For years, John Harms dreamed he would play Test cricket. He dreamed of sweet off-drives, long-haul flights and days of champagne punting. Reality, however, intervened, in the form of an observable absence of ability, a peerless resistance to hard work and a complete lack of style.
So he became a Test tourist in his own way: on a shoestring budget, at the wheel of his dodgy Camira, he followed the Ashes series around Australia. To perform this difficult feat he needed to overcome the distraction of a dangerous and clever woman named Grace.
'Confessions of a Thirteenth Man' is the riotously funny account of Harms' adventures on the road and inside cricket's fields of glory. It's a story of painful love, nifty mechanical solutions and the shared joy of sport. Australia's rich sporting culture has at last found the chronicler it deserves.
