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Cricket's Greatest Rivalry: FREE SAMPLER A History of the Ashes in 10 Matches
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The Book
A gripping, distinctive history of the iconic, 135-year-old cricketing rivalry between England and Australia. Award-winning author Simon Hughes brings to life the history of the Ashes through 10 of the most iconic matches in the fixture's 135-year history. With an innovative and distinctive approach Hughes selects each match as a narrative spine packed with thrillingly evocative detail, alongside the issues, controversies, heroes and villains of each match. With both fascinating analysis of ten unforgettable Test matches and fast-paced history of cricket's fiercest rivalry, this is the perfect way for cricket lovers, both English and Australian, to prepare for the ten-match feast of Ashes cricket that begins in Nottingham in July 2013 and ends in Sydney in January 2014. It includes complete statistics and records of all the Ashes fixtures and results.
The Tatser
The free chapter tells the story of the Third Test in Adelaide in 1933, which was part of the infamous ‘bodyline series’. It gives you the build up from 1928 and carries right through to the aftermath of Jardine’s controversial tactics.- GenresNonfictionHistorySports
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2013
4 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Simon Hughes
56 books29 followersSimon Peter Hughes is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor Peter Hughes, and the brother of historian Bettany Hughes.
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 10, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads # Cricket
Books about the Ashes are almost a genre unto themselves. In cricket literature, the Ashes rivalry functions as both myth and archive: the birthplace of modern Test drama, the crucible in which legends are forged, the longest-running soap opera in sport.
Every generation has produced its own accounts, from Sir Neville Cardus’s lyricism to Gideon Haigh’s meticulous dissections, from Mike Brearley’s cerebral captain’s eye to the countless compilations of statistics and match reports.
So when Simon Hughes, the former Middlesex fast-medium bowler turned television analyst and writer, published Cricket’s Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in 10 Matches, he entered a crowded field.
What distinguished his effort was not a new archive or radical thesis but a narrative device: to tell the story of 140 years of Ashes history through ten matches, ten crystallised encounters that encapsulate the essence of the rivalry. It was a clever conceit, journalistic in pace, accessible in tone, designed for the reader who wants to feel the sweep of history without drowning in detail.
What I held in my hands, though, was not the full book but the Free Sampler edition—a taster, a highlights reel, a bite-sized distillation of Hughes’s larger argument. Moreover, here the personal enters: my mother gave it to me on September 24, 2016, as a birthday gift. That mattered more than the number of pages. Books received from one’s mother are never just books; they are acts of care, acknowledgments of who you are, what obsessions define you. For me, cricket books have always been talismans, markers of relationship as much as reading. The sampler may have been slim, but the gesture was vast. It was as if she were saying: here is the story you already half-know, wrapped up in the format of memory, carry it forward.
Reading the sampler was therefore a layered experience. On the surface, Hughes’ style is brisk and anecdotal, the style of someone who has lived the game but also made a career explaining it to others. He has always been the “Analyst,” the man in TV studios with graphics and insights, and his prose bears that signature: crisp sentences, sharp descriptions, and an eye for the turning point. In the sampler, one gets glimpses of his selection of matches: the famous 1882 Oval Test where England “died” and the Ashes were born; the “Bodyline” series of 1932–33; Botham’s Headingley miracle in 1981; Warne’s Ball of the Century in 1993; Flintoff at Edgbaston in 2005. Each is treated not as dry scorecard but as drama, populated by personalities, framed as conflict. Hughes is good at this: he sketches characters quickly—Jardine’s icy ruthlessness, Larwood’s working-class fury, Botham’s swagger, Warne’s sorcery—so that the matches feel like short stories, each with a cast and a climax.
However, reading a sampler is like watching a highlights package when you have been raised on full Tests. You get the sixes and wickets, but you miss the grind, the slow build, the false starts, the sessions of attrition that make the climax matter. There were moments when I wanted to linger in the spaces between, to know not just what happened in the decisive Test but how it felt in the weeks before and after, how the newspapers reacted, how the crowds behaved. The full book, I knew, would give me more.
Yet there was something strangely apt about having only the sampler. It forced me to engage not with completeness but with essence, to ask: what makes a rivalry endure? Why these ten matches and not others? What is the distilled DNA of the Ashes?
