Tag: Dan Liebke

Two Ridiculously Good Books Which Arrived On The Same Day, 6 November 2025

The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments, Dan Liebke & Alex Bowden, Affirm Press, 2025, EAN/UPC: 9781923135697, & In the Eye of the Typhoon: The Inside Story of the MCC Tour of Australia and New Zealand 1954/55, Frank Tyson, Parrs Wood Press, 2004, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1903158579

There is something faintly ridiculous about cricket books generally.  I say that as a cricket lover, a book lover and, indeed, a cricket book lover.  Most cricket books go into excruciating detail about something or another. Cricket loving, book loving folk don’t mind wallowing in such details, but that doesn’t detract from the intrinsic absurdity of cricket books. 

One In The Eye

To be perfectly Frank with you…

For example, “In the Eye Of The Typhoon” by Frank ‘Typhoon’ Tyson.  It is a first-hand, blow-by-blow account & photo-diary of the 1954/55 Ashes series.  We get Tyson’s perspective on the tour; his activities and thoughts on and off the field. The book is neatly crafted and is a thoroughly enjoyable wallow. 

One entertaining Tyson subplot is his tour romance, which he writes about in an unwittingly amusing, melodramatic style.

Thursday October 7th 1954…I have become very attached to a good-looking Sydney girl called Margaret, whom I met on our second day out of Tilbury. Our parting on the last evening on board was very emotional…I am looking forward, perhaps more eagerly than normal, to seeing her again in Sydney…

Thursday March 3rd 1955…Margaret was my first great love; indeed she was my first real girlfriend. In matters of the heart I was naïve until I met her…We agreed to keep in touch – but could we guarantee that some influence would not intervene? God knew!…Shall I see her again?  I must.

I can’t help thinking of Trevor Howard, Celia Johnson & Sergei Rachmaninoff. 

Yet Tyson’s emotional parting with Margaret at Sydney airport did not prevent The Typhoon from making the lives of New Zealand cricketers hell for the rest of March 1955.

My favourite page in the whole book is the glossary of tour party nicknames on P259. The Boil, Kipper, Scrubs, The Whippet, Godders, and Woozer, to name but a few. Worth the price of admission alone, that page.

50 Most Ridiculous

“The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments” is an antidote to cricket book wallowing, much as Alex Bowden’s irreverent King Cricket website is an antidote to typical cricket journalism.  Each of the 50 stories stands alone, giving the book a dipping rather than wallowing quality. I shall ration myself on these stories over the coming weeks, to help sustain my spirits during the inevitable emotional upheaval that the 2025/26 Ashes will bring.

“The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments” was born, out of wedlock, between Alex Bowden’s whimsey and that of Dan Liebke, who also has a website (who doesn’t?).   The two of them first came together producing The Ridiculous Ashes Podcast, which I have consistently enjoyed, since it first came out in early 2021, despite my tendency, universally, to find podcasts soporific.

The Ridiculous Ashes book pleases me more than the podcast for reasons beyond my preference for books over podcasts as a medium. The conceit of the podcast is to assess the most ridiculous moments in each Ashes test match from a particular Ashes series, eventually to award Ridiculous Ashes to the most ridiculous side.  It is a fun idea but at times the structure of the “parlour game” detracts from the interesting, amusing and acerbic stories that Dan and Alex are discussing.

The book format liberates the prickly pair [did you see what I did there?] from game show style banter, combining their natural writing abilities to produce 50 well-crafted stories about bizarre happenings in the Ashes during the last 50 years.  The book formula also enables Liebke & Bowden to broaden their coverage beyond that covered by the podcast, hence covering 50 years and covering both men’s and women’s Ashes. 

I especially enjoyed the way they described the demise of the dozy England wicketkeeper-batsman who inadvertently strayed out of his ground to be run out in bizarre circumstances (Chapter 49). And no, that story is not the Jonny Bairstow crease-gate story, although that Jonny Bairstow story inevitably gets an outing in the book: Chapter 8.  

