Product Description

This year's Test cricket series between England and Australia is the most eagerly awaited since Botham's Ashes of 1981. Grounds like Lord's and the Oval were sold out for all five days months ago, and tickets could have been sold several times over. For the first time in decades England go into the series as one of the top Test sides in the world, with - at least on paper - a real chance of winning. England have magnificent match-winning players like Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss; Australia have men like Glenn McGrath, Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden. Gideon Haigh is covering the whole series for the Guardian, and has now been commissioned to write a book about the whole series, which Aurum will rush out within weeks of the final ball of the series being bowled. This is not a piece of instant hackwork: this will be a considered and eloquent account of a historic sporting event by possibly the finest writer on cricket at the moment, whose classic Mystery Spinner (also published by Aurum) has been acclaimed as a 'classic' and a 'small masterpiece'. There will be a large audience for it, and a continuing one.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #189280 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author
Gideon Haigh's other books for Aurum include Mystery Spinner, Many o Slip. The Big Ship, Bad Company and, most recently, Game for Anything. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Customer Reviews

real-time, real-writing, real-good
How many times have you picked up a book reviewing a recent sporting event to find that it is unreavealing and dull, little more than a catalogue of scores, players and incidents, with no reference to the surrounding events and environment in which it was played? How many tmes have you groaned as the author trots out the same old cliches and platitudes, over-emphasising the skill of this player, the significance of that goal/try/wicket? How many times have you shuddered as the author describes part of the story with the smugness of hindsight? If you are fed up of such writing then I urge you to read this book.
This book is not a restrospective study of the most exiting Ashes series for many a year, but a real-time progression of articles following events as they unfold, without the knowledge of the end result. The book starts the winter of '04/'05 during the England tour of South Africa, but rather than using this as a springboard for building up the forthcoming Ashes series, Haigh describes the Australian response to an English batting collapse, and the background of Australian cricket and recent Ashes mismatches.

He then moves on to the early season skirmishes, with reports/essays written, crucially, on the day. This format continues through the tests, and is a fantastic format for reliving and re-understanding the twists and turns of this tense, unpredicable series. If you had just returned from camping on the dark side of the moon (a little breathless and dusty, no doubt), then this book would be the perfect way to live through the agonies and ecstasies as the advantage sways one way then the other. If you witnessed the series at the time, then this will refresh the emotions you felt during the matches (I listened to much of the series on TMS whilst painting my house- different rooms, and even individual brushstrokes, remind me of specific pasages of play).

This is a superb book, and even better considering it was released so quickly after the series reached its conclusion. The writing is crisp, entertaining, insightful, witty and cliche-free. I would recommend it without reservation. Even to Australians.

An intelligent read
A really intelligent read with some great character sketches and a wide-ranging take on contemporary popular culture as well as what has made cricket tick over the decades. Some of the prose can be a little dense but is well worth the effort. It's an intriguing book which one will return to with pleasure this winter when other Ashes books seem just one more photo-montage for the Christmas stocking. BUT - and it doesn't detract from the five stars - spot the howler on page 51!

Surprisingly Good
My heart sank as I read the introduction to this book for it is simply a collection of Gideon Haigh’s match reports and articles from the Guardian, Cricinfo & Wisden Cricketer. In order to meet the publication deadline they are essentially untouched.

This gives the book some structural problems, for example for each test there is an overall match report before the day by day summaries and because the reports are drawn from a number of different sources there is some repetition and some odd digressions. Furthermore, given the rush to publish, there are, inevitably, mistakes: most egregiously, the upsetting assertion that Australia won the second test by two runs.

It is a tribute to Haigh’s qualities as a writer and journalist and the intrinsic appeal of the Ashes contest of 2005 that despite these problems this is actually a good book. Haigh writes well and is a knowledgeable cricket pundit; the book is full of interesting observations and funny moments. I suspect that in order to appreciate the book, the reader needs to be quite well versed in the nuances of cricket and have an appreciation of cricket history; this is a book for the genuine cricket fan, not someone with a passing interest.

The book does contain a quote from Haigh that, for me, sums up the series: “It wasn’t long before the Ashes of 2005 had become the best Ashes in recent memory; a little longer and it was one of the best in history; by its conclusion it was a Test match classic that will be talked about for as long as I live, which can be guaranteed, because I will be doing the talking if no one else cares to.” Haigh does not need to worry, there are many others, including me, who will be talking about it as well.