Richie Benaud’s Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic

by David Kynaston, Harry Ricketts

David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts relive the compelling story of a gripping Ashes-deciding Test match that heralded the dawn of an new era for English cricket.

The Ashes are on the line as England and Australia meet at Old Trafford in July 1961 for the fourth Test. For most of the match, England have their noses ahead – until a dramatic final day, of intensely fluctuating fortunes, as the tourists eventually storm to victory. In short, an Ashes classic, told here by David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts in vivid and immersive detail, recreating the sometimes agonising experience of millions of armchair viewers and listeners.

At the heart of 'Richie Benaud's Blue Suede Shoes' are two strikingly contrasting England's captain, the Cambridge-educated, risk-averse, establishment-minded Peter May; and Australia's captain, the charismatic, risk-taking, open-minded Benaud – a contrast not only between two individuals, but between two cricketing and indeed national cultures. Whereas Benaud and Australia symbolised a new, meritocratic era, May and England seemed, in what was still an amateur-dominated game, to look back to an old imperial legacy out of sync with the dawning Sixties.

The sharply observed final chapters take the story up to the present day. They relate the 'after-lives' of the match's key participants, including Ted Dexter, Bill Lawry and Fred Trueman as well as May and Benaud; trace the continuing chequered relationship between English cricket and broader social change; and, after six more decades of fierce Ashes rivalry, wrestle with the perennial conundrum for all England supporters – why do the baggy green caps usually beat us?

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 23, 2024

About the author

David Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written eighteen books, including The City of London (1994-2001), a widely acclaimed four-volume history, and W.G.'s Birthday Party, an account of the Gentleman vs. the Players at Lord's in July 1898. He is the author of Austerity Britain, 1945-51, the first title in a series of books covering the history of post-war Britain (1945-1979) under the collective title "Tales of a New Jerusalem".

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Kynaston is one of our greatest historians; his monumental histories of the City of London and the Bank of England are the standard texts on their subjects and more recently his remarkable series of books on postwar social history(Austerity Britain, Family Britain, Modernity Britain, etc) have received excellent academic reviews and been popular bestsellers. He also has a successful sideline in cricket books, usually from a social history viewpoint. His joint biography (with Stephen Fay) of John Arlott and Jim Swanton painted a marvellous picture of the game through two very different characters with opposing politics and social views, and his latest book (written with longtime friend Harry Ricketts) does something similar with the contrasting attitudes and assumptions of the captains of the 1961 Ashes series; the public-school educated, City gent Peter May, and Richie Benaud, the charismatic, unconventional Australian captain, a journalist by profession and alert to the demands of the new media age just emerging. This is the period of the last gasp of the ‘gentlemen and players’ distinction in English cricket (officially, at least: one of the key themes of the book is how the game has continued to be shaped - very much for the worst - by casual elitism, southern bias and old boys networks, unlike the more meritocratic approach in Australia). Kynaston and Ricketts tell a thoroughly engaging and entertaining story of the 1961 campaign, focusing in particular on the Fourth Test at Old Trafford, which, they argue, represents a turning point in the history of English cricket and holds a mirror up to wider social changes that were already underway or on the horizon. With a cast of fascinating characters, and expert storytelling and analysis, the reader is carried along on a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking tour de force. A must-read for cricket lovers and anyone interested in the social history of postwar Britain.

[Gerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the legendary Max Boyce once used to say, 'I was there' so this book brings back many happy memories for me, despite the disappointing result!

'Richie Benaud's Blue Suede Shoes' is an interesting concept in book writing for while it covers the Australian cricket tour of England in 1961, it majors on one match in that series, the Fourth Test at Manchester's Old Trafford. And it was a match that provided plenty of drama, sufficient to be able to give perhaps two-thirds of this book to a most exhilarating account of the game.

As a youngster, I followed this Australian tour to such a degree that as it went along I wrote a book about it, and just like David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts I also dwelt at length on the Old Trafford Test. That was primarily because I attended every day, indeed scored the game every day in the traditional way and with wagon wheel charts of where the runs were scored by each batsman and it was the game that secured the Ashes for Australia for another few years.

The authors lead up to the game in question by discussing the merits of the two captains, Peter May of England and Richie Benaud. There follows a brief account of the tour up as it unwound up to the
game under discussion. And in that lead up is a newspaper headline that I have always remembered (and the authors also mention it), 'Lawry, Lawry Hallelujah'. As an impressionistic teenager I immediately took a liking to Bill Lawry, who was on his first tour of England, as he seemed to be scoring runs wherever he played; centuries seemed to come along regularly. Thankfully he kept it up and made a century in the match in question, much to my delight.

The lead-up to the first Test saw, unlike today, the Australians play 11 first-class games so they were well tuned up for Edgbaston and after bowling England out for a paltry 195, Australia replied with 516-9 declared with Neil Harvey making 114. Fortunately, Raman Subba Row, 112, and Ted Dexter (another great favourite of mine), 180, saved the day in a drawn game.

