Triumph and tragedy may be universal but sometimes it seems that cricket has a mortgage on the term. And there's never been a cricketer who flew so high yet sunk so low as Australian chinaman bowler Charles "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith.

As we read of his youth in small town Stawell through his cricketing career, his eccentricities and his sad decline, there is almost an inevitably that there would be no happy ending for Fleetwood-Smith. Of course, most of his problems were self-inflicted.

For a while he had the perfect life; an international cricketer, married into a wealthy family and a handsome bloke who, according to fellow spinner Bill O'Reilly, had sex with more women than you would have hot dinners. But throughout, his self-destructive personality would lead to destroying friendships (such as Don Bradman), his marriage and any prospect of a happy post-cricketing life. And then there was the time, during World War II, when he crashed that army truck.

As Growden points out, he could well have been writing about Australia's greatest ever spinner who post-cricketing retirement had a comfortable living instead of (potential Spoiler Alert) a homeless alcoholic. But then that wouldn't be Fleetwood-Smith. ( )