Mystery Spinner: The Rise of Jack Iverson by Gideon Haigh

Book Description

Secondhand. New fine condition.

It is no mystery that today Jack Iverson is virtually unknown. An unexceptional estate agent who died in obscurity, by his own hand, he was a clumsy fielder and a hopeless batsman. But for four years he was the best spin bowler in the world.

Iverson took up cricket at the advanced age of 31, as capriciously as he left it joining a club 3rd XI in Melbourne one day and instantly announcing himself as the most prodigious and improbable spinner of a cricket ball. Within four years, he was bowling the Australian Test side to victory over England in the Ashes series of 1950-51. Then, in his moment of triumph, he retired from international cricket and was never the same bowler again.

Gideon Haigh's quest for the truth about this enigmatic, elusive man, with the strangest grip any spinner had ever used, is not just a story of a forgotten hero but an attempt to solve the enduring riddle of Iverson's life. (publisher blurb)