The Fifty Best Australian Cricket Books Of All Time

Archie Mac | 12:00am BST 11 July 2006

Published: 2006
Pages: 27
Author: Cardwell, Ronald
Publisher: Cherrybrook
Rating: 2 stars

Cricket author Ronald Cardwell and Australia’s only full-time cricket book seller Roger Page, set out to choose the 50 best Australian cricket books.

This was no easy task as there have been more than 1000 books published in Australia or written by Australian authors.

But the result is very disappointing.

Rather then ranking the top 50 books in order, they have simply named the 50 best books and have only ranked the top five in order.

The 50 books they have chosen, have just been listed in categories such as biographies and tour books with a bare amount of information such as title, author and published year.

In fact, the whole publication took me just 10 minutes to read.

This small publication could have been so much more – why not a short review of each book?
Or perhaps interviews with some well known authors and having them list their all time five Australian cricket books.

I just don’t understand why they could not have selected all 50 books from one to fifty.

The book is in a limited edition of just 60 numbered copies, 50 of which are available for purchase.

Roger Page was charged with putting the final five in order:

Between Wickets by Ray Robinson (1946)
The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh (1997)
Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith (2003)
Cricket Crisis by Jack Fingleton (1945)
On Top Down Under by Ray Robinson (1975)