The second Test at Lord's went, reasonably comfortably, to Australia by five wickets but the third at Headingley saw England level the series with an eight-wicket victory and so we come to Old Trafford on 27 July at one game all and the Ashes still to play for.

I was fortunate to have relatives in nearby Heywood so I stayed with them and was at the ground before eight o'clock for an 11am start every day! Just as well for it was a full house or near enough each day. And what a game it turned out to be and, with only the loss of most of the afternoon's play on the opening day, it continued until 5.40pm on the final day. Sadly England lost by 54 runs after looking to have the game in the bag at mid-afternoon on the final day.

I won't go into details so as not to spoil it for potential readers but suffice it to say that some of my heroes made good, Lawry 74 and 102, Brian Statham 5-53 in the Australian first innings and Geoff Pullar, 63 in England's first innings, and finally Dexter who made a magnificent 76 in the second innings. And I was fortunate enough to spend time with Ted Dexter at Hove in 2009 when we discussed the game at length. With Australia having secured the Ashes, the fifth Test at The Oval was drawn thus Australia won the series 2-1.

There were so many talking points about that Old Trafford defeat, one of which placed partial blame on an England player and, ironically, it was the same player that I thought was largely responsible for our defeat all those years ago. The book discusses all these points and goes on to look ahead to the prospects of the 1962/63 series down under.

Interestingly there is mention of the selections for the tour and the question of the appointment of a manager. It was to be, much to everybody's surprise, the Duke of Norfolk. Obviously not in the book, but I can support the questionability of this choice by adding that Ted Dexter told me about how this came about. Dexter was England's captain for the tour and he told me that at the pre-tour selection meeting at which the Duke was present, having been MCC President in 1956/57 and was still a member of the MCC Committee, the question of who was to manage the tour came up. And before anyone could speak the Duke spoke up and stated that he intended to do so and nobody felt that they could countermand his statement!

Ted went on to say that the Duke took a very low-profile role and preferred to hob-knob with other dignitaries rather than get involved in the running of the tour; he even returned home for a month's break when a replacement went over to do his duties!

It is an excellent book, the only disappointment for me was the statement about the tied Test in Australia when the West Indies were visiting in 1959/60. The book states, '... the heart-stopping pressure-cooker final over ... with the scores level and going for a third run that would have won the game ... he (the batsman) was magnificently thrown out by Conrad Hunte from the mid-wicket boundary'. It was so sensational that not only did it stay in my memory, but it was recorded for posterity and is now seen on You tube. However, the fielder was Joe Solomon and the throw was from square-leg as is clearly seen on the replay. So it was surprising to see that mistake in such a superbly researched book.

Footnote (no need to read this - I would rather not!): When I decided pre-tour in 1961 to write a book on the tour, my Dad hired a typewriter for me from Ashworth's Office Supplies in Caunce Street, Blackpool, for five shillings a week (25p). I duly typed an original and carbon copy which, with no idea at that time of how to get it published or even looked at, I placed it in a brown foolscap envelope. And there it sat as I began my official career and it was still there when my wife died in 2004. Then, somehow when I was taking things down to my daughter in Glastonbury it must have got caught up and she rang to ask why it had arrived there! I had no idea but I told her to keep it because it would be fun to publish it after all those years and leave it as written by a 15-year-old. Unfortunately that didn't happen because when I went down on a visit I asked for it only to discover that it had been burned by her husband on their wood burner! Disaster!!

[Nick Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a disappointment. The account of the actual game is good enough, but the book is marred by a couple of things. Firstly that Kynaston (a historian) and Ricketts (a poet famous in New Zealand, apparently), are very keen to see the match as a clash between the (as they would see it) outdated patrician attitudes (as they would see it) of the English cricket authorities, and the more egalitarian (again, as they would see it) Australian approach, with the outcome of the game a consequence of those attitudes.

There are several weaknesses of this argument. The first is that this was a very tightly fought Test match, and as the authors themselves admit, could have gone either way (a false shot from Brian Close and a poor piece of technique by Peter May in the fourth innings were the proximate causes of the outcome). If the result had been different would the authors have felt the outcome warranted a different argument? Of course not. They chose the game because it appeared to support their thesis.

While all sport takes place in a political and social context, close Test Matches turn on brief periods of furious of action when the class divide in English cricket is not uppermost in anyone's mind.

So keen are the authors (let's call them the K/Ricketts) to hang their argument on this tenuous peg that they are overly keen to load the dice. Peter May was a poor captain because he was an amateur and a toff. Actually he was made captain because he was the best batsman in the team, not because he was a toff. Moreover, England had won the previous test match (at Headingley), with May as captain (taking over from Colin Cowdrey who had lost the first two Tests)!

The K/Ricketts reveal their preferred candidate for the job in the professional player Ken Barrington. It doesn't seem to occur to them that Barrington might also have turned out to be an unimaginative captain as well.

No, England lost not because the Aussies played better on the day, but because they were lions led by donkeys. The book is fulling of dribblingly feeble speculation to that effect. "Was it", the authors ask, "because [May and Cowdrey] knew . . that they were out of sync with the meritocratic-cum-anti-establishment zeitgeist . . . [and this] deep awareness undermined their inner confidence?" They don't know; but that doesn't stop them wondering.

