The Silk Express – The story of E.A. ‘Ted’ McDonald

Cricketbooks.com.au/Ken Piesse Football & Cricket Books (Nostalgia Series), Mt Eliza, 2015 

Ted McDonald only played 11 Test matches for Australia but he is considered one of the finest fast bowlers to have ever graced the game. At the peak of his powers, he turned his back on his homeland to chase the rewards of a professional career in England, that netted him more than 1000 wickets. He died in a car accident on an isolated English road and left a complicated legacy that is fully revealed here for the first time. 

What they said: 

“The cure for admiring Ted McDonald was surely to have met him. He was a duplicitous rake. Even R.C. Robertson-Glasgow, who saw the best in everyone, conceded that McDonald “fell into ways…that somehow foreshadowed tragedy’’. Nick Richardson’s The Silk Express, a compelling book about a complicated figure, articulates what Robertson-Glasgow was too polite to say explicitly.’’ 

Duncan Hamilton, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, 2016 

“This is a rather special book…The Ted McDonald story has been a long time coming, but no genuine cricket-lover could fail to be gripped by it.’’ David Frith