Book Of The Year Award > 2010 > Golden Boy
GOLDEN BOY The Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket
Christian Ryan

'Strewth, you wouldn't flaming read about it.' No longer true as Christian Ryan delves into that curious interregnum in Australian cricket, between the reigns of tough nut skippers, Ian Chappell, Greg Chappell and Bobby Simpson and the accession of Captain Grumpy, Alan Border. Filling that gap is the curious and sometimes typical, often untypical, Aussie figure of Kim Hughes.

So we have a book that the subject doesn't mind being written but is not willing to assist with and all of the other major protagonists, Rodney Marsh, Dennis Lille, Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell politely decline to talk about that era. If Thackeray hadn't already purloined that useful sub-title, we would have here, 'a novel without a hero' as from the start of his career at junior level, Kim Hughes showed an awesome talent that seemed to perpetually end in a limp dismissal around the 30 mark. Occasionally, a major innings would come and that would ensure his obvious ability was talked about until the next batch of missed opportunities came around.

It would have been easy for an author to take sides and produce a one-sided book but Christian Ryan has a clear-headed view of the controversies that bedevilled Kim Hughes during the years of his captaincy and sees that many were self-induced as opposed to the unhelpful attitude of senior Australian players of the time. The very first chapter deals with the worst of times, the 1981 tour of England with an unsure captain receiving no help whatsoever from his senior players. A cursory glance at old videos of the Headingley Test shows a rigid and relatively unchanged set of field placings as Ian Botham, Graham Dilley and Chris Old carved away taking England towards an improbable victory. Perhaps the Rodney Marsh dictum quoted here, that only long-established superstars could strut their stuff and behave as they liked, while newcomers should shut up and listen not talk, explains the lack of reaction from the non-senior players. As for senior players, Marsh is quoted before Headingley as saying, "He's got the job...he's a big boy. Let him stew in it" when Peter Philpott, manager of the tour, sensed that Kim Hughes was struggling and needed help. Interestingly, when Mike Whitney, whose stature grows with each mention, had the temerity to stand up to Marsh's bullying, they didn't speak for the next ten years.

The rebel tour to South Africa provided virtually the final chapter of Kim Hughes's career. Unlike Mike Whitney, who turned down the offer on moral grounds, Kim Hughes paraded the traditional justifications trotted out by participants who took the grubby rand but, unfair as it may be, a captain of a country was a different animal and a more important catch for Ali Bacher, as Mike Gatting was to find out at a later time. A brief attempt to relaunch a career in Australia found Kim Hughes struggling for form against players who he had previously belittled and were notably unsympathetic to his struggle and eventually a talent that had seemed to be going to conquer the Test arena fizzled gently out in Natal.

As a book this often resembles a Kim Hughes innings. Sometimes inspired, sometimes frantic and frenetic, occasionally drifting off at a tangent and somehow, absolutely Australian. Read at a single sitting, there is a sense of waste and real futility. That such a talent could wither away without someone at a senior level reasoning that a working and successful Kim Hughes could only make an Australian team stronger is hard to believe. It also seems that alone among ex-Australian captains; Kim Hughes seems to have become almost a non-person, involved only on the fringes of cricket. This is truly a sad story, not a tragedy but one that had to be told and here we have an important book that covers a period of cricket that simply cried out to be explained.

review by John Symons

Publisher
ORION, (ex Allen & Unwin, Australia),
5 Upper ST. Martin's Lane,
LONDON
WC2H 9EA
£10.99