Book Review - Time to Declare by Mark Taylor

 Time to Declare by Mark Taylor with Ian Heads

Sydney: Ironbark, 1999                                                           ISBN 0330361848

Cricket it seems, more than most other sports, lends itself to the written word. In my opinion there are many reasons for this - the time it takes, the breaks in play that lead to deeper thought on what has occurred and what may be about to occur, the way cricket today can reflect back to past cricketing events, and not forgetting the endless statistical delight that the game gives us.

So we come to the autobiography of the man who I feel has been the best Australian captain of the last fifty years. As a leader he was always optimistic and supportive of his team-mates, but it was as a tactician that he shone. Taylor rarely miss-stepped as captain, and he quite often made changes in the field that turned out to be inspired. This, added to his steady batting and brilliant slips fielding make him one of Australia's best cricketers of his generation. 

Unfortunately, in Time to Declare, Taylor has not chosen to discuss in any great depth his tactical decisions, or how he managed the team. This is more of a "traditional" cricketer's book, listing anecdotes, family life, and personal milestones. Taylor does weigh in on some controversies, particularly throwing and whether Australia should have separate captains for different forms of cricket: hot-button issues when he wrote this book, but somewhat old-hat now (although his opinions are interesting nonetheless).

For those of us who have seen and heard Taylor commentate, Time to Declare will hold no surprises. He is a straightforward type of man who says what he thinks. He was an aggressive captain, in the sense that he was always striving for the win, but never seemed an aggressive player. Some of the episodes he relates from his early cricketing life are about his aggressiveness, and learning how to temper that so that it became a productive force for him. There are several occasions in the book where he shows some understanding and forgiveness for the excesses of some of his younger team-mates (Ponting and Warne in particular), and explains clearly how difficult it can be to live the life of a professional sportsman.

What we don't get is very much explanation of his thinking as captain, or even as a batsman. We get the stories, but not the thinking behind them. That's a shame. I do wonder if that might be a product of Taylor writing this book in the six months immediately after his retirement: perhaps a longer period of reflection may have given us a book with more heft.

As it is, Time to Declare is pretty much another run-of-the-mill cricket book, which is not without its interest and nostalgia.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell