Moeen Ali & Tanya Aldred

Moeen Ali is one of the world’s most popular and iconic cricketers. He has played red and white ball cricket for England, captaining the side four times as well as leading Worcestershire and Birmingham Phoenix. In 2021 he won the IPL playing for Chennai Super Kings. Off the field, he is a thoughtful and influential figure, writing an occasional column for the Guardian. He was named one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year in 2015 and his autobiography was shortlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards and longlisted for the National Book Awards. He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Honours list for services to cricket.

Tanya Aldred has been writing about sport since 1997, when she joined Wisden Cricket Monthly. In 2001 she went freelance. She specialised in cricket, but has also covered swimming, boxing, horse racing, Formula One, the Ryder Cup, Wimbledon, the 2002 Commonwealth Games and the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. She has written for the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph and Wisden. She loves children’s books and trying to get children reading, and for the last six years has run weekly creative writing classes for primary school children and also works as a supply teaching assistant. She has written one book, Freddie Flintoff, England’s Hero, and contributed to numerous others.

Together Tanya and Moeen wrote The Legend of Sparkhill, a middle grade novel about Mo Aqeel, who lives for cricket and is good at it. His club manages to beat the odds and makes the final. But practice clashes with his Arabic class at the mosque and Mo has to take drastic action to fulfil his destiny. The Legend of Sparkhill is published by Fairfield Books and available here.