The annual Clifton Hampden cricket match started in 1976 and has been going ever since. Not Dark Yet is loosely based on the story of those games. It is mainly about cricket but Margaret Thatcher, Stan Bowles, Samuel Beckett, Mick Jagger, Tony Blair and others also get a mention. What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?


Mike Harfield

The author used to work for a large multi-national company (think Tony Curtis talking to Marilyn Monroe on the beach in Some Like it Hot). He was made redundant in the early 1990s. After a while, the company thought that it had made a mistake and so asked him back. A few years later they realised that actually it hadn't been a mistake, and made him redundant again.

For this last act he was, and continues to be, eternally grateful. It enabled him to watch virtually every ball of the 2005 Ashes series and write Not Dark Yet. Every cloud has a silver lining, except of course when it brings rain to prevent an England victory.

During the summer he plays cricket for the Ash Tree CC at Prestbury in Cheshire (except for one weekend when he can be found at Clifton Hampden).

The team of 1981