The Ashes: This Thing Can Be Done

Martin Chandler | 9:02am GMT 06 March 2022

Published: 2022
Pages: 349
Author: Sengupta, Arunabha and Maha
Publisher: CricketMASH
Rating: 4.5 stars

One of the first cricket books I ever bought was the fifth edition of David Frith’s pictorial history, England versus Australia, published back in 1984. The premise of the book was simple, in that for every single Test match that these great rivals had contested there were a selection of photographs, a potted score and a brief account of the game.

In time the book made it to a twelfth edition, in 2007, but as far as I can see hasn’t been updated since. I can’t say I am surprised at that as, splendid book that it is, my fifth edition was a big old tome, a 336 page large format hardback printed on decent paper. I can see that by 2007 it had become a paperback, and added another hundred pages. To update it again would, I suspect, give rise to a book that was simply too large to produce at a price point that would attract enough buyers.

For those interested in the Ashes Frith’s magnum opus remains the classic introduction to the subject and highly recommended, but why have I spent the first part of the review of a completely different type of book banging on about it?

There is not a single photograph in The Ashes: This Thing Can Be Done, no potted scores nor a narrative description of any of the Tests that have been played in this long running series. Yet it does have important similarities, in the main that it sets out to give its reader a flavour of all the Ashes contests down the years, and secondly that several of the soundbites that accompany the drawings that the book showcases are Frith’s.

I did spend some time trying to work out how to describe the book, without ever coming up with anything that seemed to me to do it justice, so I am grateful to publishers CricketMASH for allowing me to reproduce these two pages from the book, which illustrate the approach very clearly.

So first a page on the first Test of the famous 1932/33 series;

followed by a rather less studied but almost as well known episode from six decades later;

So the first point to be made is that The Ashes: This Thing Can Be Done is not a dry history, and indeed would certainly warrant being described as entertaining. There is plenty of humour, almost all of which works very well and none of which falls flat. The bare facts are given, and some famous scenarios illustrated, but in truth this is more a book for the Ashes aficionado rather than the novice.

For the complete beginner there is, perhaps, not quite enough detail, but they only have to pick up one of the many editions of Frith’s book first and read that and they will then be ready to understand the wit and humour that constantly springs from the pen of Sengupta, and the pencil of Maha.

For the more experienced Ashes watcher the book is an absolute delight, and its constant reminders of curious incidents from the past are going to frequently create a desire for further knowledge. For my part I certainly learnt things that I either never knew or had long forgotten, examples of that being George Ulyett’s close call with a shark after falling overboard on the 1884/85 tour, and the washed out Old Trafford Test of 1938 being referenced in the classic Hitchcock thriller, The Lady Vanishes.

Many of the series occupy only two or three pages, although it is remarkable how much of a picture the authors can convey in half a dozen or so sketches and the accompanying commentary. The classic series of 1894/95, 1932/33, 1981 and 2005 get rather more attention, for obvious reasons. 1968 gets the full treatment as well albeit its role was primarily its setting up the D’Oliveira Affair, but Sengupta is, to say the least, an expert on that one so he can be forgiven that slight discursion.

As for the artwork Maha’s talent is remarkable. I used to work with a bloke who, a bit of a dreamer, would often suddenly start scribbling with no obvious inspiration and within a minute or two produce an extraordinarily perceptive caricature of office life. I imagine Maha is exactly the same, and time and time again she manages to encapsulate the essence of those she is sketching. In fact there is only one individual whose likeness I would question and that is Jim Laker, although that said I suspect the problem there is less that Maha fails to capture Laker, and rather more that his caricature is the perfect representation of a barrister I used to instruct more years ago than I care to remember.

All in all The Ashes: This Thing Can Be Done is a book that all cricket lovers should invest in and, at £17.99 in hardback and £12.99 in softback, it is certainly not going to break the bank. No doubt available in many outlets, both online and bricks and mortar, I am sure however that the publisher would prefer that customers buy directly from them, and that can be done here