Faf - Through Fire: Book Review

My Recommendation: 7.5/10

Couple of questions exist every time we pick up a book. First & foremost is: Why did we pick ‘This’ book? Another important one is: What are we expecting from this book? Many a times, we don’t even know that these questions exist; we might have been bored and picked the first available book to keep us engaged. Other times, we pick a particular book because we are trying to find answers to a specific problem (Ex: Learning about stock markets, improving decision making etc.). Somewhere between these 2 extremes is the case where you are curious about certain things or just plain interested in a particular topic.

Sports related books – especially biographies/autobiographies – are perennial favorites for me. I love sportspersons and learning about the amount of hard work they have put into their sport to achieve what they have achieved. Even within this broad category, I prefer cricket & tennis related books (Reason being these are the only 2 sports I know a bit about!). My other preference is to read about sportspersons who are known for being a ‘fighter’ and their perseverance (Steve Waugh should come to mind here!).

I picked up ‘Faf – Through Fire’ for the reason that Faf du Plessis is a cricketer who I associate with mental fortitude. I still remember the fact that he faced close to around 300+ balls in his first test and batted all day long to save the test against the Australians. He was also part of the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) franchise for a long time and this made Faf all the more special for me! When I saw the news in espncricinfo.com that Faf has released his autobiography & that is has some controversial elements in it, it definitely piqued my interest even more. Last but not the least, it was available in ‘Kindle Unlimited’ and it was a no brainer to get this book & start reading it.

I was expecting that Faf would talk about his preparation (Physical & Mental) before going out to play, the ‘Chokers’ tag for South Africa, the team environment, how he dealt with failures, his general outlook towards life, his days in the CSK camp, the betting/spot fixing scandals that keeps rocking the cricket fraternity, the various controversies he has seen or been associated with etc. It definitely is a long list of expectations for an autobiography from a cricketer. My previous experience reading the autobiographies of AB de Villiers, Andrew Flintoff, Sanjay Manjrekar did not end up so well as they wrote mostly about the bright things of Cricket and did not dwell much into the darker/murkier side of the sport. The exception to this trend is the autobiography of Steve Waugh where he talks about the struggles he faced and how he overcame those. It was definitely with apprehension that I started Faf’s autobiography and I should admit that he did not disappoint.