On the Ashes

by Gideon Haigh

Nothing compares to the Ashes. The Ashes is always coming, even when it is finished. The Ashes is where hope, expectation, magic and chagrin flourish in equal measure, and performance is permanently burnished.'The best cricket writer in the world' Guardian'The Bradman of cricket writing' Sunday Telegraph'The finest cricket writer alive' The Australian'Australia's finest writer on cricket' The Times'The most gifted cricket essayist of his generation' Richard Williams, GuardianIn On The Ashes, Gideon Haigh, today's pre-eminent cricket writer, has captured over a century and half of Anglo-Australian cricket, from WG Grace to Don Bradman, from Bodyline to Jim Laker's 19-wicket match, from Ian Botham's miracle at Headingley to the phenomena of Patrick Cummins and Ben Stokes, today's Ashes captains. From over three decades of covering The Ashes, Gideon has brought together an enduring vision of this timeless contest between Australia and England - the world's oldest sporting rivalry - from the colonial era to the present day.

Genres: History

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2023

About the author

Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh (born 29 December 1965) is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport (especially cricket) and business. He was born in London, raised in Geelong, and now lives in Melbourne.

Haigh began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over 70 newspapers and magazines,[2] both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series and has featured also in The Times and the Financial Times.

Haigh has authored 19 books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical works includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society's "Book of the Year", short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times;[3] anthologies of his writings Ashes 2005 and Game for Anything, as well as Many a Slip, the humorous diary of a club cricket season, and The Vincibles, his story of the South Yarra Cricket Club, of which he is life member and perennate vice-president and for whose newsletter he has written about cricket the longest. He has also published several books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP, Asbestos House (which dilates the James Hardie asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO phenomenon. He mostly publishes with Aurum Press.

Haigh was appointed editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC television sports panel show Offsiders. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.

Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as the deification of Sir Donald Bradman and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy".[4] He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly, entitled "Sir Donald Brandname". Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry, writing in The Australian that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".[4]

Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[5] for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid",[6] which was published in The Monthly magazine. He asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. He believes the pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is inevitably limited and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences.

He blogged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer.[7]

On 24 October 2012 he addressed the tenth Bradman Oration in Melbourne.

Reviews

[Jared Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very solid cricket writing by Gideon Haigh, as ever masterful with his use of allusions, metaphor, and says as much with the words he delicately avoids as those he sets down. The book is only three stars because it's not strictly, as it appears, a fun potted history of the Ashes set down, but rather an edited collection of dozens of articles Haigh has written in the past (and at least one speech) re the Ashes and then put in the chronological order of their subjects. This creates an odd effect where there is far more exhaustive detail once we reach the mid-90s onwards, when Haigh was regularly working and reporting on live matches, and giving the modern series so much weight feels a bit lopsided. A lot of his pieces on past figures are also obituaries and slice of life writing, so even they get divorced a bit from the story of the sporting contest. As said, the writing is lovely (and opinionated) but be aware it's a collection of pieces with no semblance of narrative to the content, just a rough throughline of Anglo-Austral rivalry.

[Michael Brasier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Look full disclosure I have been a cricket tragic since the day Dad took the family to the MCG in 1975 to watch the Australians run amoke against the English. I saw Thomson and Lillee bowl and have been hooked ever since. This is a great book for me. I love the history that comes with this game and Gideon writes wonderfully about people that I am familiar with as well as many that I am not. A great companion to the series in the Uk at the moment. A welcome addition to the collection of his writings on cricket

[Conor Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was reading about all the ashes controversies of old when Bairstow got stumped, added to the gravitas of the most recent test. Loved ‘On Warne’ and this definitely did not disappoint.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just skimmed through, short snippets of Ashes players through history. Well put together and easy to pick up and put down.

[Douglas Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

An outstanding read from the Thinking Man’s cricketer. The quality of the prose as it defines the character of a player, or the circumstances of a match are excellent. Reading Gideon Haigh is like looking at a radio script - he has an outstanding capacity to turn words into pictures. His description of Darren Lehman standing at the wicket at Trent Bridge in 2015 after the capitulation to Stuart Broad made me shiver, not just because of the recent memory but his description - forlorn is the best descriptor. I note that Australia have not been back there for a Test Match since. A great book from Australia’s greatest cricket writer.

[Peter Langston · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was wonderful recapping so many well written pieces on Ashes cricket - whether descriptions of okay or players, Haigh has risen to be Australian cricket’s preeminent re-teller of the moments of the great game. But wait, there’s more, so much more captured in his style, he smooth metaphors and his comparisons: Strauss playing a googly that turned as slow as an old watch, for instance. Haigh is an observer of the things we saw but didn’t understand; what we watched but didn’t see. Like a delicious pudding, his words are rich and too soon finished.

[Dec · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australia’s best cricket writer