Sobers' career. If so, why is it included in a book on the spirit of cricket?

And the structure is strange, too - divided into four apparently random, untitled chapters, with an introduction and conclusion whose content is indistinguishable from the rest of the book, and finishing with a 'Spirit of Cricket XI', in which many of the examples already mentioned are repeated.

To complicate things further, within each chapter are boxed-off contributions from some of the game's greats (including David Gower, Richie Benaud, Nasser Hussain...and Andy Bull). I am still unclear whether these should be read in isolation or as part of the main text, particularly when it is also necessary to contend with further unboxed but subtitled accounts of great matches.

These are just a few examples, but there are many more. 

This is all doubly annoying, because the book could be so great. All the classic anecdotes are present and correct (the Dwayne Leverock catch, Johnners and Aggers falling apart on Test Match Special, Gary Pratt). We may have heard them a hundred times before, but when they are this good, who cares?