SA Footy

I bought this book, appropriately subtitled 'Inside the mind of a lunatic fast bowler', today and can recommend it as an entertaining read.

The book's not going to win any literary prizes but Hogg is a bloke with a real sense of humour and character and his book is interesting and funny unlike many of the deadpan boring offerings (e.g. Captains diaries) written by current day cricketers that predictably come out at Christmas to cash in on sales every year.

I like the story of when during the 1984 Test v West Windies at Trinidad, Hoggy actually ran up and threw a full-on cut lunch at captain Kim Hughes after dismissing Gordon Greenidge. He was in a very irritated frame of mind because Hughes wouldn't give him a 3rd man and several nicks were passing through for boundaries. After getting Greenidge he just cracked and tried to king hit Hughesy when he ran in to congratulate him. At the time it was passed off as a high-five type slap that missed everything but Hogg reveals that he did try to hit him.

Amazingly he was only 1 vote away from being given the Australian captaincy after Hughes fell on his sword the following summer. Makes you wonder how things would have panned out for Australian cricket if Hogg had been made skipper instead of AB!.

Apparently after he got out in a grade game against a young Shane Warne's St Kilda, he turned to a laughing Shaun Graf on his way back to the pavillion after he had been dismissed by Warne (Hogg faced 4 balls off of Warne to which he admitted he had no idea where any of them were going) and said "I don't know what you're laughing at, this bloke's better than Sleepy"

He also got the sack from his column in "the truth" newspaper for predicting that Warne would get at least 500 test wickets.