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When cricketers trade bats for pens, memoirs often arrive padded with nostalgia, life lessons and the occasional dressing-room anecdote. But every so often, a book drops like a short ball to the ribs, uncomfortable, bruising and impossible to ignore.
With Shikhar Dhawan joining the force by releasing his memoir today, reportedly filled with candid confessions and subtle digs, it joins a not-so-gentlemen’s club of autobiographies that aired cricket's dirtiest laundry.
From explosive coach-captain feuds to systemic biases and whispered dressing-room vendettas, here are some memoirs that didn’t just make headlines — they rewrote the subtext of cricket history.
Sourav Ganguly: When the captain hit back
In A Century Is Not Enough, Sourav Ganguly does more than chart his rise from a Maharaja of Bengal to one of India’s most aggressive captains. He revisits, unapologetically, his very public clash with coach Greg Chappell.
Ganguly accuses Chappell of attempting to dismantle team unity with a management style that was all control, no cohesion.
“He came in with the mindset of control, not of cohesion,” Ganguly writes, reigniting the embers of a feud that had once engulfed Indian cricket.
The timing and candour stirred debate, especially as Ganguly revisited the 2005–06 episode when Chappell’s scathing email, questioning Ganguly’s physical and mental fitness, was leaked and triggered such uproar that Parliament got involved.
What the memoir adds, however, is a rawer layer. He recalls how his father urged him to retire to preserve his dignity, how the humiliation bled into his personal life, and how, instead of backing off, he chose to fight on.
The cricketing public had always seen the headlines. The book made them feel the scars.
Yuvraj Singh: Fit, but still unwanted
Yuvraj Singh’s The Test of My Life is, on the surface, a story of triumph over cancer. But buried within its pages is a quieter, more insidious heartbreak of coming back from the brink, only to be told he wasn’t good enough.
Despite clearing all medical and fitness hurdles, Yuvraj writes that selectors remained wary, telling him he “wasn’t fit” in ways they never clearly explained.
This was more than professional disappointment. It exposed a culture of suspicion — where comeback stories weren’t embraced, but scrutinised.
For fans, the revelation stirred unease: had the BCCI’s risk-averse mindset come at the cost of empathy? For Yuvraj, a man who had won India a World Cup on one lung, it felt like a betrayal.
Shane Warne: A spin wizard’s explosive final over
Shane Warne never played by the book, and when he finally wrote one, he made sure it spun furiously.
No Spin is laced with trademark swagger, but its most talked-about delivery was directed at former captain Steve Waugh.
Warne brands Waugh “the most selfish cricketer” he’s played with, blaming him for scapegoating him during the 1999 West Indies tour when Warne was dropped mid-series.
And then there was the sacrilege: Warne confesses he “wanted to puke” at the reverence shown to the Baggy Green, questioning its sanctity.
For a cricketing nation that treats the cap as sacred cloth, it was heresy. The memoir sparked strong reactions across the cricketing and media sphere. Even his teammate Jason Gillespie called his comments unfair, but Warne was unmoved.
Kevin Pietersen: A rebel With a manuscript
Few autobiographies have detonated with the force of KP: The Autobiography. In it, Kevin Pietersen delivers a scathing insider’s take on what he describes as a “bullying culture” within the England team.
His prime targets were Graeme Swann, Matt Prior, and Stuart Broad, the senior players he claims formed a toxic clique that ran the dressing room like a private club.
Pietersen doesn’t hold back, describing the environment as “a dark place full of fear and mistrust,” a far cry from England’s polished image during their winning years.
The reaction was swift and divisive. Swann dismissed the book as fiction, while the ECB scrambled to downplay the allegations.
But even amid the controversy, there were pointed questions: Why were these claims surfacing only after the accused had retired? Was this honesty, or revenge served post-career?
Faf du Plessis: A captain's confession
Faf du Plessis’s Through Fire didn’t come with sensationalist barbs or tabloid-ready feuds, but it delivered one of the most powerful admissions in modern cricket literature: “We had never created a culture of belonging for players of colour.”
For a country still wrestling with its post-apartheid legacy, the words struck deep.
Rather than cast blame outward, Du Plessis points the finger inward, at himself and the team leadership, for not doing enough to make black and brown teammates feel truly part of the squad.
The book triggered a wider reckoning about transformation in South African cricket, with critics pointing out that while his admission was noble, it didn’t absolve him of past privilege.
