The Cricket War

Front Cover
Melbourne Univ. Publishing, 2007 - Performing Arts - 400 pages
It was the end of cricket as we knew it - and the beginning of cricket as we know it. In May 1977, the cricket world woke to discover that a businessman called Kerry Packer had signed 35 international players for his own televised World Series Cricket. This title is an account of the split that changed the game on the field and on the screen.
 

Contents

Prologue Jesus its not going to work
1
These are not professionals
13
You think this is a fucking democracy do you?
29
Where do I sign?
49
How come youre worth all that money?
63
War situation
78
Just like old Aussie eh?
94
If you fuck it up we could lose the whole 12 million
108
Listen about those helmets
208
These people have found truth
224
Rejected dejected were sorry were born
236
I feel very sorry for the Australians
248
I think this Lennie want to kill you man
263
One to the eye one to the bollocks
279
We were representing our country but it wasnt important
294
These are professionals and theyll
309

Half a house brick at a hundred miles an hour
123
We cannot afford to let this man down
137
The best bunch of cricketers Ive ever seen with one exception
151
Its gotta be the worlds most expensive cricket bat
164
Simmo bring down a shit side
177
Sweet reason
192
Afterword to the 2007 edition
327
Complete World Series Cricket Statistics compiled by Ross Dundas
329
Bibliography
379
Index
385
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Gideon Haigh is an Australian journalist and writer, born in 1965. He was educated at Trinity College at the University of Melbourne. He has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines in his thirty years as a journalist. He has written thirty books and edited seven others. His book, On Warne, won the British Sports Book Awards Best Cricket Book of the Year Award, the Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award, the Jack Pollard Trophy, and the Waverley Library Nib Award. The Office won the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction. Other recent titles include Uncertain Corridors: Writings on Modern Cricket, End of the Road?, and The Deserted Newsroom. He was the winner of the 2016 Ned Kelly Awards best true crime award for Certain Admissions.

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