From the 1960s until the turn of the century, Phil Wilkins was chief cricket writer in turn for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald, then The Australian and The Sun newspapers.
In this autobiography, he remembers great players watched and interviewed, historic events, reviving memories of cricketers, rugby league, rugby union and soccer players, of boxers and tennis titleholders. Among his cavalcade of champions are Rod Laver, Ian and Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Bob Simpson, Bill Lawry and Shane Warne; England’s Freddie Trueman, Ian Botham, Colin Cowdrey and Geoffrey Boycott, the West Indies’ Vivian Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes, the Pakistanis, Javed Miandad and Imran Khan, the Indians, Bishan Singh Bedi and Sunil Gavaskar, and earlier Australian immortals, Keith Miller, Ray Lindwall and Norman O’Neill; in rugby league, Johnny Raper, Ron Coote, Reg Gasnier, Harry Wells and Bobby Fulton; in rugby union, Ray Price and Ken Catchpole, Ewen Mc Kenzie and Phil Kearns, Tim Horan and Jason Little, David Campese and Nick Farr-Jones, all match-winners and game-breakers, the mightiest of performers. But the first of his greats was Melbourne’s Australian Rules captain and later coach, the splendid Ron Barassi.
Above all players, Wilkins praises his littlest hero, the fearless nine-year-old Guyanese boy, Dominic, who saved his life by throwing himself at a pipe-wielding thug at the height of a riot in the World Series Cricket match in Georgetown on the ‘Forgotten tour’ of 1979, when the Australians drew the Super Test series with Clive Lloyd’s world champion West Indians.
Table des matières
Chapter 1 A Gold Fossicker’s Son
Chapter 2 A Good Place to Die
Chapter 3 The Big Smoke
Chapter 4 Broken Hill and Beyond
Chapter 5 Nemesis
Chapter 6 Horse Heaven
Chapter 7 Steel City
Chapter 8 The Soccer Revolution
Chapter 9 The Gattellari Boys
Chapter 10 Rugby League: The Hard Men
Chapter 1 1 M.J.K.
Chapter 12 Tiger Bill O’Reilly
Chapter 13 Bish
Chapter 14 White Dog
Chapter 15 Phanto’s Tour
Chapter 16 Wimbledon 1968
Chapter 17 South Africa’s Revival 1970
Chapter 18 Illy’s Urn
Chapter 19 Chappelli’s Tour: 1972
Chapter 20 Thommo, the Hell-Raiser
Chapter 21 Up the Jumper
Chapter 22 The Chappell Brothers’ Golden Years 1974-76
Chapter 23 The Centenary Test
Chapter 24 Marsh’s Accession, Hughes’ Initiation
Chapter 25 WSC and Sheff
Chapter 26 The Ragamuffin
Chapter 27 Simmo in the Windies (1978)
Chapter 28 The Forgotten Tour
Chapter 29 Dominic
Chapter 30 Order of the Boot
Chapter 31 Jonesy, 1983 and Beyond
Chapter 32 The 1984 Grand Slam
Chapter 33 Hell’s Kitchen
Chapter 34 Kim’s Crown of Thorns
Chapter 35 Clive’s Counsel
Chapter 36 A Horse Named John (1984)
Chapter 37 The 1987 Rugby World Cup
Chapter 38 Two-Step Tango; Lillee vs Miandad
Chapter 39 My Mate Malik
Chapter 40 Island in the Sun 1995
Chapter 41 Road’s End
Epilogue
Appendix
A propos de l’auteur
Born in Broken Hill in 1939, Phil Wilkins was educated in remote Waratah (Tasmania), Broken Hill, Drake and Lismore, gaining his tertiary degree in the Broadway gutters and back streets of Sydney as a newspaper cadet police roundsman in 1958 with The Sydney Morning Herald.Ever the leg-spinning cricket devotee and rugby league player, placing sport before academic honours, becoming a graded journalist after three years as a cadet, he temporarily abandoned the newspaper game to spend two years labouring and playing rugby union in New Zealand. Recalled to the Herald, he became the Australian Rules reporter and ultimately its chief cricket writer in 1967.This highly regarded sports journalist spent 45 years with the Herald, the Sun-Herald and The Australian newspapers as well as becoming the Australian correspondent for the Wisden Cricket Almanack and Cricketer magazine, before retirement in 2003, receiving the Walkley Award for outstanding journalism in 2004. He continues as the rugby union writer for the Great Lakes Advocate in Forster as well as the Manning River Times of Taree.
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