Bedtime Tales for Cricket Tragics by Geoff Lemon

No sport does storytelling like cricket – a game as full of heroes, villains, politics, and drama as any Shakespearean play.

And few have explored those stories as far and wide as Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon. Over hundreds of episodes of Story Time, the history spin-off to beloved podcast The Final Word, they have followed their listeners’ clues to track down the wildest characters, matches, and situations the pitch has seen.

Bedtime Tales for Cricket Tragics brings together the stories they enjoyed telling most, from the 1879 riot in Sydney sparked by an umpire’s call, the all-rounder who tried to rob the Catholic Church, the biggest defeat in history, and much more.

About the Author:

Adam Collins is an Australian cricket
journalist, author, and broadcaster. Before that he worked
as a senior adviser to a federal Labor government, and for
the organising committee of the London 2012 Olympic
and Paralympic Games. A Melbourne sports nut from
central casting, he follows cricket and footy first, but plenty
more. He has been named the Christopher Martin-Jenkins
Broadcaster of the Year, and co-authored Glenn Maxwell’s
autobiography.

Geoff Lemon’s cricket exploits include
founding pirate commentary station White Line Wireless,
graduating to ABC and BBC ball-by-ball around the world,
and spending the last dozen years as the principal cricket
writer for Guardian Australia. His book Steve Smith’s Men,
on the Cape Town sandpaper scandal, won multiple awards.
Outside cricket, he was the longtime editor of literary
anthology Going Down Swinging, director of the National
Young Writers Festival, has published books of poetry and
essays, and still writes on politics, literature, and music.

25 Nov 2025
 

Bedtime Tales for Cricket Tragics: 22 ‘Story Time’ tales from hit podcast The Final Word by Geoff Lemon ISBN 9781923419049