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Stephen Pollard

ByStephen Pollard, Stephen Pollard

Opinion

A great writer

January 25, 2008 24:00
1 min read

There's a superb obituary in the Guardian by Mike Brearley of the great sports writer Dudley Doust, with whom Brearley collaborated on two wonderful books about the Ashes: He was much more than a ghost (for example in our book on the tour of Australia in 1978-9, there were three chapters written solely by him, including a marvellous portrait of Derek Randall, From Rags to Riches. Cricket writer Scyld Berry says that this "is still the best reconstruction of an innings ever done. No one ever got inside the head of a batsman like that.")

I too was more than the ghostly figure who might provide some basis for a writer's perorations. It was a real partnership, in which he taught me, as he did many others, a lot about writing. I learned the difference between an academic essay and a good read. I learned how details - most stereotypically, what someone had for breakfast before a big game - could throw light on the person in unexpected ways.

Doust brought to English sports-writing techniques learned from Tom Wolfe and American journalism. He excelled as a portraitist. Later, in my work as a psychoanalyst, I realised that his approach fits in with a central notion of this field, that there is to a personality a sort of hologram or core that presents itself in all sorts of detailed ways.