Hughes’ method, at least as glimpsed in the sampler, is to treat the Ashes as a narrative arc where cricket reflects national character. England the custodians of tradition, Australia the challengers who turn irreverence into dominance. Bodyline, for example, is not just fast bowling but a clash of empire and colony, class and defiance.
The 1981 Ashes are not just Botham’s revival but Thatcher-era Britain finding a swagger in sport amid economic gloom. The 2005 Ashes are not just Flintoff’s heroics but also the rebirth of cricket as a national obsession in an era of football dominance. Hughes is not as literary as CLR James, not as philosophical as Brearley, but he has a knack for showing how the matches mattered beyond the field. That gift of contextualisation, even in brief form, makes his narrative stick.
The sampler also reminded me of the peculiar role of the Ashes in cricket literature compared to, say, India–Pakistan cricket. Where Indo-Pak matches are often described as war by proxy, laden with politics and pain, the Ashes are treated more like a saga, a heritage.
They are fierce, yes, but they are also oddly affectionate. England and Australia are rivals, but they are also co-parents of the game, custodians of its oldest rituals. Hughes taps into this tone: even when describing brutal contests, he maintains an undercurrent of respect, of continuity. There is fire, but there is also fraternity. For someone raised on the subcontinent’s blood-and-thunder rivalries, that gentler tone was almost refreshing.
The sampler, in its brevity, also made me think about the act of choosing “ten matches.” Selection is always exclusion. Why Headingley ’81 and not Adelaide ’93? Why Flintoff at Edgbaston and not Cook’s 2010–11 masterpiece? Hughes’ choices reveal his priorities: he wants drama, turning points, the matches that are remembered not only for scores but also for images.
Botham walking off with bat raised, Warne’s ball to Gatting, Flintoff consoling Brett Lee. These are not just cricketing moments; they are visual myths, replayed endlessly on television. In that sense, Hughes is not writing a historian’s book but a broadcaster’s book. He is less interested in the forgotten classics than in the canonical highlights. Some might criticise this as superficial, but I saw it as honest. He writes for memory, not for archive.
What deepened the experience for me was the temporal frame: reading it in 2016, a year that was itself rich in cricket drama. By then, Australia were no longer invincible, England had new heroes in Root and Stokes, and the Ashes themselves felt renewed with every cycle.
Reading Hughes then was like dipping into a well of continuity, reminding myself that every Ashes series is not isolated but part of a story stretching back to 1882. It made my own fandom feel less like a hobby and more like participation in an ongoing epic. In addition, because the book came as a birthday gift from my mother, it tied that epic to the intimacy of family.
The Ashes rivalry was suddenly not just about England and Australia; it was about me and her, about the act of being seen, of being given a book that spoke to my passions.
In comparing Hughes to other Ashes writers, one realises his niche. Gideon Haigh, in books like On Warne, writes with a literary elegance that situates cricket in philosophy and culture. Mike Atherton, in his columns and books, writes with the insider’s tactical precision. Brearley, in The Art of Captaincy, turns Ashes anecdotes into lessons in leadership. Hughes is different: he writes for the general reader, the fan who wants to relive the great days without academic scaffolding. In the sampler, that populist gift comes through clearly.
He is less poet, more narrator. And sometimes, that is exactly what you want: a voice to guide you through the noise of history to the signal moments.
Yet the sampler also left me hungry. I wanted the full ten matches, the complete arc. I wanted to linger in the Bodyline saga, to understand not just Jardine’s tactics but Larwood’s conscience, Bradman’s adjustments, the MCC’s embarrassment. I wanted the full sweep of 2005, not just Edgbaston but also the series as a whole, the Oval finale, the nation’s rediscovery of cricket. The sampler dangled these like teasers, like seeing the trailers of films you long to watch. In this sense, it was both satisfying and frustrating. But perhaps that is the point: a sampler is designed to ignite appetite, to leave you wanting.
