It was the summer of speed which smashed cricket’s modus operandi forever. So relentless were the volleys of ‘throat’ balls from Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in 1974-75, that the departing English blessed themselves that no one had been killed. ‘One tour too many,’ 35-year-old Brian Luckhurst told a teammate.
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 of 1945’ is absorbing, lyrical […]
