Why Every Cricketer Should Listen to Audiobooks: The Science of Audio Learning for Athletes

This post used to contain a set of statistics about how much faster you learn from an audiobook than from a book. They were not real. We have removed them, and in their place is what the published research actually says, which is more interesting and more useful than the numbers were.

The short version. Listening to an audiobook and reading the same text produce roughly the same comprehension, which is not what most people expect and is not what the audiobook industry suggests. Reading is faster and easier to look things up in. Listening requires no visual attention, works in situations where reading is impossible, and is easier to sustain over a long book because it asks less.

There is also a popular claim that has been repeatedly challenged by researchers and that we have removed from this page: the idea that you learn better by matching your learning style, so that visual learners should read and auditory learners should listen. The evidence does not support it. If you have been told otherwise, you are in good company, but it is still wrong.

The facts

What it covers

The Art of Learning

Josh Waitzkin won the US National Chess Championship at nine, and The Art of Learning is his account of what produced that. It is a book about how a hard skill is actually acquired, and about the most common mistake in practice, which is repeating the version of a skill you can already do.

The chapter on how to study is the one that will change what you do at the nets. Waitzkin makes the distinction between learning and performing and argues that confusing them is how most deliberate practice becomes wasted repetition.

He reads it himself at close to eight hours. Whatever you think of the format, this is a book worth hearing from its author.

Read by Josh Waitzkin · Tim Ferriss. Listen on Audible

Bounce

Matthew Syed was a table tennis champion before he became a journalist, and Bounce uses that background to argue that success is explained by deliberate practice, by how you were taught, and by how much luck you had, rather than by innate talent.

The cricket-relevant ideas are that practice quality beats practice quantity, and that the environment you are in shapes your ceiling more than your talent does. Both are worth sitting with during a bad season.

Seven hours and fifty minutes, read by James Clamp. It is popular psychology rather than laboratory science and it is the lightest read here.

Read by James Clamp · Harper. Listen on Audible

Mind Gym

Mind Gym is by Sebastian Bailey and Octavius Black, who ran a business that helped people think more clearly, and it is a book about the mechanics of mental performance. Ten hours and nine minutes, narrated by Ralph Lister.

The parts worth your time are the ones about how attention is allocated and how you can train it, which is the bridge between a cricketer trying to concentrate and a cricketer who has practised concentrating.

It is the most structured book on this list and the least specific, which makes it a good companion to the more narrative titles.

Read by Ralph Lister · HarperOne. Listen on Audible

The Mindful Athlete Audio Companion

The Mindful Athlete Audio Companion is one hour and fifty minutes and it is the shortest title here. George Mumford reads it himself and the material is attention and breath work.

It is on this list because of what it demonstrates rather than what it argues. You can learn something about attention by doing it for five minutes, and that is a more useful relationship with a book than understanding a theory of focus.

Which is also the argument for audio in general. A book that asks you to do something is more valuable heard than read, because you can act on it immediately.

Read by George Mumford · BetterListen. Listen on Audible

Crickonomics

Crickonomics is by the economist Stefan Szymanski and Tim Wigmore, read by David Thorpe, and it analyses the economics of modern cricket: the auction, the franchise model, and what each structural change is worth.

For a cricketer this is a lesson in how your industry is actually built, which is not something anybody teaches you. It was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards in 2023.

Thirteen hours and fifty-seven minutes. It is also a good demonstration of the format for a book with charts, because you can hear the argument without needing to look at the chart at the same time.

Read by David Thorpe · Bloomsbury Sport. Listen on Audible

Hitting Against the Spin

Hitting Against the Spin by Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones is nine hours long and the best explanation of how cricket works that we have found in audio. The Times picked it as a best sports book of 2021 and Eoin Morgan called it a must-read for any cricketer, coach or fan.

Leamon narrates it himself, and the subject is what the ball does and why the outcomes people call luck are more predictable than they appear.

This is also the best demonstration of why audio suits explanation. The prose carries the argument and the listener can concentrate on it rather than on decoding it.

Read by Nathan Leamon · Little, Brown Book Group. Listen on Audible

The Analyst Inside Cricket

The Analyst Inside Cricket is a free podcast from Simon Hughes, the former Middlesex bowler, with the BBC’s Simon Mann and former England wicketkeeper. It is analysis and opinion rather than narrative.

We include it here because it is the format doing what it is good at. Short, frequent, and arriving when you have twenty minutes rather than when you have arranged a quiet evening.

Free to listen, and the best demonstration that the audio habit does not require a subscription.

Hosted by Simon Hughes. Listen on Audible

The Final Word Cricket Podcast

The Final Word is hosted by Geoff Lemon and Adam Collins and describes itself as a friendly guide to the world’s strangest sport. The tone is irreverent and the analysis underneath it is serious.

The reason it belongs on a list about learning is the disagreement. Two people who know the game, arguing with each other and respecting each other, is a better model for how to think about cricket than any book.

Free and episodic, and the sort of thing you can listen to on the way home without having planned it.

