Blood on the tracks | Cricketweb

Martin Chandler | 9:18 am GMT November 17, 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 386
Author: Tossel, David
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Rating: 5 stars

I will immediately declare my interest here, as I have been eagerly awaiting this since I first heard it was being written, which must have been two or three years ago now. The reason is simple enough. I remember the Ashes series of 1968 and 1970/71, but the first one I really experienced was 1972, when Ian Chappell's Australians won at the Oval to level matters 2-2. That, of course, meant Ray Illingworth's side kept the urn they had taken to Australia 18 months earlier.

By the time of England's next visit to Australia, in 1974/75, Illingworth was gone and England were captained by a Scot, Mike Denness. Personally, I was now completely into the games, had my own radio that I was allowed to leave in my bedroom and had been given permission by my parents to be able to set an alarm clock and turn it on every morning. listen to the commentary. Later in our evening there was a full highlights package available on BBC2.

And while the result of the series, a thumping 4-1 win against Australia, was disappointing, the match was not like the man with the broken back, Dennis Lillee, and the man no one in England had heard of or seen coming , Jeff Thomson. , produced between them as stunning a display of fast and hostile bowling as I have ever seen.

The images we've seen mean the series is burned into the memory. The newspapers were full of reports, comments and opinions. Somewhat surprisingly, there were only two accounts of the tour in book form, one published here by Christopher Martin-Jenkins, and the other by Frank Tyson in Australia. But beyond that, at some point over the past half century, almost all the major players have appeared in print or been the subject of biographies.

David Tossell, a man whose previous writings have rightly won him numerous awards, is a man who knows how to recreate an earlier Test series, his atmospheric account of the 1976 series between England and the West Indies, Crawl!, being one of the very best of the genre. Sadly, not all the men involved in 1974/75 are still with us, but many are and their memories, together with the fact that Tossell was there, like me, add authority to the story.

So in reality, Tossell shot at an open goal with this project, but as even the best strikers will tell you, it is still possible to miss one. There is no disappointment Blood on the tracks however, because the book is among the very best of its kind, or any kind.

Half a century later, before I opened the book, it was only the field events of 1974/75 that stuck in my memory. But reading this comprehensive report immediately took me back in time and reminded me of the selection dilemmas the selectors faced. They wanted their best batsman, Geoffrey Boycott, but in the end he declined their invitation. On the other hand, they did not want their best fast bowler, John Snow, although he would have been willing to travel.

The touring experience has certainly changed over the course of half a century. Unlike today, there was no entourage among the tourists, who were accompanied by manager Alec Bedser, his assistant Alan Smith and physio Bernard Thomas. Also, quite unlike the modern tour, no fewer than nine matches were scheduled prior to the first Test, four being first-class matches against South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, and the other a relatively undemanding series of upcountry -competitions.

The first part of the tour was not without problems for England, mainly due to injuries. But they went into the first Test unbeaten, and with wins over Queensland and New South Wales. The first day of the first Test, after Australia won the toss and elected to bat, was relatively uneventful. Tossell's writing style is ideally suited to these types of stories. He drives the story, but much of it consists of the observations of those involved, some contemporary, and some with the benefit of hindsight. As a way of describing a cricket match, the benefits of Tossell's approach are vividly demonstrated as England's first innings begins, Lillee and Thomson are released and the pace changes completely.

But Blood on the tracks is not only concerned with events on the field. The elaboration on Colin Cowdreys being called up after the first Test is particularly good, and there is one comment from the old stagers that particularly struck me, namely his reference to taking at least three weeks to get used to Australian conditions. This being his fifth Ashes tour, no one can speak with more authority on that subject than Cowdrey, and it is a clear indication to me that, given the planning for the third decade of the 21st century, England are in all likelihood never going to have a major victory will win. away Ashes series again.

Another issue that intrigued me was the issue of the women and children accompanying the tourists. I did remember that the women had been invited, but I hadn't realized that they were limited to 21 nights with their husbands, and that their physio had the unenviable job of keeping the necessary records. That was a surprising revelation, but what was really shocking was that the players had to pay their families to get them to Australia. In that regard, I also found the fact that Denness was expected to pay for some private medical expenses himself to be quite extraordinary.

The whole story is of course about an English defeat, but the Australians contribute their share of many insights Blood on the tracks offers, and the problems they had are certainly not ignored, an excellent chapter telling the story of Ian Chappell's ongoing struggle to improve the pay received by the Australian players, who in these pre-World Series Cricket days were on the borderline was ridiculous.

The Australians regained the Ashes as they took an unassailable 3-0 lead after winning the fourth Test. At this point Tossell pauses to look at the then contemporary attitude of Australians towards the mother country. It is by no means a long treatise, but, as a consideration which I must admit did not occur to me at the time, throws much light on what turns out to be an interesting and relevant consideration.

Then the Australians dealt another chastening experience to England in the fifth Test before, Thomson was injured and Lillee broke down after just six overs England, with key contributions from the previously ineffective Denness and Keith Fletcher, well supported by John Edrich and Tony Greig . with the bat and Peter Lever with the ball, led to an innings victory, and then it was all over?

Not quite, as this would be the last Ashes tour where, until the very end, a weary and homesick England team visited New Zealand for, on this occasion, two Tests. If it had been a surprise that no one had been seriously injured in Australia, the first of those two Tests was the one in which Ewen Chatfield, hit on the head by a Lever bouncer, could have died without the intervention of England physio Thomas.

And then it was home for the inquest, something I remember well, even though I didn't have access to the Daily mirror at that time I had not yet read Peter Laker's description of the tour the biggest english cricket disaster since the squires of Broadhalfpenny Down invented the gameand his description of the team as an apathetic bunch who have made fools of themselves off the field and acted like clowns in the middle.

Blame was laid everywhere; schools cricket, coaching, the limited overs game, foreign players and the structure of the provincial game were the favorite pet peeves. However, I have to say that at the time I thought the honorable members of the Fourth Estate were a bunch of idiots, although I now understand that their priority was selling newspapers and not necessarily writing what they really thought.

The truth as I saw it then, and as I see it now, was clearly proven by the events that unfolded during that final Tribulation. For ten weeks between late November 1974 and early February 1975, two great fast bowlers were at the absolute peak of their powers, and Blood on the tracks is a wonderful tribute to them, and to all the others who contributed to that remarkable summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

The book itself is very well designed and set out, with a good selection of photos, as well as all the scorecards and tour averages. In addition, there are detailed score sheets for each of the six Tests to please the statistically minded, and of course there is the title of one of Bob Dylan's best albums. Only in one respect Blood on the tracks falling short of perfection. By my arithmetic, seventeen of the men who appeared in the series, seven Englishmen and ten Australians, are still with us and a specially bound limited edition signed by them all would be the ultimate 'must-have' item for the bibliophiles among us.