The best cricket book I have ever read was "Ten for Sixty Six and All that" by Arthur Mailey.
The piece on Mailey bowling to Trumper in a grade game in Sydney is one of the best chapters of any book I have ever read, sport or otherwise.
Mailey took 10 for 66 for Australia against Gloucestershire in 1921. He jokingly said that he could have taken 10 for 36 but it wouldn't have made nearly as good a title for a book.
I am a huge fan of Gideon Haigh but I was very disappointed in "Cricket War" given the rave reviews that it has got over the years from every respected critic. I know that history is written by the victors but Haigh has many factual inaccuracies and he doesn't give any regard to the fact that the young cricketers who went to WSC by and large failed to impact test cricket after the truce, yet the ACB side produced players of the ilk of Border and Hughes as well as very serviceable test cricketers like Wood, Yallop, Hogg, Dymock and Higgs.
Your last point is a good one rig, given the general impression, both from the book and other sources was that the ACB was on it's knees.
Can you enlighten us as to some of the errors in the book? Not doubting you, just that I was young when I read it and it was seminal to me at the time.
Sorry I haven't responded earlier, but I wanted to read the book again before airing my problems with it.
I think the main problem with the book is that given that Haigh turned 50 a couple of days ago he was only 12-13 years of age when World Series Cricket took place and thus didn't have an "adult" view of what happened at the time.
I think the book should have had at least a chapter on why the WSC selectors made so many mistakes with the choosing of the players. Rob Langer, Martin Kent, Trevor Chappell, Ray Bright and Dennis Yagmich for starters weren't a patch on Border, Hughes etc. Also the fact that there were no India players in World Series Cricket certainly rated some consideration.
Haigh's mocking of Phil Ridings was just downright wrong. He makes fun of the fact that Ridings said that the 1978-79 series was much closer than the 5-1 scoreline indicated. Australia certainly should have won the 4th test in Sydney and probably the 5th test in Adelaide. England benefited from some of the worst umpiring I have ever seen in Sydney. One umpire even apologised to Yallop at the end of the third day when he gave Randall not out before he had scored. Randall went on to score 150. Given that Australia led after the first inning by 116, I doubt that England would have recovered from 2 wickets for 0 in the second innings. England went on to win by 95 runs when Australia had to bat on a badly deteriorating wicket. In Adelaide, Australia had England 6 for 132 with all recognised batsmen out in the second innings after leading by a few runs on the first innings. Australia's lack of strong leadership let England slip out of that noose.
There is no mention in the book of how Sydney-Melbourne centric WSC became in the second year. Adelaide would have been bypassed completely if it hadn't been for Des Corcoran pleading Adelaide's case, thus we got one exhibition WSC one day match.
Haigh concentrates on the poor traditional crowds at Melbourne and Sydney but again fails to even consider that Adelaide drew good crowds to the test match despite being a dead rubber, similar in size to the 1970-71 England tour. Sure Adelaide's crowds fell away compared to 1974-75, but 1974-75 saw record crowds with Thomson and Lillee at the peak.
I am not denying that WSC was wonderful for cricketers and that telecasting of cricket improved markedly, I just thought that Haigh took a very blinkered view in his book. I repeat there should have been criticisms of WSC where they were warranted.