Game for Anything : Writings on Cricket

by Gideon Haigh

Gideon Haigh's new book covers all the great figures and major issues of cricket, by collecting all his best writing about the game. There are profiles of players past and present - Bradman, Ranjitsinhji, Benaud and Sobers from the past, Steve Waugh, Shane Warne and Wasim Akram from the present. He covers the big issues in the sledging, match-fixing, Kerry Packer, Zimbabwe, umpiring. He writes about cricket's best writers - Swanton, C.L.R. James - and ponders the game's most halcyon and unique slow bowling, captaincy, the essence of good batting. Haigh has now established himself as one of the finest writers on the game - author of one acknowledged masterpiece, Mystery Spinner, a comic classic, Many a Slip - and one of its most most shrewd commentators, who gets widely reviewed both by the cricket media and the national press. This book is likely to attract the same attention.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

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

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of essays. A couple of them are all-timers, will be rereading those.

[Anindya Dutta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankly a bit disappointed with this collection. Some are brilliant, and some are ordinary.

[Sumanth J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read a lot about Haigh's writing and some of Haigh's writing. This book is an excellent compilation of his writing (pre-2005) about various aspects of the game. From player profiles and great performances to controversies and evolution of the craft of batting/bowling, this book has it all. Haigh's conviction that Cricket writing is an integral part of modern literature is evident with each word and sentence. I would love to read more by Haigh. Cricket is really privileged to be blessed with great writers and Haigh is definitely among the ones at the very top.

[Ashish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haigh has the gift of the gab when it comes to cricket writing and in a field already congested with some excellent writers, his work has the ability to stand apart. A must read for every cricket enthusiast.

[Dipra Lahiri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amongst the very best cricket writers in the world. These essays are old but not dated. Haigh writes with authority on the match fixing scandals of the past and evocatively about the old masters.

[Ryan Wulfsohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gideon Haigh is one of the best cricket journalists working today and although this collection of his writing dates from 2004 it is still very much relevant and of interest.