Hosted by Adam Collins Geoff Lemon. Listen on Audible

Who it is for, and who it is not

This is for a cricketer who has never had a book out on a train journey, and for the coaches and parents who have tried suggesting one and been ignored.

It is also for anyone who has been sold an audiobook on the strength of a claim about learning faster. There are eight titles below, all of them verified against Audible’s catalogue, and the research section above tells you honestly what the format can and cannot do.

How to get the most from it

Do not use audio for everything. The case for listening is that it fits places where reading does not, not that it is superior. If you are at a desk with the book open, reading is faster and you will get more done.

Use audio for the books you would never start in print. A fourteen-hour book on a tour is a fortnight of car journeys. In print it is a month you never begin.

Close the book and say what it said. The single most reliable memory technique in the research is self-explanation, which means saying the idea back in your own words after you have heard it. If you cannot do that, you have not retained it.

Choose books that are worth your attention in the first place. There is no format that makes a bad book good, and the format amplifies whatever is already there.

• Listen in the gaps you already have: the commute, the drive, the warm-up.
• Keep reference in print: anything with a table, a diagram or a passage you will need again.
• Recount rather than highlight: say the idea back in your own words afterwards.
• Finish before you start another: one book out loud beats six half-heard.
• Do not believe the learning styles claim: it has been tested and it does not hold.

What the research actually says

On audiobook versus print: research comparing listening to an audiobook with reading the same text has generally found no significant difference in comprehension. Work published in the education research literature, including James Best’s 2020 review for the ERIC database, has reached the same conclusion, and it has been reported on from Harvard and Michigan State since. Reading is faster, and you can re-scan a page. Listening is slower, but it demands no visual attention and it can happen in places where reading cannot.

On learning styles: the claim that visual learners should read and auditory learners should listen has been tested extensively and does not hold up. Pashler and colleagues reviewed the evidence in 2008 and found it lacking, the American Psychological Association published a task force report on the same question, and later work including Rogowsky and colleagues found visual learners performed better on both listening and reading tests rather than worse on one. Preference is a different question from effectiveness, and it is possible to prefer listening without doing better for it.

On what does have support: interest and prior knowledge consistently affect comprehension, and there is good evidence for the value of self-explanation, which means stopping to explain something in your own words. There is also strong support for spaced and retrieval practice, meaning testing yourself rather than re-reading. None of that is specific to audio, and none of it requires a subscription.

What this means for a cricketer is fairly simple. Listen when you would not otherwise read, because a long book you never start helps nobody. Keep print for anything you need to look at again. And if you want to remember what you heard, the research is blunt about what works: say it back in your own words, and do it again later.

• Listening and reading produce similar comprehension, so choose on convenience rather than on fantasy about learning styles.
• Reading is faster, which makes it the better choice for anything you need to re-scan or look up.
• Listening wins on long books, on anything requiring no visual attention, and on anything you would not sit down to read.
• Saying a thing back in your own words is a better memory aid than highlighting it, in either format.
• Re-reading and re-listening are weaker than testing yourself, so finish the book and then close it and recall it.

Common questions

Is listening to an audiobook as good as reading a book?

For comprehension, research generally finds no significant difference between the two, and that is the honest answer rather than the one the audiobook industry tends to give. Reading is faster and lets you re-scan. Listening needs no visual attention and works where reading cannot. Which is better depends entirely on what you are doing and how long the book is, not on some intrinsic superiority of one format.

Do audiobooks work better for visual learners?

No. The idea that you should match your learning style, so that visual learners read and auditory learners listen, has been tested repeatedly and the evidence does not support it. Pashler and colleagues reviewed it in 2008 and found it lacking, and later work found visual learners actually performed better on both listening and reading tests. You may well prefer listening. That is a different thing, and it is still worth doing.

Can I listen to audiobooks while training at the nets?

For material about the mental side, yes, and it is one of the better uses. For anything technical, no. You cannot hold the ball, feel the edge or watch your own bat while your ears are on a book, and the technical work is where most of the improvement is. The sensible arrangement is audio on the journey and at the gym, and print or nothing at the nets.

Is it worth paying for an Audible subscription?

It is worth testing with a trial before committing. Audible normally offers 30-day free trials to new members on its plans, and Amazon Prime members have been able to take two free audiobooks during that trial. The plans themselves range in price, with the entry-level plan at roughly 7.95 a month in the US and the top plan carrying two credits a month at a higher figure, so check Audible’s current pricing page before you decide. The cricket podcasts on this site are free and need no subscription at all.

How do I remember what I listen to?

Better than by reading, in one specific way. Reading leaves a visual trace you can find again; listening does not, so you have to make the trace yourself. The research is consistent that self-explanation works well, which means stopping and saying the main idea back in your own words. Repeating it days later does more for retention than any amount of highlighting.

Written by the CricketGearGuru editorial team. Every title above was checked against Audible’s own catalogue on the day this page was published, so the narrator, the running time and the edition are the current ones. The links are affiliate links, so we may earn a commission if you buy through them at no extra cost to you.