I also like the fact that some of the chapters are not really moments, such as Chapter 10, which is a tour d’horizon of Ellyse Perry’s ridiculous Ashes career.  That chapter, like several others, has an “Activity Corner” vignette which made me smile out loud. 

Ridiculous Coincidence Corner

By complete coincidence, I took possession of both books at almost the exact same moment. Tom Carew Hunt very kindly handed me his father’s copy of “In the Eye Of The Typhoon” as I arrived at The Queen’s Club on 6 November for the Tennis & Rackets Association dinner we were both attending. 18:30 that was.  When I got home, I picked up a message from Daisy, sent at that exact same time, to let me know that Alex Bowden’s ridiculous book had arrived.  

Both books are enjoyable, albeit in such different ways. What a happy coincidence.

Oh, and 70 years ago to that very day, my parents got married, in the Empire Rooms, Tottenham Court Road – latterly a strip club named Spearmint Rhino. Now THAT coincidence really is platty joobs ridiculous.

England v Australia Day Two, Lord’s, 19 July 2013

Photo from September 2016, when the despised Lower Compton was empty

Almost everything that needed to be said about this wonderful day was included in my King Cricket match report at the time:

England v Australia at Lord’s, day two match report

(If anything should ever go awry with the above links, click here instead).

Except, of course, that King Cricket match reports cannot talk about the cricket itself.

Whereas King Cricket himself is allowed to waffle on, with his mates, for hours, in excruciating detail about the ridiculous aspect of cricket matches – and three cheers for that ability, because The Ridiculous Ashes is a fun listen.

Here is a link to The Ridiculous Ashes podcast for this match.

The following link is to the recent King Cricket posting about this match which includes some text and vids about the most ridiculous bits:

Shane Watson’s legendary front pad, the worst piece of cricket in Test history + more

If that is too much clicking for you but you are desperate for some vids, here is Geoff Lemon’s seminal vlog rant about Shane Watson from the Lord’s East Gate (now renamed the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Gate. One of the things I love about it is the passers by noticing and/or feigning not to notice this ranting Aussie holding forth. I recognise several of the faces as Lord’s regulars:

Or, if seeing Chris Rogers’s freak dismissal is more your bag, the following vid will feed your desirous eyeballs:

I remember being especially taken with THAT ball from Graeme Swann, not least because I did once take a hat trick with balls that were not too dissimilar to that one…except that at least two of mine were definitely hitting the stumps:

The Day I Took A Hat Trick At Cricket, Alleyn’s School, 9 July 1975

If you actually want to know about the actual score in the match (by which I mean Lord’s Ashes Test 2013, not Alleyn’s 9 July 1975) and the sort of details that official professional sites publish about matches of this kind, then click here.

The thing that stands out the most about all this for me, in reflective Ogblog mode, is the enormity of the picnic that I took for just me and Daisy (Janie) for one day at Lord’s. I’m sure King Cricket won’t mind me scraping my own words:

Naturally, I had prepared the picnic. We made early headway into assorted delights of my picnic bag – some mini croissants from the artisanal bakery that kindly opened a couple of years ago no more than 50 yards from my front door. Then on to the smoked trout bagels I had lovingly made, with my own special recipe horseradish butter and lemon. The fishy delight needed white wine; I brought a very interesting little Austrian Riesling. Some readers might already know that Ged and Daisy abstain from all forms of Australian wine for the duration of Ashes series. I thought the choice of Austrian was a little edgy, but safe enough.

After the smoked trout, smoked eel bagels – embellished in similar fashion to the trout. Daisy found the eel a little rich for her taste. Bags of pork scratchings and some portions of soft fruit kept the afternoon interesting enough in the food department…

…home made shortbread (not home made by me, you understand)…

…later, the ham sandwiches on tomato bread encouraged us to launch into the bottle of red – a jolly little Tuscan number.

Blooming heck!