While some of the literature of this subject is quite good, much of it is amateurish, apparently written to appeal to an "underground" audience and not especially rigorous or complete. Thus Astill is a man who should, given the vast bibliography the game of cricket has inspired, have a book about his life within that body of literature. Our pool games give you additional control and advantages over playing billiards in real life. There are lengthy chapters on Astill’s playing style. The difficulty he has arises out of Astill’s managing to avoid much in the way of controversy over his career and, playing for arguably the least "fashionable" of the First Class counties, not having participated in any famous matches. The reasons we noticed Astill were his nine doubles, placing him fourth in the all-time list, the total of 2,432 career wickets that saw him at 14th in that table, and the fact he was one of only nine men to have completed a career double of 20,000 runs and 2,000 wickets.

The best conclusion would seem to be that he was essentially an off spinner, but a very versatile one. Probably the best book I've found on picking locks is the Gerry Finch Manual of Lock Picking, which unfortunately appears to be out of print as of this writing. Picking locks requires skill, practice, and the use of rather unusual (and not widely available) tools. While some of these features can be defeated with conventional picking tools and are covered here, picking high security locks generally requires specialized tools and techniques (often designed for a specific brand or model of lock) and are beyond our scope here. Some pin tumbler locks incorporate "high security" features, including secondary locking mechanisms and features intended specifically to frustrate picking. However, what many people may not realize is that they actually have different meanings-and some striking differences in table features! If you inadvertently push a pin up too far or are applying so much torque that more than one pin is binding, you may have an overset pin instead. If just one pin sets at the "other" shear line, the lock will not open even though all the pin stacks are picked. Because there are two independent shear lines, there is no way to control, or even tell, at which shear line a given pin stack sets.

Strings. Strings are two imaginary lines on the table which pass perpendicular to the head and foot spots, what is billiards and all called the head string and the foot string. The head spot lies in the middle of the head string. The foot spot lies in the middle of the foot string and indicates where to rack the balls or where to return a previously sunk object ball to the table. This is done by hitting the white ball, also known as the cue ball, against the other balls. Their go ends when they fail to pot a ball, pot the white or opponents colour ball or the ball comes off the table. It is not riveting stuff it has to be conceded, and the observations of all those former teammates and opponents who Littlewood managed to speak to in the 1990s are the only thing that tempts a reader not to skim read in the pursuit of more interesting material than bland descriptions of Astill’s cricket.

That on his bowling is particularly frustrating, as it leaves its reader little wiser at the end than he was at the beginning as to exactly what sort of bowler Astill was. The opposite end of the table is often called the head rail. The short rail is where you rack the balls at the start of the game. It is also known as the foot rail. Leicestershire cricket obviously has a place in Littlewood’s heart, but it is clear from his introduction he was not entirely convinced of the merits of his long term project. It is perhaps surprising in the circumstances that this book is one of the longer ones in the Lives in Cricket series, but Littlewood has pursued his project with such diligence his book runs to as many as 190 pages. The other principal games are played on tables that have six pockets, one at each corner and one in each of the long sides; these games include English billiards, played with three balls; snooker, played with 21 balls and a cue ball; and pocket billiards, or pool, played with 15 balls and a cue ball.