BOOKSHELF

Press, 20 December 1985, Page 22

BOOKSHELF

For more than 40 years Australia’s cricketing fortunes have been described on A.B.C. radio by Alan McGilvray, the country’s best-known commentator. Wherever Australian teams went for test cricket, along went McGilvray to relate proceedings back to his cricket-mad nation. When he called a halt to his commentating career last September, McGilvray had been 10 times to England, three time to the West Indies, twice to South Africa, once to New Zealand.

He had seen every series' unfold in Australia, and had broadcast every day of them, since Walter Hammond’s team made the first post-war visit in 1946-47. In his long innings behind the microphone, McGilvray watched and described many of the game’s most memorable moments, met and mixed with some of cricket’s greatest players and personalities, and exCerienced the change rought about by the money and commercialism that have followed'its popularity. With his vast background of knowledge and deep insight into the sport, it is not surprising that McGilvray, with the assistance of Norman Tasker, sports editor of the Syndey newspaper “The Sun,” has written an account of his experiences. McGilvray — The Game is Not the Same (Pitman 188 pp; $29.95) is an informative, interesting book which outlines many famous chapters in cricketing history. Incidents on the field and off the field are described by McGilvray ' with the same honesty and sincerity which were trademarks of his cricket commentaries.

No apparent chronological pattern emerges from the book, but each chapter unveils its own story; individuals and teams, test matches and test series are all given good exposure. McGilvray’s frightening experience in the West Indies in 1978 is vividly recalled. His safety com not be guaranteed and he was forced to leave the tour early, a situation which

made him vow never to return to the West Indies.That was one of the saddest times for him in his life in cricket.

McGilvray’s opinions of Australia’s three most famous captains, Don Bradman, Richie Benaud and lan Chappell, make interesting reading. It may surprise some that he says in his fifty-odd years of watching test cricket played around the world he has seen no better captain than lan Chappell. In some ways, the book will have only limited appeal to New Zealand readers. New Zealand and its cricketers receive scant mention but the New Zealand public will be able to relate to many of the incidents described, especially the chapter on the captaincy of Kim Hughes. - R.L.S. Boycott. By Don Mosey. (Methuen. 224 pp, Index. $24.95). This book is well worth acquiring, or at least sneaking a look at, merely for the Mosey account (with assistance from Constable Delaney, the Temuka policeman), of Boycott’s exploits while New Zealand as England’s captain in 1978.

How Boycott earned the presentation of the bigger block of cheese from the good ladies of Temuka, why poor Mike Gatting and some schoolboys spent four hours bowling in the nets to give the captain batting practice, and how Boycott reacted to an ill-judged question in the press conference which followed New Zealand’s historic test win in Wellington, is all explained. Mosey, a highly respected cricket writer and broadcaster, and a Yorkshireman to boot, is well qualified to write the Boycott story.

But even Mosey, who has known Geoffrey Boycott for more than 20 years, was unable to get any co-opera-tion from the subject of his biography. This seemed to have stemmed from a television interview in 1983 when Mosey mildly criticised .. Boycott “This has meant the end of a beautiful

friendship,” he says. Mosey spent many years defending Boycott before their split, but he cannot be criticised for any lack of objectivity in this book. Boycott comes across as a most complex character, though single-minded in his desire to accumulate runs and become the highestscoring test batsman of all time.

According to his biographer, the man who scored more than 8000 test runs, including 22 centuries, is a remarkable cricketer who touched greatness.

But it is evident that Boycott lacked warmth of personality and even as Yorkshire county captain was unable to shake off the tag that he played only for himself. Many readers will find it difficult to find sympathy for Boycott during his many trials and tribulations. One Yorkshire player, Tony Nicholson, was good natured enough to drive Boycott around the country on many occasions and lend him his car on others. “On one occasion when he wanted . to ; borrow it I needed it myself, and he complained that I was ‘letting him down’,” Nicholson told Mosey: “So I asked him why he didn’t get a car of his own. He replied, *What the hell do I need a car of my <j|Sn for when I can get you to drive me all round t’country?’ Mosey describes this as

just a bit of honest Yorkshire philosophy. Perhaps you need to be a Yorkshireman to read this book as well as to write it.

These days Boycott is best known as the man who split a cricket club and there is a protracted account of the Yorkshire committee controversy, probably necessary to help explain Yorkshire cricket and the make-up of the man, Boycott.

To many Yorkshiremen, oblivious of the anti-Boycott feelings prevalent in the countryside, Geoffrey Boycott can do no wrong. One recalls the story about the reactions of a dour businessman in Yorkshire when another famous opening batsman from the country was dropped from the English test side in 1948. The businessman sat down to breakfast, opened bis newspaper, blinked his eyes and said: “Wife doon’t speak to me. Tha’ve dropped Hooton.”

- T.R.D. Marks Out of XI. By Vic Marks. (George Allen and Unwin. 157 pp; $29,95.). On the face of it reading an account of a cricket tour written by a rather nondescript player who can’t even make the test side is an unexciting prospect. But Vic Marks, a one-day specialist for England, though not by choice, has made the most of all the extra time he had to write a tour diary, which his publisher originally suggested should be called: “A View from the Balcony.” The tour in question is the England team’s trip to India last summer and the brief - venture which followed to Australia for the World Championship of Cricket.

Marks, who won four blues at Oxford, is more erudite than your average sportsman and his dry sense of humour, makes this a most enjoyable book. He spares neither himself nor fellow players such as the left-arm spinner/vPhil (“Henri”) Edmonds, 'whose run-up is a little unusual. “He stutters up to the

wicket like a duck on a river bank contemplating a swim,” Marks says. The England all-rounder is able to get a little mileage from the instructions received from the Test and County Cricket Board before the tour began. “I note with pleasure that the loss of my right arm is insured for £40,000, an increase of £lO,OOO on last year,” Marks says. “My little toe returns £l2OO and my spinning finger £8000; nonetheles the advantages of self-mutilation have so far been neglected.”

. The arrival of the team in Delhi at the start of the tour coincided with the assassination of Mrs Gandhi, just 3km from its hotel, and on the day before the first test was to begin in Bombay the British Deputy High Commissioner went the same way. Just 12 hours earlier the team had attended a drinks party at his flat.

The test still went ahead, both sides wearing black arm bands. “I hope this doesn’t become a regular feature of the tour,” observes Marks wryly.

His comments about the way of life in India, too, are often amusing. He said that there appeared to be no highway code in India, just a “vague expectation” that you proceed on the left-hand side of the road — “unless you are a cow.” - T.R.D.