WISDEN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019 | WINNER OF THE CRICKET SOCIETY & MCC BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 TELEGRAPH CRICKET BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 CRICKET WRITER'S CLUB (CWC) BOOK OF THE YEAR
He was the top Test batsman in the world, with numbers bettered only by the great Don Bradman - then Australian cricket captain Steve Smith led the Australian team into a cheating scandal that stunned cricket. How did a team with such hard-edged history reach crisis point under Smith, and what happened on their tour of South Africa to cause such a failure of culture on the world stage?
This is a full and frank narrative of Smith's captaincy, David Warner's influence, the dramas that beset Australian cricket, and a blow-by-blow account from Ashes high to Cape Town low, from someone who was there for every ball and every statement. Geoff Lemon writes a dramatic story that exposes how the actions of a few young men shook the very foundations of the Australian cricket establishment.
Steve Smith's Men
Description
Author Description
Geoff Lemon has covered cricket as a writer and broadcaster since 2010, including touring with the Australian men's and women's teams since 2013, for outlets including the ABC, BBC, Wisden Almanack, The Guardian, The Cricketer, The Saturday Paper and Cricinfo. He has worked on radio and television in Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, Ireland and the UAE, and hosts cricket podcast The Final Word. Geoff Lemon's book Steve Smith's Men has been awarded Wisden Book of the Year as well as The Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year at events in London. It has been shortlisted for The Telegraph Cricket Book of the Year and the Cricket Writers Club Book of the Year and the Mark & Evette Moran NIB Literary Award. Geoff Lemon's writing outside sport appears in places like Best Australian Stories, The Monthly and Meanjin. He's editor of one of Australia's oldest literary publications, Going Down Swinging, and formerly directed the National Young Writers Festival. His previous books were the essay collection The Sturgeon General Presents, collaborative novel Willow Pattern, and poetry collection Sunblind.