The Desperates

GH on John Benaud

John Benaud - brother of the more famous etc - has a new book. Perhaps you haven’t read him. You should. I’ve been given the honour of writing the foreword to The First Ball After Lunch, a memoir of Australia’s 1973 tour of the West Indies and its sequelae. You’ll love the handsome hardback, copiously illustrated, and available here.

John Benaud may be the best cricket writer that Australian never had. He had a successful but brief career as a cricketer, playing three Tests and appearing in three internationals against the Rest of the World; he had a more successful and longer career in journalism, rising from copyboy to editor. But the overlap between the careers was limited, chiefly in the pages of Australian Cricket magazine, rather than in newspapers, or in radio and television. He has also published several short, discursive books, including an excellent memoir cum treatise on his years picking Australian teams, Matters of Choice. But I’m sorry there’s not more of him between covers, for everything bearing his name is shot through with not only a love of the game in all its shades but a pithy, mordant wisdom. Older brother Richie, of course, had the great career in broadcasting, but given the choice I suspect I’d rather read John, and John writing about his own career in First Ball After Lunch is a treat.