Book description
Gideon Haigh's previous collections of cricket writings, Game for
Anything (978 1 84513 0787) and Silent Revolutions (978 1 84513 226 2),
both published by Aurum, have concentrated primarily on historical
subjects great cricketers of the past, cricketing controversies,
forgotten heroes. In this new book he concentrates on the modern game
cricket for the twenty-first century. Above all, of course, it is a
game, at least at Test level, dominated by the green-and-gold wearing
Australians, so Haigh includes a number of pieces on the great
Australian Cricketers of our day like Shame Warne, Glen McGrath, Steve
Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Justin Langer many of whom have been exciting
figures on the English county scene. He also considers the precipitous
and regrettable decline of the West Indies, the advent of the new
Test-playing countries like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, the pyrotechnic
thrills of the new Twenty 20 game and the shift of gravity in the game's
finances to the subcontinent. And he ponders, from bitter experience,
such eternal verities of the game as the gratuitous rudeness and
xenophobia of the gatemen at the home of cricket.
Gideon Haigh's other books for Aurum include Mystery Spinner, Many a
Slip, Ashes 2005 and Downed Under, as well as two Wisden anthologies
Peter the Lord's Cat and Parachutist at Fine Leg. He lives in Melbourne,
Australia
