by Mayukh Ghosh

Even before David Frith started contributing to The Cricketer in the late 1960s, he had dreamt of putting together a large pictorial history of the England versus Australia Test matches.
He eventually decided to bring that out just before the Centenary Test in 1977.

Two or three big publishers refused. Then Richard Smart at Lutterworth, boosted by the success of The Fast Men, agreed to Frith's proposal.
They wanted it to have 500 pictures and the price to be much less than the £12.50 Frith had suggested.
But Frith was somewhat adamant. They had to agree to his terms.

Throughout 1976, every night, Frith chose pictures to, in his words, ‘bring back to life the 224 Anglo-Australian Test matches since 1877’.
Once he was satisfied with the progress, he requested Donald Bradman and Len Hutton to write forewords. Both happily agreed.

Frith wanted to go to Melbourne to meet the old cricketers and promote the book.
His employer, 'The Cricketer', were in no mood to send him there, though.
He then cobbled together a deal with Qantas wherein the airline took some copies of the book but paid Frith's airfares.

There in Melbourne Frith obtained the autographs of 234 old cricketers from Ashes Tests!

Richard Smart had no reasons to be disappointed as the book did exceedingly well.
There has been 12 editions. The last being published at the end of the 2006-07 Ashes series.

No other cricket book has been published/updated a dozen or more times.