Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket

Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket

by Christian Ryan (Author)

Synopsis

Kim Hughes was one of the most majestic and daring batsmen to play for Australia in the last 40 years. Golden curled and boyishly handsome, his rise and fall as captain and player is unparalleled in cricketing history. He played several innings that count as all-time classics, but it's his tearful resignation from the captaincy that is remembered. Insecure but arrogant, abrasive but charming; in Hughes' character were the seeds of his own destruction. Yet was Hughes' fall partly due to those around him, men who are themselves legends in Australia's cricketing history? Lillee, Marsh, the Chappells, all had their agendas, all were unhappy with his selection and performance as captain - evidenced by Dennis Lillee's tendency to aim bouncers relentlessly at Hughes' head during net practice. Hughes' arrival on the Test scene coincided with the most turbulent time Australian cricket has ever seen - first Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket, then the rebel tours to South Africa. Both had dramatic effects on Hughes' career. As he traces the high points and the low, Christian Ryan sheds new and fascinating light on the cricket - and the cricketers - of the times.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 01 Oct 2010

ISBN 10: 1742374638
ISBN 13: 9781742374635
Book Overview: Voted Cricket Book of the Year at the 2010 British Sports Book Awards, Golden Boy is a blistering expose of the tumultuous Lillee/Marsh/Chappells era of Australian cricket, as viewed through the lens of flawed genius Kim Hughes.

Media Reviews
A cracking read ... An almost tragic but compelling tale of how Hughes tried hard - and failed - to fit his smiling personality into the hard-faced world of his country's uniquely macho and badly moustached team. * The Observer *
Absolutely superb, one of the best cricket books I've read. -- John Stern * The Wisden Cricketer *
Author Bio
Christian Ryan has edited Australian Wisden, Inside Edge and The Monthly, and has worked as a journalist on The Guardian. Several years of research, interviewing over a hundred players, officials and cricket followers, have enabled him to provide a fresh and often controversial perspective on a formative period of Australian cricket.