Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes

ACS Book of the Week

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Each week we spotlight a fascinating title from the vast collection catalogued in the Cricket Bibliography project, drawing on insightful (but not necessarily positive!) reviews from the archives of our journal. Today we bring you Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes (2024) by David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts, reviewed by Richard Lawrence.

A few years ago David Kynaston collaborated in a parallel study of two contrasting figures, Arlott and Swanton, delivering a book that was one of the best of 2018. Here, in a collaboration with a different author, he has taken a similar approach to two more key figures in post-war cricket history: Richie Benaud and Peter May, and the encounter between the two in the 1961 Ashes series. The free-thinking Aussie and the buttoned-up Englishman may be a cliché, but this doesn’t stop it from being true, as it appears to have been in this case. Benaud had just led the Australians in one of the finest series in cricket history, and had done so innovatively and positively, whereas May had been out of the game for more than a year with injury and had not only his own innate conservatism but also the inhibitions of the county game to contend with.

Posterity has perhaps tarnished the 1961 Ashes with the memories of the often slow and uninspiring nature of cricket in the 1960s, so it is not necessarily a series that is now recalled as a classic. Added to which, of course, England lost the series. But although the play might have been slow at times, and indeed the writers report slow-handclapping in the crowd at times, these passages of play usually reflected periods where the struggle was particularly intense, rather than uninspired cricketers becoming becalmed. There were also periods where bat dominated, and ironically, the authors argue, one of the key shifts in the balance seems to have come when the England tail attempted to force the pace after tea on the third day, resulting in quick wickets, a lower than expected first innings lead and a longer period for the Australian opening batsmen to play themselves in, which had a profound impact on the outcome of the Test.

The authors’ research for the match has been aided not only by the numerous biographies of the leading players and the contemporary books and match reports, but also by an extensive selection of highlights now available on YouTube, which has been a very pleasurable part of my preparation for writing this review. Indeed, the authors quote extensively from the television commentary where it is available, which gives an additional immediacy to the description of the play. It is interesting to note that they have struggled to identify all the voices, although no problem with the inimitable Brian Johnston. Readers’ contributions here would no doubt be welcomed. Contemporary news coverage of the tour includes pundits reflecting on the likelihood that Benaud, struggling with a shoulder injury, would make no meaningful contribution to the series with the ball, which just shows the danger of predictions.

The book is focused on a single match, but the story of the 1961 series is told in brief as part of the background to the match, along with an overview of England in the early 1960s. It is striking that although within living memory of many – although not this reviewer – it feels profoundly different from the England of 2024. The past truly is a foreign country.