Usman Khawaja’s book was expected to be controversial even if he had skipped the Sandpapergate incident in its entirety. From the Homeworkgate incident of 2013 to facing the heat at Lord’s 2023 to being strong enough in his support for Gaza to take on the ICC, he had been at the centre of the storm on numerous occasions.

Cricket has had its share of controversial autobiographies. Some of these led to actual consequences. Others did not face such destiny despite the explosive material. Here is a list in chronological order of publication (how else can you rank controversial books?).

This selection is by no means exhaustive. Back to the Mark (Dennis Lillee), (EAS Prasanna), (Kevin Pietersen) and several other cricket books fit the bill. We kept the count to twelve.

Body-Line?, Harold Larwood (1933)

The most controversial book on the most controversial Test series is a logical starting point for this list. Full of conviction in “fast leg-theory”, did not bother to hold his opinions on any subject, even the holiest of cows. Thus, Don Bradman could not “justify a claim to be ranked among the great batsmen of the world” for his “fundamentally unsound strokes”. He even wrote that Bradman “flinches”, an accusation that led to a furore in Australia. Bradman issued a statement to “emphatically deny” it.

Over to Me, Jim Laker (1960)

England’s streak of 14 unbeaten Test series ended with a humiliating 0-4 thrashing in the 1958/59 Ashes. Laker, hero of the 1956 home Ashes, had 15 wickets at 21, but did not think much of captain Peter May (the captain at his county side Surrey as well, with whom he had had a fallout in 1958) and manager Freddie Brown on the tour. He called out May’s lack of availability and limited captaincy, but was more scathing on Brown’s high-handedness and the intrinsic social class divide in English cricket. MCC and Surrey responded by stripping him of his memberships, though these were reinstated. He was Jim Laker, after all.

, Roy Gilchrist (1963)

Gilchrist’s tumultuous Test career ended when he fell out with captain Gerry Alexander, who sent the paceman home halfway through the 1958/59 tour of India and Pakistan – an incident he described in detail. Gilchrist bowled quick and lost his temper quicker, and never hesitated to deliberately injure batters. His memoirs have descriptions of batters exposing the stumps to avoid his bouncers, but he had harsher words for the “wise blue-blooded” White administrators who ran West Indies cricket. He recalled how they were up in arms against him, expecting Gilchrist to walk “without shoes and wearing a loincloth”.

Generations of Indian fans have grown up on ’s first (and most candid) book. There was the characteristic snark (“you don’t question an English umpire’s decision, do you?” after getting a rough decision in England), but the real explosive chapter was titled Barbarism at Kingston. The final Test of 1975/76 was the tipping point where Clive Lloyd switched to an all-pace attack and the home fast bowlers kept peppering the visitors with bouncers and the odd beamer in front of a cheering crowd. “To call the crowd a crowd in Jamaica is a misnomer. It should be called a mob … [they] hadn’t graduated from the trees where they belonged,” wrote Gavaskar. It would have caused a furore in another era.

Lambs to the Slaughter, Graham Yallop (1979)

The Australian board appointed Yallop as Australian captain when , and sacked him after he had a torrid run with a third-string team. Yallop did not hold back in his book, whose chapters (, , , and so on) were in tune with the title. When the ran some extracts, teammate Rodney Hogg refuted the accusations of trying to “roughshod” over Yallop. At this point, Yallop claimed to have not read the manuscript, and wanted the book to be held back. When the publishers declined, Yallop managed to get an injunction from the Supreme Court to stop publication. The matter was finally settled out of court, and the book came out unaltered.

was the first Indian cricketer to call out his teammates for their “one-track obsession” with making money. At a team-meeting where conversations revolved around sponsorship and match fees, he felt that “cricket was discussed only as an afterthought”. He did not hesitate to call out the BCCI either, calling them “a government within a government, almost totally not accountable to anyone”. How would the BCCI have responded today? One can only wonder.

Out on a Limb, Martin Crowe (1995)

’s book carried vivid (and graphic) descriptions of the Colombo Central Station bomb blast just outside the team hotel on the 1992 tour of Sri Lanka. New Zealand Cricket chair Peter McDermott flew out to the team and made it clear that the tour had to go on, leading to acrimony in the tour party. Crowe, captain on that tour, did not abandon his post, but voiced his displeasure about the entire episode in his book, going deep into how his teammates reacted when coerced to stay back in the face of mortal danger. Ken Rutherford called Mark Greatbatch a turncoat for staying put. When manager Warren Lees refused to stay put, McDermott asked him to resign: New Zealand did not have a manager for the rest of the tour. It was ugly.

Save the Last Ball for Me, Chris Pringle (1998)

will have to go lengths to match the frankness with which Pringle confessed to ball-tampering at the Faisalabad Test of 1990/91. In the chapter titled When in Rome, Pringle wrote about the visitors feeling “something going on” when Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis swung the old ball very late. So he used the quarter of a bottle-top to create “lots of grooves and lines and deep gouges” on one side of the ball. Pringle took 30 wickets in 14 Tests, but 11 of those came in that one game. So candid are his descriptions of ball-tampering that his admissions to the sex and drug scandals seem kosher.

, Herschelle Gibbs (2010)

Probably the most explosive entry on this list, Gibbs’s book lives up to its tagline of “The No-Holds-Barred Autobiography”. He confessed about alcohol abuse (and rehabilitation sessions); sessions of “Antigua’s finest, A-grade marijuana”, and an all-night orgy featuring several single teammates and “about 30 girls”. Oh, and there were cricketing bits too – not only did he call captain Graeme Smith “simply too powerful”, but also accused a “clique” of Smith and three seniors dividing the team and having control over coach Mickey Arthur.

Few books have lived up so fully to their title. No one is too holy for Shoaib. Not Javed Miandad (“as a coach he left much to be desired … never cared for anyone”). Not Shoaib Malik (“a slave who would jump through hoops [for the PCB]”). Certainly not PCB chair Naseem Ashraf (“lacked any sort of grace … tended to behave like a dictator … I didn’t want to eat with someone like Ashraf”). His first ever interactions with Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara can be perceived as arrogant. And he does not feel “entirely guilty” about ball-tampering (he had been caught twice).

Caught in the Middle, Mike Procter (2017)

Procter’s book focuses on his legendary career, but the most vivid descriptions are in the chapter on the Monkeygate. As the ICC match referee who found Harbhajan Singh guilty of racial abuse, he provides a blow-by-blow narration of the saga. India offered “absolutely nothing in terms of evidence,” he felt … but the verdict was overturned. Andrew Symonds, the accuser, found IPL contracts, but not Procter: it was the last international series he officiated in, and he was not one of the referees when the IPL was moved to South Africa in 2009. It was not before 2012 that he found work in cricket.

The anticipation around Afridi’s book revolved around the revelation of his much-discussed age: the book convoluted it even more by providing two figures, both different from the official number. But there is, in true Afridi style, a fair share of bombastic statements. So Miandad is “small” and “weak” who “lives in the past”. “Terrible coach” Waqar Younis ran “propaganda” against Afridi. An unnamed batter who “declared an all-out rebellion” at midnight against captain Younis Khan during the 2009 Champions Trophy. Gautam Gambhir is of “no personality … just a lot of attitude”. And finally, on his refusal to allow his daughters to participate in public sporting activities: “The feminists can say what they want; as a conservative Pakistani father, I’ve made my decision.”

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