Graeme Swann's transformation from international outsider to England's match-winner and indisputably the best spin bowler in the world has been remarkably rapid.

Since his Test debut in 2008, Swann has taken in excess of 150 wickets, including the decisive ones at the Oval two years apart that sealed first the Ashes victory and then a 4-0 whitewash of India - and with it England's world number one status. Yet, as Swann reveals in The Breaks Are Off, he'd previously experienced as many peaks as troughs.

Selected for the tour of South Africa in 1999-2000, his career received an almighty jolt in its infancy. Whilst some liked the cut of his jib, others did not, and Swann's relationship with the then England coach Duncan Fletcher was already strained when he missed the team bus for the second time that winter.

Although Swann candidly concedes he was nowhere near good enough for the top level aged 20, his jettisoning back to county cricket for the next seven years, following a solitary one-day international, hinted at a career wasted. It might even have reached a premature conclusion, such was his state of mind following a bust-up with Northamptonshire coach Kepler Wessels in 2004.

Instead of quitting, however, he sought refuge with Nottinghamshire and never looked back. A County Championship winner in his debut season of 2005, he was back in the England fold at the end of his third.

Typically taking centre stage, he made up for lost time with two wickets in the first over of his Test debut against India in Chennai - his habit of striking at the start of a spell became something of a party piece.

You cannot keep him out of the spotlight for long, and here the man whose irreverent 2010-11 Ashes video diaries brought the sprinkler dance into cricket's consciousness, combines his unique sense of humour with overwhelming honesty to recap his journey.