Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket
Christian Ryan
**Voted Wisden Cricket Monthly's best cricket book ever in 2019**
WINNER, BEST CRICKET BOOK, BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2010
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Golden Boy is a blistering exposé of the tumultuous Lillee/Marsh/Chappells era of Australian cricket, as viewed through the lens of flawed genius Kim Hughes.
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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.
Product Details
About Christian Ryan
Reviews for Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket
William Fiennes, member of Wisden Cricket Monthly's Best Cricket Book Ever judging panel At once unputdownable and also unpickupable, because if you pick it up you will eventually finish it, and what are you going to do then?
Rob Smyth
Guardian
It made me laugh, it told me things, it reminded me why I love the subject I'm reading about and it put a series of images in my head that I won't ever forget. It's audacious, it's got chutzpah, it's done with a lyrical flourish. I didn't know cricket books could be written like this.
Phil Walker, editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly 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
Graphic ... Shocking ... Devastating ... If half of what we read here is true, two Australian legends should hang their heads in shame.
Simon Wilde
The Times
A valuable archive of the professional cricketer's lot during the 1980s - paltry wages, petty officials, vermin-infested hotels and astonishing levels of alcohol consumption ... a fascinating account of Australian cricket's leanest years.
Times Literary Supplement
Absolutely superb, one of the best cricket books I've read.
John Stern
The Wisden Cricketer