If a batsman were now and then carried in dead or maimed for life to the pavilion it would increase the interest of the match, draw the public, and make cricket pay.

Benaud’s description of the one-day district competitions made necessary by the economies of the second world war shows that one-day cricket is not simply the result of modem cricket’s need to draw crowds. There were, however, even earlier precedents for this style of cricket. In the early 1890s a decline of interest in Sydney cricket led one supporter to write to the Sydney Morning Herald urging the introduction of a competition almost identical to the present one-day game. The chapters on captaincy and the place of the all-rounder in cricket should be compulsory reading for every player, and especially captains, from school elevens to the national team.

My only real criticism of On Reflection surrounds Benaud’s opening premise that cricket is the most controversial game. It is suggested in the opening two pages that cricket outdoes football, athletics, tennis and even occasionally horse-racing for scandal. As a result the book never really escapes an uneasy tendency toward sensationalism, perhaps an inevitable consequence of Renaud’s training in journalism. His thoughts on sponsorship, television and South Africa will generate a good deal of discussion but no doubt that in itself will be good for the game.

Ashley Mallet’s Trumper: The illustrated biography provides a handsome companion to Michael Page’s Bradman: The illustrated biography which appeared in 1983. The format of these two Macmillan productions is identical and one can only hope that the series will continue. A major difference between the two is that while Page’s biography followed Irving Rosenwater’s comprehensive biography of the Don, Mallett’s illustrated biography of Victor Trumper stands, to date, largely alone. Despite Fingleton’s disappointing The Immortal Victor Trumper, Vasant Ranjii’s Victor Trumper: The beau ideal of a cricketer and Lionel Brown’s Victor Trumper and the 1902 Australians a thorough biography of Australia’s premier batsman of the pre-first world war period remains to be written. Mallett has collected some fine photographs of Trumper and his colleagues but his illustrated biography was clearly, not intended to serve as a complete biography: ‘No doubt there are bits and pieces missing’. In addition to the illustrations, Mallet has made good use of Trumper’s diary of the 1902 tour of England. The diary is selectively quoted to reveal much of Trumper’s character and, despite the obvious drawbacks of using a single source, Mallett generally escapes occasional lapses into the traditional hagiography to provide a more critical and hopefully accurate appraisal of the great batsman’s personality.

Beyond the diary Mallet has relied heavily on published sources for his text and therefore falls into many errors of fact. The Australasian Cricket Council, a forerunner to the modem Australian Cricket Board, was dis­banded in 1900, not, as stated, 1898; during the dispute between the New South Wales Cricket Association and ten leading players in 1906-7 Paddington District Cricket Club did not suspend Trumper or his teammate Monty Noble and was therefore itself temporarily suspended from the Association; the South African team visited Australia in 1910-11, not 1909-10; and it was on the 1912 Australian tour of England, not the 1909 tour, that players were offered a choice between a full share of the net profits and a flat payment of £400 by the recently formed Board of Control. These errors are easily excused, because the book does succeed in telling the basic story of this stylish batsman, from W. G. Grace’s early pronouncement that ‘You’ll never get anywhere as a batsman’, to his early death, from Bright’s disease, in 1915. Nevertheless the book raises more questions than it answers. Why, for example, despite his well-documented poor business sense, was Trumper appointed secretary and later treasurer of the fledgling New South Wales Rugby Football League? Victor Trumper: The illustrated biography is a worthwhile buy, if only for the photographs, but it will be an even more attractive purchase if and when it can be marketed as a companion to a comprehensive biography of Trumper.

In Keith Dunstan’s Horse-racing Dictionary we became acquainted with ‘An A to Z of turfing terms to tickle your fancy ... [a] hilarious guide to the sport of kings’ and in Jim Webster’s RugbyDictionary we are urged to ‘Try laughing with the A to Z of the muddiest, bloodiest sport of all’. These two latest additions to the A to Z of sports series put out by Sun Books over the last few years will inevitably raise a chuckle or twenty, especially when one considers the plentiful cartoons provided by Jeff Hook and Bill Mitchell, respectively. Once the mirth subsides and the trousers are hung out to dry, though, I was left wondering whether, given the lack of good sports writing in this country, two journalists of the calibre of Dunstan and Webster might not have provided a better service to the sporting public by devoting some of their energies to a more constructive analysis of their sports.

On Reflection
By Richie Benaud
Fontana, $7.95 pb, 266p

Trumper: The illustrated biography
By Ashley Mallett
Macmillan, $29.95, 232pp

The Rugby Dictionary
By Jim Webster, illustrated by Bill Mitchell
Sun Books, $7.95, 76pp

The Horse-racing Dictionary
By Keith Dunstan, illustrated by Jeff Hook
Sun Books, $7.95, 84pp