1 review for Piesse, Ken – Living the Dream, 60 years in cricket and football

1. 

   Ken – August 2, 2024

   A review from the UK for the Association of Cricket Statisticians:

   Seldom can a book’s title have more accurately described its contents. For many of us the notion of earning a living from cricket will have been a wholly unfulfilled pipedream, but Kendrick Piesse has made it happen.

   Obsessed from childhood with sport, most notably cricket with Aussie Rules in hot pursuit, as a teenager he embarked on a career in journalism, quickly finding his way to the sports desk. Leading positions with newspapers in his home city of Melbourne soon followed.

   By 23 he was chief cricket and football writer for The Sporting Globe, at the same time editing Cricketer (Australian version) while already starting to amass a collection of cricket books ancient and modern, a passion that would later see him shipping his purchases by the crate load. A playing career that has enabled him to rub shoulders with a few of his heroes on the field was put on hold in his twenties, but was still thriving 40 years later.

   Ken Piesse’s devotion to the game has extended to authoring many books, ghosting and publishing scores of others and setting up as the principal outlet through which cricket books from the UK and elsewhere can find a way to the Australian market. Those on his mailing list will be aware of the infectious enthusiasm and energy of a man whose activities have brought him the wherewithal to care for a wife and five children.

   Moreover, as a leading light in the Australian Cricket Society, he has arranged and led tours to the UK and other parts of the world, enabling this reviewer and others to have the pleasure of meeting him and seeing at first hand his boundless passion for our great game.

   Stylishly presented, this book is the work of a true professional, albeit a journalist in a country where the style of the red tops is favoured over what we once described as broadsheets.

   Some of the boozy youthful exploits also have a bit of an Aussie flavour, but the book’s greatest strength lies in the closeness of the author to so many leading players. With many such as Ricky Ponting there have been lifelong friendships, but there is no condoning the fault lines in David Warner, while in Piesse’s view Steve Smith’s part in the sandpaper affair should have barred him from ever captaining his country again.

   For the majority of ACS members – those who live in the UK – long sections of the book may have limited appeal. Much space is devoted to a form of football whose rules we do not pretend to understand and whose greatest stars we would fail to name.

   There may also be no great interest in the on-field exploits of one playing cricket a few notches below first-class level. On the other hand most of the Test match descriptions, while covering much familiar territory, are enriched by the unfettered testimony of the participants. There is plenty of good tittle tattle with splendid chapters on characters such as Shane Warne, for whom Piesse clearly had a soft spot, and Cec Pepper, whose four sons by different mothers have been unearthed and bring their own stories of a father not all of them ever knew whose tongue probably cost him the baggy greens his talent merited.

   A lengthy appendix has a distinctly self-indulgent flavour with clips heralding the author’s writing and the value of his companionship, many from such friends as Darren Lehmann for whom ‘few match Ken’s knowledge or have his rapport with the players.’

   A devoted compiler of statistics from childhood, Piesse is able to record his own stats from a lifetime of playing. His 699 matches across eight different clubs have yielded just two hundreds and participation in seven century stands. Perhaps more of a bowler, he lists ten five-fors, three of them in consecutive innings, but only once, in 2021-22 for St Eliza fourths, have his leggies brought him six wickets.

   A thoroughly enjoyable read, and one can only wish the best for an author who has done so much for cricket, although would-be purchasers from the UK should be aware that the book has extensive sections devoted to Australian Rules Football which may be of little interest.
   Douglas Miller