Unlikely partnerships

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 16

Unlikely partnerships

(Reviewed by R. T. Brittenden) Unlikely cricket partnerships have produced‘two of the year’s best books on the game. Ray. Illingworth and Kenneth Gregory have combined in “The Ashes” (Collins, 272 pp; $21.95) and Fred Trueman is with Don Mosey in “My Most Memorable Matches” (Stanley Paul, 141 pp, $20.95). “The Ashes” is outstandingly good. Gregory, presumably, has done most of the writing, with Illingworth providing sharp Yorkshire assessments of the play and the players as a platform. It is, at times, a highly amusing accopnt of a century of tests between Australia and England, no more so than when the authors deal with Charles Frederick Henry Leslie, a member of the Hon Ivo. Bligh’s team in Australia in 188283 > Only cricket's pundits can be familiar with Leslie. To the ordinary enthusiast, he is not. known. He should be. for he was a spectacularly inaccurate bowler, one now to be treasured.

This is a very lively entertaining and instructive account of the series, liberally illustrated. The pictures, many of them excellent action studies, start with Grace and end with Botham. Trueman, also a Yorkshireman, and Mosey, well-known as a radio commentator on cricket, leans for its lighter moments mainly on some excellent cartoons by. Roy Ulyett. This is . a little surprising, for since his retirement Truemen has had a career as a night-club entertainer, and ■as an after-dinner speaker; in both capacities he .exhibited an earthy humour which, thankfully, is hot to be found in this book. Trueman the fast bowler was a tremendous performer. He has been a keen observer of the game, as a newspaper columnist, and as a ■ broadcaster. His knowledge of cricket, and of the players, is immense. The games he has chosen — 22 of them — cover his career from first to last. With Mosey’s mellifluous influence to be found on almost every page, it is well worth reading.