Carlton Books Limited and Chris Hawkes must be congratulated on bringing out an outstanding publication - a massive source of reference, worth its weight in gold.

Released in November 2011, World Cricket Records 2012 is a celebration of more than 140 years of excellence, featuring not only a host of records from all formats of the game (first-class cricket, limited overs, women's and youth internationals), but also the stories behind them, and a series of potted biographies of some of the greatest players ever to have walked onto the field to bat, bowl or field.

If you ever get into an argument about cricket facts and stats, anywhere in the world, World Cricket Records 2012 will not only provide you with the definite answer, it will also give you loads of additional information that will amaze your audience.

Chris Hawkes' bumper second edition of World Cricket Records is a massive collection of team and player records, facts and stats, covering every aspect of international cricket from around the globe e.g. Who holds the record for the highest score by a Test debutant? Who is the only player to bag 50 wickets or more against every modern Test-playing country? Who is the youngest player to reach the milestone of 5,000 runs in Test Cricket and Who holds the England record for the longest occupancy of the crease in a five-match Test series?

According to Chris Hawkes, the book is an exposition of benchmarks - those to which every player in the game would wish to aspire and surpass as well as those that players would want to avoid. For every one of the game's most wanted records, there is a plethora of unwanted ones.

The book mentions the first hat-trick in Tests to be split over two innings: "There have been two instances in Test history of a bowler taking a hat-trick split over two innings. In the First Test of the 1988-89 series between Australia and the West Indies at Brisbane, Courtney Walsh dismissed Tony Dodemaide with his final ball of Australia's first innings and Mike Veletta and Graeme Wood with his first two balls of the second to complete Test cricket's first "split" hat-trick."

In the Batting Records' section (ODIs) under the heading Hitting new heights the cricket enthusiasts have been informed - by 2010, Sachin Tendulkar held almost every cricket batting record in the book: he had scored the most runs in Test matches, the most runs in ODIs and had hit more centuries in both forms of the game than any other batsman in history. But if any criticism could be directed towards the Little Master, it would be that he had consistently failed to push on and gather huge scores. That perception changed on 24 February 2010 when India played South Africa in the second one-day international at Gwalior. Opening the batting, Tendulkar smashed an unbeaten 200 off 147 balls (with 25 fours and three sixes) to become the first batsman in history to pass the 200-mark in one-day international cricket.

The production work of World Cricket Records 2012 is outstanding. The photographs by the world's leading photographrs are marvellous.

An indispensable book for cricket enthusiasts, it is also an excellent value for money.