Looking back, nearly a decade later, I think less of what the sampler lacked and more of what it gave. It gave me a reminder that cricket’s greatest rivalry is not only about winners and losers but about storytelling. It gave me Simon Hughes’ crisp, explanatory voice, a reminder of why he became the “Analyst” in the first place. It gave me the connection to my mother, her quiet recognition that this was the sort of book that would make me happy. In 2016, that gift was both acknowledgment and invitation: acknowledgment of my lifelong obsession, invitation to keep reading, keep collecting, keep immersing.
In the pantheon of cricket books I have read since, the Hughes sampler does not rank among the most profound. It is not Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field, not CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary, not even Osman Samiuddin’s The Unquiet Ones. But it does not need to be. Its value is not only literary but emotional. It sits on my shelf as a reminder of a birthday, a gift, a bond, and the peculiar joy of reading cricket history in fragments. Sometimes the fragments are enough. Sometimes they even speak louder than the whole.
Therefore, when I think of Hughes’ Cricket’s Greatest Rivalry, I do not think of ten matches or even one. I think of the act of receiving it, opening it, sampling it, letting it transport me into the Oval in 1882, into Brisbane in 1932, into Leeds in 1981, into Edgbaston in 2005.
I think of my mother, who gave me the book. I think of how cricket books are never just cricket books, but vessels of memory, tokens of affection, mirrors of identity. The sampler may have been thin, but the memory it carries is weighty. That is why it matters, that is why it endures, that is why I write of it now, nearly a decade later, with the same affection as if it were a full-length volume.
In the end, that is the strange alchemy of cricket literature: the way a book, even a sampler, can carry both history and intimacy, myth and memory, fire and affection.
Hughes told the story of the Ashes in ten matches. My mother told the story of me, through one gift. Both stories, in their way, endure.
Books about the Ashes are almost a genre unto themselves. In cricket literature, the Ashes rivalry functions as both myth and archive: the birthplace of modern Test drama, the crucible in which legends are forged, the longest-running soap opera in sport.
Every generation has produced its own accounts, from Sir Neville Cardus’s lyricism to Gideon Haigh’s meticulous dissections, from Mike Brearley’s cerebral captain’s eye to the countless compilations of statistics and match reports.
So when Simon Hughes, the former Middlesex fast-medium bowler turned television analyst and writer, published Cricket’s Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes in 10 Matches, he entered a crowded field.
What distinguished his effort was not a new archive or radical thesis but a narrative device: to tell the story of 140 years of Ashes history through ten matches, ten crystallised encounters that encapsulate the essence of the rivalry. It was a clever conceit, journalistic in pace, accessible in tone, designed for the reader who wants to feel the sweep of history without drowning in detail.
What I held in my hands, though, was not the full book but the Free Sampler edition—a taster, a highlights reel, a bite-sized distillation of Hughes’s larger argument. Moreover, here the personal enters: my mother gave it to me on September 24, 2016, as a birthday gift. That mattered more than the number of pages. Books received from one’s mother are never just books; they are acts of care, acknowledgments of who you are, what obsessions define you. For me, cricket books have always been talismans, markers of relationship as much as reading. The sampler may have been slim, but the gesture was vast. It was as if she were saying: here is the story you already half-know, wrapped up in the format of memory, carry it forward.
Reading the sampler was therefore a layered experience. On the surface, Hughes’ style is brisk and anecdotal, the style of someone who has lived the game but also made a career explaining it to others. He has always been the “Analyst,” the man in TV studios with graphics and insights, and his prose bears that signature: crisp sentences, sharp descriptions, and an eye for the turning point. In the sampler, one gets glimpses of his selection of matches: the famous 1882 Oval Test where England “died” and the Ashes were born; the “Bodyline” series of 1932–33; Botham’s Headingley miracle in 1981; Warne’s Ball of the Century in 1993; Flintoff at Edgbaston in 2005. Each is treated not as dry scorecard but as drama, populated by personalities, framed as conflict. Hughes is good at this: he sketches characters quickly—Jardine’s icy ruthlessness, Larwood’s working-class fury, Botham’s swagger, Warne’s sorcery—so that the matches feel like short stories, each with a cast and a climax.
