Rating: 4/5
Review:
Good in parts...
I found this a mixed bag of a book. The 200 or so pages which are actually about David Lloyd's personal involvement in The Ashes as player, coach and commentator are pretty good, but there's some very thin stuff and some out-and-out padding, too. If you like Bumble's sense of humour you may well love this book. I'm not so keen on it myself so I didn't find it as hilarious as some people, but he's a knowledgeable and thoughtful bloke under the oh-so-jokey persona and there was enough here to make me glad I'd read it.
The meat of the book is Bumble's personal thoughts and experiences of The Ashes (including, of course, the Thommo at Perth incident which causes every male cricket lover to wince and cross his legs at its very mention), and his thoughts and insights into the players, staff and tactics are well worth reading. It's not the best-written of books, with, an especially idiosyncratic, use of commas. This, coupled with the lightweight rush through some Ashes history to start with, and two frankly dire chapters toward the end which consist of unfunny "comedy" stuff about his wife, his local football club and random press cuttings about sexual practices made me think that this had been padded and rushed out in time to cash in on the 2013 series rather than properly, thoughtfully written and edited. And the cover...dear Lord!
I've given this four stars (just) because I did enjoy the real Ashes stuff and found it interesting and quite often insightful. It's not a great book by any means, but there's enough here to provide a couple of diverting hours between Test Matches.
(Oh, and nothing to do with the overall quality of the book, but he's picked an "All-Time Ashes XI" which doesn't include Bradman. That's right. No Bradman. I mean, come on, Bumble - there's a difference between being a cross-grained individualist and being plain wrong, mate.)
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