Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps: A Sledger’s History of the Ashes

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Number of Pages: 188

In September 1882, “The Sporting Times” published a mock obituary for English cricket, and a great sporting rivalry was born. Relations between England and Australia have never been the same since. Every other year, the two teams gather for the traditional frenzy of backbiting, finger-pointing and dubious facial hair. For a list of every Ashes century and five-wicket haul, try Wisden, but if you want to know which Australian captain punched his chairman of selectors on the nose, which England batsman was a martyr to syphilis and which great fast bowler reckoned the Queen had ‘nice legs for an old Sheila’, then “Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps” is the book for you. “Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps” is a rip-roaring history of 124 years of Ashes cricket between England and Australia. It exposes the seamy side of Ashes cricket – the inside story behind controversies from the “Bodyline” series of 1932-33 to the Lillee and Thomson blitzkrieg of 1974-75. It profiles great players from W.G. Grace to K.P. Pietersen, and captures choice examples of the dark art of ‘sledging’. Embellished with some 75 black-and-white photographs, and incorporating more than 100 of the wittiest and most wounding Ashes quotations, “Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps” is the perfect gift for cricket fans, whether English or Australian.