THINGS WE DID NOT KNOW about cricket in Australia made me curious and made me embark on this book. Soon after, sitting in front of my video cassette recorder, I was reminded of something we used to know but have forgotten: that a batsman, even a Test batsman, even a Test batsman who’s captain, can leap out of his crease and play strokes purely for the thrill and perfection of the stroke itself. For batting with so little regard for his own average, thank you Kim Hughes.
Old cricketers, cricket personalities and other characters in this story were honest and full of goodwill. Sometimes a long letter was help enough. In most instances they sat with me and talked, often passionately, about things they had puzzled over many times before but not in the company of someone holding a tape recorder. I am grateful to them all for their trust and kindness.
‘Should you write it? You have to write it,’ said my friend Andrew Hyde when I ran the idea, as I always do, by him. Once I was too far down the road to turn back, John Harms and Gideon Haigh reassured me that the road would indeed have an end and that the trip would be worthwhile. Gideon’s own books have done journalists near and far a favour: never again can someone dash off a lousy book on cricket and get away with it. Tim de Lisle has long been a good friend with an uncommon interest in the state of my sentences. Julia Matthews, John Rogers, Barry Nicholls, Mark Ray and Peter English always gave me whatever I was searching for, and then some. Thanks too to Stephen Gray, Geoff Lawson, Steven Lynch, Sambit Bal, John Benaud, Paul Daffey, Bill Reynolds, Lucas Carter and David Frith for their thoughtful nudges, and to Patrick Gallagher and Angela Handley at Allen & Unwin for their encouragement and good cheer in the face of all those blown-out deadlines.
So many hundreds of my recent days have been spent inside Australia’s libraries. Especially helpful were David Studham, always welcoming and wise, at the Melbourne Cricket Club library; Steve Howell at the State Library of Western Australia; Zsuzsi Szucs at the National Film and Sound Archive; and staff at ABC archives, Geraldton Library and the State Library of Victoria. Alexandra Payne, Michelle and Brett Robinson, and myriad Ryans (Belinda, Katharine, Cassie, Gemma, Susan, Xavier and Jayden) let a travelling journalist with no budget and a long list of interviewees come to stay. Monica Dux, Kris Mrksa, Jenny Macmillan, Mark Picinali, Sibylle Brautigam, Peter Delis, Anna and James Smallclough, Ellie Smith, Sam Pang and Shoppy Bailey were nice to a pretty dull friend.
Thanks, and sorry, to Mary Small most of all. When sneakers or jumpers grew holes, she’d come home with new ones. Mary lost her front room and someone to go out with at night and on weekends. She never lost her sunniness, her belief in me, her love, or her curls.