A must-read for any cricket fan, Cricket's Summer of Change is the inside story of how Australian cricket rose to the summit of world cricket.
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A must-read for any cricket fan, Cricket's Summer of Change is the inside story of how Australian cricket rose to the summit of world cricket.
The retirement of Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell in 1984 was the beginning of the darkest time in the history of Australian cricket: a period of losses, with a team seemingly unable to pose a challenge to their opponents. But by the late 1980s, the tide was turning. A handful of young men began to lead Australian cricket out of its crisis. The events that transpired during the summer of '92–'93 would set Australian cricket up for the most glorious decade of its Test history: Steve Waugh would re-enter the Australian Test XI as a batsman; Dean Jones would be controversially dropped, never to return; Mark Taylor would captain Australia for the first time; Glenn McGrath would make his Shield and domestic one-day debuts for New South Wales; Shane Warne would take his maiden Test five-wicket haul and would, for the first time, win a Test match for his country in front of an Australian crowd; Damien Martyn and Justin Langer would make their Test debuts as 21- and 22-year-olds respectively; Michael Slater and Matthew Hayden — aged 22 and 21 respectively — would score the first-class runs that would book them their plane tickets for the 1993 Ashes tour, and an 18-year-old Ricky Ponting would announce himself as the most promising batsman of his generation, scoring 782 first-class runs that summer at an average of 46. Cricket's Summer of Change is the story of how it all happened.
