Author Harry Pearson exudes an endless and apparently effortless charm, though rather like David Gower, it is bloody hard work making it look this easy, writes Peter May.

Readers of Harry Pearson's Guardian column - or his six previous books - will have a good idea what to expect from Slipless in Settle: A slow turn around northern cricket.

Writing 750 words or 75,000, Pearson exudes an endless and apparently effortless charm, though rather like David Gower I imagine it is bloody hard work making it look this easy. Dryly, wryly funny, this is one of the most enjoyable cricket reads in recent memory.

Not that Pearson would necessarily appreciate the Gower analogy; certainly his father would despair. The author and his subjects are men of the north, a regional identity so jealously guarded by Pearson's 'Dad's Law of the North' that here even Geoffrey Boycott is dismissed as a southerner.

The book recounts a summer-long tour around club cricket in the north of England: arrive in a village, seek out a local lunch, watch a game, weave in great stories of the past, have a pint of mild, take the temperature of the locals; repeat.

The back cover uses the phrase "a sentimental journey", but don't be fooled.

This risks lumping Slipless in Settle in with archetypal English village cricket memoirs. In these the entire cast are heroically crap ex-public school duffers called Bunter and the whole season passes without the featured team turning up in the right place at the right time, much less winning a game. In short, southern village cricket.

But Pearson examines a hard business in which frivolity and cheap praise are anathema.

The "sentimentality" hook also misleads since he never shies away from the decline in on-field (and, in some senses, off-field) standards. This is a memoir rooted not in sentiment but realism.

The best bits are shared around liberally between Pearson's own gems, those of his fellow spectators and travellers, and stories from northern cricket's mighty past.

In the latter category, a litany of great players honed their skills in the leagues from early-20th-century titan SF Barnes through to modern(ish) heroes such as Basil D'Oliveira, Michael Holding and Andrew Flintoff. I particularly enjoyed the tale of Australian Cec Pepper, a belligerent leg-spinning all-rounder whose chance of a distinguished Test career was ruined by a feud with Donald Bradman.

'I played with a lot of Australians,' opines one league veteran, 'and the impression I formed was that, while they all agreed Bradman was a genius as a player, most of them regarded him as a right little prick.'

Slipless in Settle is a comedy, a history and a present day commentary in one. If you're looking for an affordable and enjoyable cricket book this Christmas, I recommend it unreservedly.

Peter May

Slipless in Settle by Harry Pearson is published by Little, Brown; £12.99; 256pp.