“Watching Brian Lara bat has been a delight to put alongside African sunsets, dry white wine, eating a ripe mango, catching a wave, reading P G Wodehouse and listening to Mozart and Bob Dylan”.
I doubt whether anyone else has captured better the joy of batting epitomized by Brian Charles Lara. This is Peter Roebuck writing at his very best and this is not even a book about the great Trinidadian but an excerpt from “In it to win it---The Australian Cricket Supremacy”
The book puts in context the Australian psyche, the country’s history, the influence of the Chappell brothers, the rise, fall and the rise again of Australian cricket. The book gives an insight into the psyche of Allan Border which was so scarred by repeated defeats by the West Indies that, the great Australian captain displayed timidity when the rivals were down and all but out. It takes you through the Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh eras and ends with the triumph of the Englishmen in the 2005 Ashes. It throws rare vignettes like how Matthew Hayden who destroyed bowling attacks at will actually needed reassurance from his captains to do well.
The book manages to add a context and perspective which is not easily seen in other writers. For instance the rise of Indian cricket is juxtaposed with the country’s economic rise and the ability of its people to embrace the best of both East & West.
In the end the book is much about Roebuck’s felicity with the pen as about Australian cricket. Peter Roebuck may have been a batsman of modest ability and never donned his country’s colors (England) although he had a good record for his county-- Somerset. When it comes to cricket writing he clearly stands a class apart. The former Somerset opener may not be in the business of writing to win it. Maybe reading Roebuck may not give one the same pleasure as watching Lara bat but it comes pretty close. If Lara made the ball race to the boundary with a deft flick of the wrist, Roebuck’s writing has the touch of a master if not a genius. Clearly, the purple patch that eluded him in his career as a cricketer has given way to purple prose.