And here they are on the later appointment of May as president of the MCC: the records of the meeting remain "difficult to access; but it would no surprise to discover that May's appointment went through on the nod." Why let the absence of facts get in the way of your thesis that it was all an establishment stitch-up?

Similarly poor old E W Swanton, journalist, gets a right old kicking. I remember Jim Swanton as an amiable old buffer who wanted the best for the game, not the fiercely reactionary class warrior K/Ricketts would have us imagine. Swanton was old school, so throughout the book the authors lose no opportunity to have a good old sneer.

Yes, the country was changing in the 1960s, but by 1961 that change had hardly made itself felt. Beyond the Fringe, cited by K/Ricketts, may have been evidence that something was afoot, but it never made it as far as TV, and had in fact only been running in the theatre for a couple of months by the time this Test match took place. And sex, as Philip Larkin observed, didn't begin until 1963.

No doubt the prime mover in K/Ricketts' desire to paint every nurdle down to third man as emblematic of a new zeitgeist is David Kynaston, well-known as a liberal social historian. He has discredited himself thoroughly here with a willingness to draw conclusions from zero or little evidence (see above) and to balance the the broadest of arguments on the narrowest of pinheads.

What were the consequences, for cricket, of the defeat of the traditionalists the authors despise? Why, it's hit and giggle, 50 overs, T20, the IPL and the Hundred. Swanton would be turning in this grave, but this was the brave new world the old buffers could see coming and the logical consequence of the new professional era and the death of deference Kynaston sees as, on the whole, A Good Thing.

It's odd to read this book when the consequences of the liberalism the likes of K/Ricketts have spent their lives advocating are playing out all across Europe in the form of social fracture, bankrupt governments, the rise of the far Right, the trampling of borders and the denial by the Americans of effective decades-old alliances. "It's only a book about cricket", I hear readers protest. Well no, it isn't; and it isn't because the authors chose to make it so.

[Alan Wightman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I have read several cricket books set well in the past, I was not aware of the 1961 Manchester test as being considered a classic, a lack of knowledge which had two effects (1) it was not clear to me that the fourth test was the subject of the book - I understood the subtitle "the story of an Ashes classic" to refer to the series - I usually try to avoid reading the summary on the inside jacket of a book, which of course would have cleared up this misunderstanding and (2) I didn't know the result until I reached the photographs.

I learned several things including - (a) that one could watch live cricket on BBC TV as early as 1961 (b) drinks breaks were not always taken - I think only one was taken in the whole fourth test.

Things perhaps I did know but were reinforced - spectators were allowed right up the rope. I knew that the over rate used to be higher than now, but I didn't appreciated by how much. The teams bowled 470.4 overs in five days - 94 overs per day, but if you allow that half of one day was lost to rain it comes to 104 overs per day.

I also found it quite moving at times, particularly towards the end, including "Bill Lawry, that dour and immovable limpet at the crease, had spent forty-five excitable, patriotic, endearing years in the TV commentary box" - I suppose this was moving to me as it touched my own memories of Lawry; indeed I misted up again just typing that quote. Although I would note that his excitability was not always patriotic, I remember him thrilling at rare NZ victories in Australia in the 1990s, a big fan of Chris Pringle, and him exhorting the Indian tail-enders to "come on, run" in the last over in a World Cup match against Australia in 1992.

As I am currently on holiday, i read it in just four days, which tells you something of how much I liked it.

[Peter Thew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Built around the decisive 4th test match at Manchester during the 1961 Ashes series, this is a very worthy winner of the Guardian's Sports Book of 2024 award. The authors set the match in the context of the longer Test series, recalling the ups and downs of the other matches in the series and the uncertainties around the England captaincy. Drawing heavily on contemporary newspaper reports alongside players' memories both from the time and subsequently, the critical Test is described blow by blow including the many twists and turns of the final day's play.
Thoroughly enjoyable

[Brian Haining · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched and written. The book essentially tells the story of the 1961 Ashes series in England concentrating on the pivotal 4th test at Old Trafford. In doing so, it looks beyond the series, providing details of the class distinctions, which were part and parcel of English cricket re administration, team selection, and player identification. An enthralling read

[Adriaan De · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read on English cricket and its social mores.

One the best books on cricket and in particular English cricket, the 1961 Ashes and how class played a major role.

[Phil Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically detailed so much so I was getting the Test in 1961 confused with the current test!

[Robert Kingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

yay I love cricket

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable book on the 1961 Australia cricket tour of England. One for all test cricket lovers.

[Chris Oakland · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book, full of great snippets, exceelnt commentary and chapters at the end that deserve applause

[Jamie Bowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

July 1961, the fourth Ashes test at Old Trafford and a battle for the ages is about to begin. Cricket writing is so evocative and this book lives up to those standards, taking you back to 1961 and a time of upheaval in so many ways. It brings the story up to modern times and helps see the links between what was starting to happen. Loved it.