Matters South
p. 98 · Read in the full issue
Of Cricket And
African
Cricketers speak a language
other mere mortals cannot hope to understand. And, by the same token, books written by cricketers and devotees are cal culated, at best, to leave those outside the sacred circle com pletely cold. But, in certain re
spects, R. S. Whitington’s book,
Bradman, Benaud and Goddard's
Cinderellas, is mercifully dif
ferent.
WHITINGTON is a professional journalist turned cricket writer.
He was himself an Australian Sheffield Shield cricketer. In 1958 he went to live in South Africa and as a journalist, accompanied the South African cricket team, the Springbok, to Australia during their 1963-64 tour.
Because it is impossible to write even of South African cricket with out also becoming involved in politics and apartheid, Whitington grasps the nettle and devotes a chapter to the thorny subject. What he has to say can be added to the small amount of commonsense that has been recorded on the matter.
Apart from the two profiles on Australia’s “greats” in cricket — Bradman and Benaud—the rest of the book is concerned with the Springbok tour. Most of it is for cricketers only — but there are humourous sidelights.
Australia’s P.M. and premier cricketing fan, Sir Robert Menzies, played host to the team in Canberra, the author records, and told the South Africans he hoped they won the final test.
“How many votes this remark would have cost Sir Robert,” writes Whitington, “had it been made before an election instead of after a highly successful one is a matter of conjecture ... It was he who stood in front of a barrage of rotten tomatoes on the platform of Fremantle Town Hall [on another occasion], and called to his Labour Party persecutors: ‘You’ll never get a game for Australia, Neil Harvey
would have hit me every time’.”
JT.