Service and Sacrifice
Archie Mac |Published: 2024
Pages: 212
Author: Stephenson, Paul
Publisher: The Cricket Publishing Company
Rating: 4 stars
This is, apparently, a sequel. I somehow missed A Cricket Club at War, which was author Paul Stephenson’s book on the Gordon players serving in the Great War. I shall have to check up as to whether Cricket Web’s friend, Roger Page has a copy.
The book under review covers a number of the Gordon players who served in World War II. The Gordon cricket club plays in the Sydney district cricket competition and has a proud history, producing players such as Victor Trumper, Charlie Macartney and Bert Oldfield. For those more modern readers, names such as Adam Gilchrist and Phil Emery will be more familiar.
Like many sporting clubs around Australia, once World War II commenced, Gordon players joined the armed forces in droves. In fact there were so many that enlisted from Gordon, that Stephenson limits himself to a selection of players. We learn that 110 Gordon cricketers served, with nine paying the ultimate price. The nine are covered in detail as are a large number of other well known Gordon players.
Stephenson starts with a brief recap of Gordon cricketers that served in the Great War, followed by another short chapter on how Australia came to be involved in World War II. And then he hits you straight between the eyes, with the first few subjects discussed all being killed in action. A sobering start, although a poignant reminder of the risk these brave men undertook to protect their country.
The author keeps all the entries short and follows a similar format. He starts with their cricket record with Gordon before they enlisted, and then follows with their service record. If they were lucky enough to make it through the war alive, we learn about both their post war cricket career and civilian life.
This is an excellent read, which covers some well known cricketers as well as those who played without coming close to the top tier of the game. The entry I particularly enjoyed was on Test cricketer Ray Robinson.
I have always been a fan of Robinson, although I am not really sure why. Perhaps it’s because he shared a name with one of my favourite Australian cricket writers, or perhaps it was due to the writings of Jack Pollard who wrote glowingly of Robinson’s aesthetically pleasing batting. His style must have been something as he was compared to previous Gordon champion, Victor Trumper. In the end, Robinson had just one Test for Australia in the Ashes of 1936/37, and unluckily it was played on a sticky wicket. His scores of 2 & 3 saw him dropped and he did not make the Ashes squad for the 1938 tour.
I had no real idea of his war record until reading Service and Sacrifice. Robinson was exposed to heavy fighting in both North Africa and the Middle East. The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that Robinson suffered saw him go AWOL on a number of occasions and end up struggling with life stressors post the war, until his death aged 51.
You’d like to think that in 2025 we have a better understanding of PTSD, however author Stephenson shows this is not the case and he rightly takes Cricinfo to task for their comments on Robinson, “how dare they say, ‘led a shadowed life working as a labourer’. What do Cricinfo know about the suffering he faced in the horrors of war”. It seems that during Robinson’s service, the Australian army showed even less understanding than Cricinfo. Stephenson writes, “Robinson was in a bad way but they just kept sending him back into battle…for god and country”.
I will leave my review there, as I am keen to track down a copy of A Cricket Club at War. As this is also published by The Cricket Publishing Company, I am assured of a top quality product as no doubt it will be up to the same high production values as Service and Sacrifice which is a large format (A4) book with many quality photographs.
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