In Dan Liebke’s debut cricket book, The Instant Cricket Library, you’ll find excerpts from a number of remarkable cricket books, none of which you’ve ever read before-because none of them actually existed. There’s I, Pad, Shane Watson’s infamous manifesto arguing that the LBW Law should be abolished. There’s Out of My Ed, in which you’ll discover the truth about the real Ed Cowan. There’s a Banner-Man comic book, a Mitch Marsh play, and much more. They’re all part of the Instant Cricket Library.

Imagine a world after a complete societal collapse. A big collapse, like Australia on a raging Chennai turner. In this dystopian future, all of the world’s cricket books have been destroyed. Nothing remains, not even the Steve Waugh autobiographies, which were previously believed to be impervious not just to casual readers, but to all known forms of physical damage. And yet, a hardy group of researchers search desperately for hints of what might have been lost. A title here. A snippet of text there. A tattered cover somewhere else. They gather all the clues they’ve discovered of the lost world of cricketing literature, and enter them into a hastily constructed supercomputer.

Finally, with a burst of makeshift artificial intelligence, they extrapolate from those fragments and regenerate a complete cricket library in an instant. This instant cricket library is a marvel of resourcefulness, and a glorious tribute to the ingenuity and determination of humanity, even when faced with the most nightmarish and cricketless of futures.

Just because a cricket book never existed doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Liebke is a comedy writer and former Nathan Hauritz impersonator. He was a regular contributor for MAD magazine in Australia for two decades before coming to his senses and turning his comic focus to cricket.

In addition to a social media presence on Twitter (@liebcricket), Dan has also contributed articles making fun of cricket and cricketers to websites such as The Guardian, Cricket365 and FirstPost. He’s also a regular on the Can’t Bowl, Can’t Throw cricket podcast and White Line Wireless internet radio commentary. Liebke was once the official scorer for ABC Radio for a Test, which was rather a neat trick as it was the first time he’d ever scored a cricket match. (Shhh, don’t tell Aunty). Dan is a genuine all-rounder, equally inept with both bat and ball, and he steadfastly believes that cricket is the funniest, and hence best, sport that humanity has ever invented.