Author: Richard Sydenham
Buy 'In a League of Their Own' and get 'The Birth of the Ashes' FREE!
In a League of Their Own-
IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN is an insightful look at how many of the game’s great players rate their best cricketers of the 20th and 21st century. One hundred World XI’s have been selected. Players from the days of Jack Hobbs and Donald Bradman right up to Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar of the current day are all discussed. Find out which fast bowlers Sunil Gavaskar chose in his team – as one of the best opening batsmen of all time there is no better judge. Discover the most popular choices from over a century of Test cricket culminating in the best team of all-time selected by the greats themselves.
Neil Harvey on Donald Bradman
“He was a freak. His reflexes and his ability to pick up the line and length of the ball early were far superior to any other batsman I have known.”
Charlie Griffith on Ken Barrington
“He was certainly not the kind of batsman who I would take my son to watch, but he was so dependable.”
Colin Bland on Barry Richards
“There were times when he came to the crease and the umpire would ask him if he wanted a guard and he would say, ‘No thanks, I’ve played here before’.”
Michael Holding on Sunil Gavaskar
“If there was no bounce you were pretty much helpless because sideways movement just didn’t bother him at all.”
(Full price: £9.99)
The Birth of the Ashes-
What is the reality behind the mythology of The Ashes? The amazing and unexpected answers are revealed in this deeply researched book which will fascinate every cricket lover round the world. Here, for the Birth time, the Oval Test match of 1882 – every bit as dramatic as anything in the 2005 season – is recreated ball by ball all the way to the agonising climax when Australia won by 7 runs.
Here, too, is the social context of that match, from the founding of Australia, spiced with a host of insights into how cricket was born and how it grew in a vast, rugged land - and how the Australians first came to England to take on the Mother Country.
The story of The Ashes is more, much more. When the Hon. Ivo Bligh took an England team to Australia in 1882–83 he said he was going to reclaim the Ashes of English cricket, lost at the Oval.
That led to a meeting with a property baron near Melbourne, an invitation for the team to stay at his mansion for Christmas … a knock-about match against the staff … and the baron’s wife, who had a little urn on her mantelpiece. She felt she ought to put some ashes into it for Bligh.
It led Bligh to a love affair with an Irish music teacher at the mansion, marriage and residence in his family mansion in Kent. It was this Irishwoman who, in 1927 when Bligh died, carried out his final instructions and sent the urn to be displayed at Lord’s, where it remains today as the living symbol of 130 years of titanic struggle between the old enemies.
(Full price: £4.99)
