Another Bloody Tour

Who can forget Frances Edmonds' explosive cricketing diaries of the 1980s? In 1986 an insider cricket memoir rocked the foundations of the sport - but it wasn't by a player. Frances Edmonds, married to Middlesex and England player Phil Edmonds - a WAG, no less - had the audacity to write one of the most talked-about cricket books of the decade. In Another Bloody Tour, her sharp, often hilarious account of England's devastating 1986 tour of the West Indies, she chronicled the unmitigated disaster of the cricket - along with the politics and scandal that accompanied what became known as the 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll tour'. Despite having been repeatedly told she knew nothing about the game, her perceptive, witty and wickedly irreverent memoir of those disappointing months was a national bestseller. Now, almost thirty years on, Frances' account is more relevant than ever. Updated with a new Introduction, here we find that, far more than any other sport, cricket is a microcosm where life in all its grim and glorious facets is vividly reflected. Since the 1980s the sport has changed immeasurably. Money has altered everything. Pay levels unheard of in the 1980s exacerbate the corrosive effects of having a superstar on the team. Leadership, motivation, team building, brand, crisis management, burn-out, the cult of celebrity and the elusive art of harnessing the star performer: these are challenges consistently encountered in every area of endeavour, but nowhere thrown more sharply into focus than by the madness and mayhem of Another Bloody Tour.

Frances Edmonds is an international bestselling author. Her first book, Another Bloody Tour (an outrageously funny and highly controversial account of the England cricket team's tour of the West Indies, published in 1986) created uproar in sporting circle. Her subsequent non-fiction titles cover sport, politics, marketing, self-help and motivation. Her internationally published works of fiction have all met with outstanding critical acclaim. After graduating with a Masters Degree in Modern Languages from Cambridge University, Frances joined the Commission of the European Union in Brussels as an international conference interpreter. For over a decade, she worked to facilitate communication and cooperation within all the major international organisations and between the heads of state and government at their annual World Economic Summits. Her years spent negotiating at the highest level fostered her expertise in cross-cultural communication and consensus creation. She specialises in working with multinational and multi-cultural organisations as both a keynote speaker and moderator. An inspirational, humorous and engaging presenter, Frances has also been voted Britain's most entertaining female after-dinner speaker in a recent survey by The Times. Frances's understanding of business issues, gleaned from her own experience in creating a specialised construction company, led to her election as an Honorary Fellow of the British Association of Women Entrepreneurs. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Founder Member and Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association.