Innings of a Lifetime

Test series have offered a convincing reminder that there is no more exciting game than cricket.

Especially when a close-fought contest reaches a climax at international level.

In the course of a game, nothing is more thrilling than an innings in which a batsman rises above his fellows and his own shortcomings to play a decisive part in achieving victory — or it may be in avoiding defeat, or in salvaging national pride.

The burly Peter Burge turning defeat into victory for Australia at Leeds in 1964, the young Colin Cowdrey saving England at Melbourne in his first Test series, the unorthodox Bob Barber setting such a frenetic tempo at Sydney that England had time to bowl Australia out twice, the two centuries by Glenn Turner that gave New Zealand their first win over Australia — these are among the examples of the first of these extremes.

No fight back from apparently certain defeat could be more memorable than the way Gary Sobers and his younger cousin David Holford saved the West Indies at Lord’s in 1966 — and very nearly turned the tables on England.

And avoiding national humiliation was the achievement of Asif Iqbal at the Oval in 1967 and Derek Randall at Melbourne in the 1977 Centenary Test.

Ten of these momentous innings are reconstructed here, in the context of the match in which they were played, the series, and the careers of the individual players, and they have provided a rich vein for research and analysis.

But more than that, the greater riches, as the author demonstrates, often lie beneath the surface, to be mined only by talks with the players, and in innings after innings he has truly struck oil.

Readers will do more than re-live these innings as if from the terraces. They will walk to the crease with the batsman, and share the unforgettable experience that each innings contains.

Praise for Ralph Barker:

‘Stories of skill, patience, grit and swashbuckling verve retold in an urgent, compelling style. You are there on the terraces, in the game.’ - Times Educational Supplement

‘Painstaking research coupled with real insight into the temperaments of his heroes gives a peculiarly graphic quality to his writing’ - Sunday Times

‘His versions have the satisfactory roundness and wholeness of brilliantly written short stories.’ - The Field

About the author…

Ralph Barker was born in 1917 and educated at Hounslow College. He joined the editorial staff of Sporting Life in 1934, but later went into banking. Meanwhile, he had begun writing, and several of his sketches and scenes were produced in West End Revue.

In 1940 he joined the RAF as a wireless operator/air-gunner, served in the Middle East and West Africa as well as the UK, and completed 2,000 flying hours before demobilisation in 1946. He returned to banking for a year, and then went into civil aviation as a radio officer. At the end of 1948, Ralph Barker rejoined the RAF and went to Germany as a public relations officer on the Berlin Airlift; he worked on the official airlift history. After two years in Service broadcasting at BFN Hamburg, he was posted to the Air Ministry in November 1952 to work on official war narratives.

His first book Down in the Drink was published in 1955, and in addition to several other non-fiction books with an aviation background, The Schneider Trophy Races, he has written an account of a mountaineering