Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes by David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts
I am a big fan of insightful sports books and the type of social and political histories that are Kynaston’s speciality. Kynaston is a massive fan of test cricket, as am I, and that form of the game lends itself perfectly to depictions of sporting prowess, dramatic shifts of momentum in tense contests and, above all, the importance of character. It is also the perfect sport through which to view societal changes, particularly in the fortunes of the England test team as they grapple with the other test playing nations, complicated by the shadow of colonialism, as well as the amateur, professional class divide that characterised the game in this country for most of the twentieth century.
In this cleverly constructed account of the 1961 Ashes test series in England, Kynaston, along with Ricketts, a Kiwi poet and critic, provides an intelligent, nuanced exploration of cricket and the changing world. The writers build the story around a detailed and thorough account of the crucial 4th Test at Old Trafford as well as two great cricketers: Richie Benaud and Peter May.
These two men, both crucial to their teams’ chances of success in the series, could not have been more different. Where Benaud was inclusive, charismatic, imaginative and attack-minded, May was dutiful, cautious and calmly detached.
As captains of their teams and representatives for their two nations, you can see how the writers are setting up a contest between the changing, modern world and an approach rooted in tradition and establishment values. That, however, was how the contest was, to some extent, seen at the time. Both teams were considered rather average outfits. The Aussies, though had just completed a tight but thrilling series victory over the West Indies whereas England were being pressurised to break away from a boring, risk averse approach to the game that was beginning to turn people away from this most English of summer pastimes.
The writers provide concise and telling contextual details about the Aussies’ tour and the first three test matches. This section is full of quaint details such May greeting Benaud and his team at the airport to welcome them to the country. Then we move to a thrilling session by session account of the 4th Test interspersed with fascinating pen portraits of the key players and, most interesting to me, the contemporaneous reports in newspapers and commentary ofrom the cricket correspondents – Engels, Christopher Martin Jenkins, Hutton amongst them but most sonorous, magisterial and imperial of all, Jim Swanton. Here the ebb and flow of this memorable encounter is supplemented with shrewd tactical insights and thrilling evocations of the emotional and psychological tenor out on the field and in the stands.
Many of you will know the result of the game and outcome of the series but I’ll avoid spoilers. Suffice to say, though, that in the final section when the dust has settled the writers provide another concise and intelligent account of the fallout from this series and how it set the course for the next sixty years of cricket in this country, in particular.
Kynaston is well-suited to sketching out the gradual and grudging modernisation of the game (much slower here than elsewhere) and the long periods of underachievement of the England team interspersed with brilliant but infrequent triumphs, often against the odds.
Of course, the sixty years since this series cover the period of the game that my sport mad friends and I have experienced as England cricket fans. Therefore, I was fully engaged by the final section when the authors tell us about the post playing life of these mythic characters – Benaud and May, of course, but also Grout and Davidson two Australian greats, Truman and Statham, the Broad and Anderson of their day with more fruity language, and the aristocratic Dexter and Cowdrey, symbols of what was most noble in the amateur tradition but also most anachronistic. Benaud and May’s after-lives are revealing – the former a hard-boiled crime reporter before his celebrated move to the commentary box and poor old May an extremely unsuccessful chair of selectors before suffering catastrophic financial losses in the 1980s as one of the unfortunate Lloyds’ names.
I know many women find it strange that many men are emotionally attached to sporting memories and the stars of their youth, in particular. It seems perfectly understandable to me, however: the vicissitudes in a game and over a season or the duration of a tour are a microcosm of life itself as are the revelations of character and nobility displayed by our heroes as they deal with these vicissitudes. That’s why I am happy to admit I felt a certain poignancy when reading the final section as the stars of this series made their way from the crease for the last time for that great pavilion in the sky.