Product Description

Kim Hughes was one of the most majestic and daring batsmen to play for Australia in the last 40 years. Golden curled and boyishly handsome, his rise and fall as captain and player is unparalleled in our cricketing history. He played at least three innings that count as all-time classics, but it's his tearful resignation from the captaincy that is remembered. Insecure but arrogant, abrasive but charming; in Hughes' character were the seeds of his own destruction. Yet was Hughes' fall partly due to those around him, men who are themselves legends in Australia's cricketing history? Lillee, Marsh, the Chappells, all had their agendas, all were unhappy with his selection and performance as captain - evidenced by Dennis Lillee's tendency to aim bouncers relentlessly at Hughes' head during net practice. Hughes' arrival on the Test scene coincided with the most turbulent time Australian cricket has ever seen - first Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, then the rebel tours to South Africa. Both had dramatic effects on Hughes' career. As he traces the high points and the low, Chris Ryan sheds new and fascinating light on the cricket - and the cricketers - of the times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11999 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 324 pages

Review
"The book you should have heard of ... This brilliant history of Australia captain Kim Hughes is your real must-read." (OBSERVER )

About the Author
Christian Ryan was the founding editor of the national current affairs magazine The Monthly. He has edited WISDEN CRICKETER'S ALMANAC, AUSTRALIA, INSIDE EDGE magazine, WISDEN CRICKET MONTHLY and has worked as a journalist with the GUARDIAN newspaper.

Customer Reviews

Golden Boy
This book has the major advantage of being written with hindsight and at a distance from the main protagonist. Suffice to say it is the antithesis of the very ordinary cricket (auto)biographies that grace the shelves with "X too fivefor, Y took threefor etc". Very well worth reading with some surprising revelations for those of us so far from Australia in the 1970s and 80s.

Bad old days indeed
Kim Hughes was one of my favourite batsmen when I was growing up and this book is a fascinating portrait of the man and what went on around him. Lillee and Marsh may have been great cricketers, but reading this book they come across as rather unsavoury characters who treated Hughes poorly.This book fills a gap nicely and I wish Kim Hughes all the best.