Ashley Mallett's newest book tells the story of Barry "Nugget" Rees, the talisman in the Adelaide Oval dressing-room. As Andrew Faulkner explains in the Australian, Rees is a man with few enemies, fewer peers, and many hundreds of loyal friends, from hack club cricketers to most of the living Australia cricket captains.

Mallett's book traces Nugget's friendship with former Australia captain Barry Jarman in the early 1960s Adelaide; a path that led to Australian dressing-rooms, Nugget's own line of sporting goods, and a meeting with the Queen.

"And how are the corgis?" Nugget asked at their Windsor Castle meeting. "As you can see Nugget, they are very well indeed," Her Majesty replied with dogs dancing at her feet.

Now Nugget has a little black book most sporting reporters would gladly exchange for their first-born. The Ws alone number Shane Warne and the Waugh twins. At Adelaide Oval last week Rod Marsh looked up, startled, from a training drill to shout a "G'day" to Nugget, and the world's premier curator, Les Burdett, paused from his pitch-preparing duties to wave a hello to his mate. Narrowing down Nugget's closest cricketing friends is a dangerous practice, but Ian Chappell, Adam Gilchrist, Jason Gillespie and Darren Lehmann would make a short list of 50.

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