Review: Game for anything - Gideon Haigh

If Bill Simmons is the everyman sportswriter full of pop culture, in-jokes and homer-isms, then Gideon Haigh is his antithesis. You read Simmons as he thinks aloud, a man down at the bar with his mates. However, he's just self-aware enough to know that because he monopolises the conversation he should fling jokes about to keep his audience engaged. There's obvious research, but done on the sly; he's no stat-geek, but muses on feel and zeitgeist.

Haigh, deliberately and with culture incomparable, compiles cricketing words that evokes a history professor's magnum opus. Immaculate research, mirrored by thoughtful prose. Simmons' raison d'etre is entertaining learning. For Haigh, it is the reverse. And they're both brilliant.

Cover image courtesy: tower.com

Haigh's 2004 compendium “Game for Anything” released in Australia his collected writings for publications such as Wisden Asia and the now-defunct periodicals The Bulletin and Wisden Cricket Monthly. It features several learned insights into periods of the game about which I, a studious and informed cricket fan, knew very little. Each essay is structured magnificently, being economical yet descriptive; each word is steeped in context. That he quotes an assortment of historical figures from Jardine Machiavelli to Mark Waugh exemplifies his remarkable reading range.

In fact the stand-out point of Haigh's work is just that – his research. Articles are based not around his palpable love of the game, it's correct spirit and statutes; his writing is revolves around a prescient “angle” and why it emerges as such a story from a multi-textured background.

There are elements of whimsy as well: he defines his favourite cricketer as the English batsman Chris Tavare, decries the rise of park cricket sledging and, most beautifully of all, develops delicate snapshots of cricket history. These short trips are, unlike the footage that comprises most of our memories, full-colour and high-definition – he makes Bradman more than ridiculous numbers and grainy footage of a fourth-ball duck.

Perhaps what's most remarkable about his text is how easily he makes just the right words fit together on paper. Despite obvious labour over books, newspapers, journals and microfiche, Haigh's words appear with economic precision – as if he has the most severe of editors. When writing for a mass audience using such a scholarly approach, Haigh is to be praised and respected for balancing intellect with ease of reading. Characters like Lawrence Rowe, Richard Wardill and characteristics such as gambling are all treated with the same laconic, precise respect.

If you learn about politics from a book by a political master, you learn about cricket from Haigh – far more than from any other writer today. His words lack Roebuck's flair but also his occasional florid tones. He analyses the game from a removed, scholarly position; writing not because he loves the game (although he does) but because he feels it has stories to tell. In the prologue, he encourages young writers to do likewise. A memorable example was my favourite essay from Game for Anything, concerning the late-19^th century Australian captain Harry Trott and his commitment to Kew Asylum.

Highly recommended, scoring footballs.

For a different perspective, the SMH also reviewed this work.

Review: The Big Ship - Gideon Haigh

To begin with a proviso, this is not a book for the leisurely Sunday afternoon read, nor is it one for the casual enthusiast in matters cricket. Haigh has produced a fine piece of historical documentation on one of the most complex characters in cricket history, Warwick Armstrong.

Armstrong was a man who could be described as being as imposing as W.G. Grace, as ruthless as Douglas Jardine, and as enigmatic as Keith Miller. Haigh accurately combines such individual analysis of Armstrong’s character with broader analysis of the world and time in which he lived which was equally as complex. Armstrong’s career straddled not only the creation of Australia as a nation, but also The Great War, each in their own way influencing Australia’s national psyche.

This was an Australia trying to be the same yet different from their British origins and a people unsure of how to live with sectarian differences, primarily Protestant and Catholic (Armstrong a product of a mixed marriage). The cricket field, and halls of the games administration, providing an adequate microcosm for such tension to play out. Haigh therefore went beyond the simple boundaries of cricketing literature in researching this work, and the inclusion of such information further enhances the reader’s experience.

The man and player in Armstrong stood out in this era, and not just because of his enormous physical dimensions. Blessed with an immense talent, only shaded by his will to win, Armstrong became a cricketing Everest for opposition to climb. It was his will to win in all things that led him to play conservatively when the crowd wanted otherwise, and to argue vigorously without restraint off the field also.

Even quarrels with administration that Armstrong was not directly involved in, still had the feel of his presence – seemingly he was ‘of’ them always. He also cannot be said to be have been necessarily consistent in his dealings or statements; English cricketing authorities were quick to point out that his criticism of Jardine’s ‘Bodyline’ in 1932-33 was inconsistent with his own captaincy of Australian quicks Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald 12 years prior and his own use of leg theory as a bowler.

These brief notes only scratch the surface of the character that was ‘The Big Ship’, Warwick Armstrong. I can highly recommend this book to read for lovers of cricket history. We often look at black and white photographs and can feel the history and story behind them, though we don’t always know the details. What Haigh has done is to successfully extrapolate this feeling we have that we may know the character and stories in detail. For lovers of cricket and history, Basketballs

Cover Photo Courtesy of amazon.co.uk