10 for 66 and all that
Arthur Mailey's 10 for 66 and all that has been lauded to the skies, which is precisely why I should like to crush it to the ground. The cantillation of hackneyed eulogies is never much fun, and iconoclasm always has its merits. But, annoyingly, there is little in Mailey's book with which to find fault. It is undeniably one of the greatest-ever contributions to cricket literature. To pour scorn on it would be like defecating on Bradman's bat.

A.A. Thomson, a great chum of the author, with whom he shared both laughs and initials, described it as a "humorously courageous account of a life which, from its beginning, was hard, harsh and hemmed in by circumstances that could have been sordid. Yet it is a glowing book, wise, tolerant, uproariously funny much of the time and at other times shrewd, original and obviously immensely knowledgeable about the cunning techniques of bowling."

All true -- even, in the case of my copy, the "glowing" bit. Age, mysterious stains and sunning have so yellowed its pages that they now give off an auriferous glow, much akin to the words that they carry.

Thomson challenges anyone to read this book without wanting to meet the man who wrote it. Alas, that is a challenge now redundant for anyone not six feet under.

Mailey numbers among a rare but delightful breed of cricketing eccentrics. Although not quite in the hyperbolic league of latter-day umpire Dickie Bird, his eccentricities are neither self-conscious nor superficial. He does not, unlike the dotty Dickie, trade off his madness, nor feel the need to accentuate it, and his writing is all the better for it.

Born in 1888 to an arduous life in the slums of Sydney, Mailey rose quickly to the top of the cricketing pile. It was, however, a steep and taxing climb, but Mailey relates it with a brevity which makes it rather hard to appreciate.

Much of this book, indeed, is too rushed. Seemingly pivotal events are either skimmed over or neglected altogether. Even the amazing bowling figures which inspired the book's title receive but three pithy paragraphs, and that on the page preceding the contents. Mailey's Test debut emerges almost from the blue, yet even that moment of great fulfillment is dealt with in passing. For a man made to work so hard to move from ghetto to greatness, Mailey recounts this pivotal period of his life in a manner discouragingly hasty and detached.

If his early days were a battle, though, both in writing and in truth, the rest of the book is the furthest thing therefrom. The prose is picturesque, evoking scenery and situation with masterly skill, yet never contrived or pretentious. It was a most refreshing change from the ostentatious deluge of Cardus in which I had been drowning.

The book's most celebrated piece appears in the third chapter, "Opposing My Hero", which deals with Mailey's first encounter with Victor Trumper, the idol of his and every other Australian youth. It holds the reader in a vice of eulogising nostalgia. The melodrama is in this case wholly apposite. Seldom has flighty adoration translated so effectively into text.

His socio-political observations, on the other hand, are painfully strained and snotty: "Being more subject to the moods and whims of other strong nations, England has been forced to shed some of its conservativeness and lean towards a more democratic state of affairs. Unfortunately, this has also meant deterioration in English manners. Jack has become as good as his master, but, alas, lacks his master's innate good taste."

His schlockier moments aside, Mailey employs a simple and conversational style, unassuming and easily understood. He does not take himself too seriously, nor try to emulate his more accomplished literary peers, and appears to extract from authorship the same joy that he took from everything else to which he put his multi-talented hand.

When not ripping leg-breaks or the heart out of England's batting, Mailey was painting or drawing. His cartoons won him wide renown, even outside of cricketing circles, and his autobiography includes some of his best work. It offers as its only plate the watercolour to which The Queen, during a chance encounter at an estate in Sandringham, took mild exception: "I don't think, Mr Mailey, you have painted the sun quite convincingly in this picture."

"Perhaps not Your Majesty," Mailey conceded, a twinkle in his eye. "You see, Your Majesty, in this country I have to paint the sun from memory."

I would dearly have loved to have met that man.