However, reading a sampler is like watching a highlights package when you have been raised on full Tests. You get the sixes and wickets, but you miss the grind, the slow build, the false starts, the sessions of attrition that make the climax matter. There were moments when I wanted to linger in the spaces between, to know not just what happened in the decisive Test but how it felt in the weeks before and after, how the newspapers reacted, how the crowds behaved. The full book, I knew, would give me more.
Yet there was something strangely apt about having only the sampler. It forced me to engage not with completeness but with essence, to ask: what makes a rivalry endure? Why these ten matches and not others? What is the distilled DNA of the Ashes?
Hughes’ method, at least as glimpsed in the sampler, is to treat the Ashes as a narrative arc where cricket reflects national character. England the custodians of tradition, Australia the challengers who turn irreverence into dominance. Bodyline, for example, is not just fast bowling but a clash of empire and colony, class and defiance.
The 1981 Ashes are not just Botham’s revival but Thatcher-era Britain finding a swagger in sport amid economic gloom. The 2005 Ashes are not just Flintoff’s heroics but also the rebirth of cricket as a national obsession in an era of football dominance. Hughes is not as literary as CLR James, not as philosophical as Brearley, but he has a knack for showing how the matches mattered beyond the field. That gift of contextualisation, even in brief form, makes his narrative stick.
The sampler also reminded me of the peculiar role of the Ashes in cricket literature compared to, say, India–Pakistan cricket. Where Indo-Pak matches are often described as war by proxy, laden with politics and pain, the Ashes are treated more like a saga, a heritage.
They are fierce, yes, but they are also oddly affectionate. England and Australia are rivals, but they are also co-parents of the game, custodians of its oldest rituals. Hughes taps into this tone: even when describing brutal contests, he maintains an undercurrent of respect, of continuity. There is fire, but there is also fraternity. For someone raised on the subcontinent’s blood-and-thunder rivalries, that gentler tone was almost refreshing.
The sampler, in its brevity, also made me think about the act of choosing “ten matches.” Selection is always exclusion. Why Headingley ’81 and not Adelaide ’93? Why Flintoff at Edgbaston and not Cook’s 2010–11 masterpiece? Hughes’ choices reveal his priorities: he wants drama, turning points, the matches that are remembered not only for scores but also for images.
Botham walking off with bat raised, Warne’s ball to Gatting, Flintoff consoling Brett Lee. These are not just cricketing moments; they are visual myths, replayed endlessly on television. In that sense, Hughes is not writing a historian’s book but a broadcaster’s book. He is less interested in the forgotten classics than in the canonical highlights. Some might criticise this as superficial, but I saw it as honest. He writes for memory, not for archive.
What deepened the experience for me was the temporal frame: reading it in 2016, a year that was itself rich in cricket drama. By then, Australia were no longer invincible, England had new heroes in Root and Stokes, and the Ashes themselves felt renewed with every cycle.
Reading Hughes then was like dipping into a well of continuity, reminding myself that every Ashes series is not isolated but part of a story stretching back to 1882. It made my own fandom feel less like a hobby and more like participation in an ongoing epic. In addition, because the book came as a birthday gift from my mother, it tied that epic to the intimacy of family.
The Ashes rivalry was suddenly not just about England and Australia; it was about me and her, about the act of being seen, of being given a book that spoke to my passions.
In comparing Hughes to other Ashes writers, one realises his niche. Gideon Haigh, in books like On Warne, writes with a literary elegance that situates cricket in philosophy and culture. Mike Atherton, in his columns and books, writes with the insider’s tactical precision. Brearley, in The Art of Captaincy, turns Ashes anecdotes into lessons in leadership. Hughes is different: he writes for the general reader, the fan who wants to relive the great days without academic scaffolding. In the sampler, that populist gift comes through clearly.
He is less poet, more narrator. And sometimes, that is exactly what you want: a voice to guide you through the noise of history to the signal moments.
Yet the sampler also left me hungry. I wanted the full ten matches, the complete arc. I wanted to linger in the Bodyline saga, to understand not just Jardine’s tactics but Larwood’s conscience, Bradman’s adjustments, the MCC’s embarrassment. I wanted the full sweep of 2005, not just Edgbaston but also the series as a whole, the Oval finale, the nation’s rediscovery of cricket. The sampler dangled these like teasers, like seeing the trailers of films you long to watch. In this sense, it was both satisfying and frustrating. But perhaps that is the point: a sampler is designed to ignite appetite, to leave you wanting.
