Franklyn Stephenson was an extraordinary, innovative cricketer. First time at the MCG he took 10-46. His slower ball became the most famed in English cricket. He was switch-hitting long before KP. He was the last to do the double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets. Yet his career is forever underrated – and tainted.
Having a self-imposed spending ‘limit’ at a Rare Book Fair is a discipline few of us can master, especially for collectors like me who still thrill to the hunt, 50-plus years since an indulgent uncle passed on a copy of Charlie Macartney’s My Cricketing Days.
In the old days of Ashes tours when ambassadorial duties demanded the packing of dinner suits and a supply of quality dress shirts, it was felt Bert Ironmonger lacked the necessary social graces to successfully represent his country overseas. He mowed lawns for a living. He’d lost half his forefinger in a farming accident as […]
Dainty, the story of Bert Ironmonger by the awardwinning Max Bonnell is currently also in production… via my publishing arm cricketbooks.com.au Dainty is the extraordinary story of an ordinary man: a council gardener who, despite a terrible childhood injury to his hand, emerged from a remote farm in Queensland to become, at the age of […]
