Cricket Books

Even Test cricketers develop inferiority complexes. Undone four times in his first four innings by India’s Jasprit Bumrah, Nathan McSweeney forfeited his Test place for the two glamour Tests of the 2024-25 summer in Melbourne and Sydney.

A very nervous Ian Redpath was playing his first match for Victoria and within minutes of the start, he dropped South Australia’s Neil Dansie at slip and cut his eyebrow in the process. Victoria’s captain Bill Lawry was unimpressed: ‘Piss off and get the 12th man out here.’

Ken Piesse reviews ‘The Cricketers of 1945, rising from the Ashes of World War Two’ by Christopher Sandford, available from cricketbooks.com.au Don’t you love the feeling of being so enveloped in a new book that you can be found in the same easy chair hours later, totally riveted? ‘The Cricketers...

KEN PIESSE’s just-published autobiography is a delightful mixture of fun, anecdotes and nostalgia, covering his 60 years in cricket and football Here is a sneak peek: The past can be intoxicating, compelling, mesmeric. The heroes of our youth are championed, their flaws and foibles forgiven. Like JM Barrie’s Peter Pan,...

Xavier College prodigy Karl Schneider was destined for stardom when selected ahead of a young Don Bradman for Australia’s 1928 tour of New Zealand, until cruelly being struck down by illness. His feats were one so young were astonishing and included, while still a schoolboy, a major part in Victoria’s...

It was my pleasure to be at the MCG this week for the launch of the new edition of Cricket Walkabout, the story of the first Australian cricketers to England, an all-colour, very impressive enhanced edition from the delightfully named Tea Bag Press in Ballarat. Among the attendees were Darcy...