Looking back, nearly a decade later, I think less of what the sampler lacked and more of what it gave. It gave me a reminder that cricket’s greatest rivalry is not only about winners and losers but about storytelling. It gave me Simon Hughes’ crisp, explanatory voice, a reminder of why he became the “Analyst” in the first place. It gave me the connection to my mother, her quiet recognition that this was the sort of book that would make me happy. In 2016, that gift was both acknowledgment and invitation: acknowledgment of my lifelong obsession, invitation to keep reading, keep collecting, keep immersing.
In the pantheon of cricket books I have read since, the Hughes sampler does not rank among the most profound. It is not Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field, not CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary, not even Osman Samiuddin’s The Unquiet Ones. But it does not need to be. Its value is not only literary but emotional. It sits on my shelf as a reminder of a birthday, a gift, a bond, and the peculiar joy of reading cricket history in fragments. Sometimes the fragments are enough. Sometimes they even speak louder than the whole.
Therefore, when I think of Hughes’ Cricket’s Greatest Rivalry, I do not think of ten matches or even one. I think of the act of receiving it, opening it, sampling it, letting it transport me into the Oval in 1882, into Brisbane in 1932, into Leeds in 1981, into Edgbaston in 2005.
I think of my mother, who gave me the book. I think of how cricket books are never just cricket books, but vessels of memory, tokens of affection, mirrors of identity. The sampler may have been thin, but the memory it carries is weighty. That is why it matters, that is why it endures, that is why I write of it now, nearly a decade later, with the same affection as if it were a full-length volume.
In the end, that is the strange alchemy of cricket literature: the way a book, even a sampler, can carry both history and intimacy, myth and memory, fire and affection.
Hughes told the story of the Ashes in ten matches. My mother told the story of me, through one gift. Both stories, in their way, endure.
November 7, 2017
I thought this a good concept for a book about the history of the Ashes, but unfortunately Simon Hughes wasn’t up to the task of writing it. The book is largely just a rehash of facts and lacks any in-depth analysis or insight. The author’s obvious English partisanship, writing style and lame jokes also start to grate after a while. Do yourself a favour and read something by Gideon Haigh instead.
September 26, 2022
Really enjoyed this book. It brought some of the legendary games alive! The descriptions of the cricket itself were fantastic.
December 9, 2024
Just ok for me..a pleasant plane trip read on my way to some cricket..knew most the stories and did not add that much..writing was ok
January 12, 2016
I read this book flushed from seeing an historic game of cricket between England and South Africa at Newlands, in Cape Town, from January 2 to 6, and so was primed to read a ripping story about cricket. The conceit of basing a book on 10 matches is merely that—there's plenty about the entire history of Ashes cricket and lots that has nothing to do with the matches themselves. Not surprisingly perhaps, the book came alive for me from the 1970s onwards (my personal history of cricket beginning then), although Hughes does his best to give you a flavor of the matches of the past. The book narrowly (and not always successfully) skirts falling into a report of match after match, and the characters can blur into a series of stats and adjectives, but Hughes manages to keep the whole thing going quite well. To my relief, Hughes is non-jingoistic and finds some of the rivalry and snobbery absurd, and the book recognizes that a lot of people have spent far too much time investing too much energy into what, in essence, is a game. I'm not a big aficionado of cricket books, but this strikes me as a worthy effort. One word of warning: my hardcover version contains neither the 2013 Australian loss, nor the 2013-14 Australian win, or the 2015 England takeback.
March 12, 2015
Hughes is a good writer and tells the tale well. The problem is that the story is so well known there is little to add. That said after the misery of the world cup campaign i was happy to read the 2005 chapter. What a series, it never disappoints. I think I'll dust off the DVD...
November 5, 2013
American readers won't understand a word of it, but this is a terrific condensed history of one of the greatest ongoing sports rivalries.
January 2, 2015
Great read for cricket tragics
July 7, 2016
My first cricket book and very enjoyable too. Enjoyed the history, anecdotes and gripping descriptions of the matches, especially the more recent ones.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews