Download or read book Uncertain Corridors written by Gideon Haigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all the glamour and new-found wealth that has come to cricket thanks to the IPL, the sport has rarely faced such an uncertain future. The gold standard of cricket - Test matches - is being sidelined in some countries by the shorter forms of the game. While the sport is being transformed, administrators are struggling to keep pace with it all. Yet, despite all of this, the sport's essential elements remain in place: great games are played, new stars rise up and old stars step back and retire. In this new collection of writing, Gideon Haigh takes the pulse of the game today, and in particular looks at the decline of the sport in Australia, where the once all-conquering men in the 'baggy green' suddenly found themselves struggling to impose themselves on their opponents.

Download or read book Cricket and Contemporary Society in Britain written by Russell Holden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the declining status of cricket within contemporary British society after the high-water mark of England’s Ashes victory in 2005. It considers the deep roots of the game within British national life as well as its ever-changing nature, and reflects upon the current significance and relevance of a sport that many still perceive as deeply traditional and conservative in outlook. Adopting a socio-political approach, the book offers new perspectives on both the contemporary realities of modern cricket and the social, cultural and political condition of modern Britain. Rather than focusing on personality and the detail of match history, the book looks at how the sport has coped with wider societal changes, such as those in Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities, and how this has demanded adaptation by cricket’s governing authorities. The book also considers the international context in which the game continues to develop and how the initiative with new formats such as Twenty20 has been lost to other cricketing nations, and it offers insight into the continued expansion and recent professionalization of the women’s game, hinting at ways in which cricket as a whole could recapture the public’s imagination. Cricket and Contemporary Society in Britain is an invaluable resource for those studying the sociology of sport, sport history, cultural studies, the politics of sport, cultural identity, sport management and sport development. It is also a fascinating read for anybody with an interest in cricket or in the value of sport in an era of rapid socio-economic, political and cultural change.

Download or read book Cricket s Changing Ethos written by Jon Gemmell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines historically how cricket was codified out of its variant folk-forms and then marketed with certain lessons sought to reinforce the values of a declining landed interest. It goes on to show how such values were then adapted as part of the imperial experiment and were eventually rejected and replaced with an ethos that better reflected the interests of new dominant elites. The work examines the impact of globalisation and marketization on cricket and analyses the shift from an English dominance, on a sport that is ever-increasingly being shaped by Asian forces. The book’s distinctiveness lies in trying to decode the spirit of the game, outlining a set of actual characteristics rather than a vague sense of values. An historical analysis shows how imperialism, nationalism, commercialism and globalisation have shaped and adapted these characteristics. As such it will be of interest to students and scholars of sport sociology, post-colonialism, globalisation as well as those with an interest in the game of cricket and sport more generally.

Download or read book Mystery Spinner written by Gideon Haigh and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘[An] unconventional journey...brilliantly documented.’ Courier Mail ‘So you want to know something about this funny old bowling of mine. Well, there’s nothing to it. It’s really very simple—in fact, at times, I do not know much about it myself.’ In 1950, aged in his mid-thirties, ‘tall, shy, shambling’ Jack Iverson burst forth from obscurity in suburban Melbourne, ‘bowled like no man before’ and became a national sensation, then faded from view almost as swiftly. He died in obscurity, in tragic circumstances. In the enthralling Mystery Spinner, first published in 1999, one of the world’s best cricket writers goes in search of an enigma: an ordinary man in whom lurked the extraordinary. Gideon Haigh has been a journalist for three decades, writing mainly about sport and business. He is the author of more than thirty books, among them the award-winning On Warne, Certain Admissions and Stroke of Genius. He lives in Melbourne. ‘One of the best cricket biographies I have ever read.’ Wisden Cricket Monthly ‘Even if you don’t care for the game you might enjoy it...Not your standard sporting biography.’ Guardian ‘A delight, a gripping (no pun intended) read, and an object lesson to anyone tempted to try their hand at biography.’ ESPN cricinfo ‘Magnificent.’ Roar

Download or read book Ashes to Ashes written by Gideon Haigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-13 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time since the mid-1970s, England and Australia faced each other home and away in back-to-back series in the summer and winter of 2013. Under prolific captain Alastair Cook, England went into the Ashes on the back of three unbeaten series, including a first win in India for more than 25 years. By contrast, Michael Clarke's Australia arrived in England with an inexperienced side, changing their coach just weeks before the Ashes started. No wonder England started as strong favourites. And so it proved, as England won the home series by a 3-0 margin - their biggest Ashes win since the 1970s. But there were signs of an Australian revival in their defeat, and when England arrived Down Under, they found an entire nation ready to make things different, as the underdogs fought back. Suddenly, Australia were the better side in every aspect of the game, and they won back the Ashes after three consecutive crushing victories. Watching on as events unfolded was award-winning cricket writer Gideon Haigh. With great insight and skill, he reveals the key moments of both series, analysing the personalities of the players and how they coped with the most pressurised and high-profile cricketing contest of them all: the Ashes. No other book on the subject comes close to this one in getting to the heart of the matter.

Download or read book Shelf Life written by Gideon Haigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-12-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few journalists exemplify the creed ‘without fear or favour’ like Gideon Haigh. Shelf Life selects from twenty-one years of writing on myriad subjects by one of our clearest thinkers, sharpest stylists and most curious journalists. Architecture and airline food. Depression and doodling. Goya and Grossman. Weegee and Wire. When not wiring about cricket, Gideon Haigh has enjoyed taking journalism on unexpected journeys, where curiosity calls, into the past and future as well as the present. Edited by Russell Jackson, Shelf Life samples his work from the last two decades: essays, reportage, reviews, crisp analyses, deep dives into history, of no camp, and independent of the news cycle, from his shelves to yours.

Download or read book From the Colonial to the Carnival written by Dr. Siddhartha R., Dr. Rani P. L. and published by Notion Press. This book was released on 2022-02-14 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research in colonial studies has traditionally revolved around the historical, political and economic aspects of the colonial regime. The case is no different with the British Empire in India. The Empire was, however, built less by military force and more through cultural reinforcement. To this end, the British engaged many tools – religion, language and sport. Among the three Cs of Victorian England that defined civilisation, Cricket stood on par with Christianity and the Classics. Beyond being a sport, cricket was the Englishman’s representation of his ‘English-ness’ in the colonies and a tool used for colonisation – a scantily researched area. This book traces, through the colonial postulates of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha, the colonial path cricket took to its growth in the colony. The game moved from the ‘exclusivity’ of the English to the ‘mimicry’ of the natives as a part of the informal modes of rule employed in a colonial framework. Once formal modes were employed in the Empire, phases of ‘cultural reinforcement’ by the colonists followed by ‘patronage’ by the natives took over the spread of the game. Historical narratives are filled with examples supporting each phase in the sport. The very same tool that was used to establish the native’s ‘effeminacy’ was used, finally, to invert the hegemony. The book argues how decolonisation, in India’s case, did not occur through ‘rejection’ of the colonial culture, but, paradoxically, through ‘adaptation’ and ‘assimilation’ in clear colonial terms. This discussion achieves recency and relevance through its exposition of the telling decolonising moves in cricket to ‘subvert authority’ through the IPL. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival helps view the shift of cricket from the colonial to the carnival mode.

Download or read book Learie Constantine and Race Relations in Britain and the Empire written by Jeffrey Hill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who was Learie Constantine? And what can he tell us about the politics of race and race relations in 20th-century Britain and the Empire? Through examining the life, times and opinions of this Trinidadian cricketer-turned-politician, Learie Constantine and Race Relations in Britain and the Empire explores the centrality of race in British politics and society. Unlike conventional biographical studies of Constantine, this unique approach to his life, and the racially volatile context in which it was lived, moves away from the 'good man' narrative commonly attributed to his rise to pre-eminence as a spokesman against racial discrimination and as the first black peer in the House of Lords. Through detailing how Constantine's idea of 'assimilation' was criticized, then later rejected by successive activists in the politics of race, Jeff rey Hill off ers an alternative and more sophisticated analysis of Constantine's contributions to, and complex relationship with, the fight against racial inequalities inherent in British domestic and imperial society.

Download or read book Certain Admissions A Beach a Body and a Lifetime of Secrets written by Gideon Haigh and published by Penguin Group Australia. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain Admissions is Australian true crime at its best, and stranger than any crime fiction. It is real-life police procedural, courtroom drama, family saga, investigative journalism, social history, archival treasure hunt - a meditation, too, on how the past shapes the present, and the present the past. On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Flinders Street railway station. They decided to have a night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Albert Park Beach. When police arrested the other, Australia was transfixed: twenty-four-year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment, a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College, and Harold Holt's next-door neighbour in Toorak. Police said he had confessed. Kerr denied it steadfastly. There were three dramatic trials attended by enormous crowds, a relentless public campaign proclaiming his innocence involving the first editorials against capital punishment in Australia. For more than a decade Kerr was a Pentridge celebrity, a poster boy for rehabilitation – a fame that burdened him the rest of his life. Then, shortly after his death, another man confessed to having murdered Williams. But could he be believed? 'A work of true detection that not only compels belief in its every detail but has the breathtaking suspense of that very weird and rare for of crime writing that has the truth of a work of art.' Weekend Australian 'Haigh's work is a mesmerising detective story itself . . . [it] finds a new twist in the archives.' The Saturday Paper 'A beautifully written, tirelessly researched and ultimately very compelling and true story . . . Fascinating and tragic.' Herald Sun 'The trial of John Bryan Kerr was the first murder trial that I read about in detail, as a boy of eleven. I longed, even then, to know the whole story. Gideon Haigh's book has made the wait worthwhile.' Gerald Murnane 'In carefully and curiously lifting from the shadow the story of a lost girl and a troubled man, Haigh explores a writer's true territory: the space between what is, and what might be.' Sonya Hartnett 'Gideon Haigh understands the real tragedy of murder - it is never really solved.' P. M. Newton

Download or read book The Cricket War written by Gideon Haigh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The Times' 50 Greatest Sports Books In May 1977, the cricket world awoke to discover that a thirty-nine-year-old Sydney Businessman called Kerry Packer had signed thirty-five elite international players for his own televised 'World Series'. The Cricket War is the definitive account of the split that changed the game on the field and on the screen. In helmets, under lights, with white balls, and in coloured clothes, the outlaw armies of Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Clive Lloyd fought a daily battle of survival. In boardrooms and courtrooms Packer and cricket's rulers fought a bitter war of nerves. A compelling account of the top-class sporting life, The Cricket War also gives a unique insight into the motives and methods of the man who became Australia's richest, and remained so, until the day he died. It was the end of cricket as we knew it – and the beginning of cricket as we know it. Gideon Haigh has published over thirty books, over twenty of them about cricket. This edition of The Cricket War, Gideon Haigh's first book about cricket originally published in 1993, has been updated with new photographs and a new introduction by the author.

Download or read book The Corridor of Certainty written by Geoffrey Boycott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoffrey Boycott is one of the most outspoken and knowledgeable voices on cricket - but this book opens up a whole, new personal side to his life. Thirteen years ago, he received the diagnosis that tore his world apart: he had cancer of the tongue. Having faced down the fastest bowlers during his career as one of England's greatest-ever batsmen, he now had to take on an even more daunting foe. Boycott not only relives his terrifying battle with cancer but also writes movingly about his long-time love Rachael, and their daughter Emma. He talks about his many other interests and friendships beyond cricket, with a great chapter on Brian Clough as well as revealing some surprising enthusiasms: Boycott and Katy Perry? But Boycott has devoted his life to cricket, and his insights on the game, its players and those who write and talk about it are never less than frank, revealing, entertaining and very honest. He assesses the modern generation of players: how does he rate England's prolific captain Alastair Cook? And is Kevin Pietersen a batting genius or a player who has frittered away his talent? His opinions come with the authority of someone with profound knowledge of and love for the sport. In commentary, he refers to the 'corridor of uncertainty' for a batsman - but with Geoffrey Boycott there is never any room for that, which is why this book is such a compelling and entertaining read.

Download or read book A History of Cricket in 100 Objects written by Gavin Mortimer and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the preserve of the English, now, for nations the world over, summertime means cricket bats to be oiled, rain forecasts analysed and tea in the pavilion. Cricket has enthralled us since the seventeenth century. But what is it about the game that provokes such fervour? Award-winning sports author Gavin Mortimer calls together a cast of salt-of-the-earth Yorkshiremen, American billionaires and dashing Indian princes to tell the strange and remarkable tale of cricket's journey from medieval village sport of 'club-ball' to the global media circus graced by superstars from Denis Compton to Sachin Tendulkar. If you've ever wanted to know what a hoop skirt has to do with overarm bowling, why England fight Australia over a burnt bail, or how to avoid tickling a jaffa in the corridor of uncertainty, Mortimer chalks up a stunning century of tales in the first truly accessible global history of cricket.

Download or read book Stroke of Genius written by Gideon Haigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The year’s best cricket book’ Daily Telegraph ‘Well researched and engagingly written, this exemplary work reveals a hidden history…superbly told story’ Sunday Times ‘Easily the cricket book of the year, of the century…It extends the possibility of cricket-writing-as-literature’ Suresh Menon, The Hindu It is arguably the most famous photograph in the history of cricket. In George Beldam's picture, Victor Trumper is caught in mid stroke, the personification of cricketing grace, skill and power, about to hit the ball long and hard. Yet this image, 'Jumping Out', is important not only because of who it depicts, but also what it illustrates about the changing nature of the game and how it has been seen. Now, in Gideon Haigh's brilliant new book, Stroke of Genius, we learn not only about the man in the picture but also the iconography of Trumper's powerful position in cricket's mythology. For many, Australian batsman Trumper was the greatest ever. Neville Cardus wrote: 'I have never yet met a cricketer who, having seen and played with Victor Trumper, did not describe him without doubt or hesitation as the most accomplished of all batsmen of his acquaintance.' Like Lionel Messi or Roger Federer today, he defied the obvious bounds of affiliation. Unlike the current generation of sporting stars, however, there were no memoirs or papers, very few interviews, no action footage - even his date of birth is a matter of debate and conjecture. What isn't in doubt, though, is the impact he had on the game and on his nation. Haigh reveals how Trumper, and 'Jumping Out', helped to change cricket from the Victorian era of static imagery to something much more dynamic, modern and compelling. As such, Trumper helped not only transform cricket but even the way his country viewed itself.

Download or read book A Spirit of Dominance written by Hilary McD. Beckles and published by Canoe Pr. This book was released on 1998 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume are the revised texts of an eight-part public lecture series on West Indian cricket history and culture organized by the Centre for Cricket Research at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. An introductory essay by the editor, an interview with Viv Richards and two commentaries are also included. "Together they represent a tribute to Viv, as well as a substantial contribution to the historiography of West Indies cricket. While this material will serve students in the classroom well, we are sure that the public who participated in and enjoyed these lectures will wish to have this text in their possession for further engagement. It is therefore offered in this spirit of continuing dialogue." Introduction

Download or read book Then We Came to the End written by Joshua Ferris and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Hemingway Foundation / PEN Award, this debut novel is "as funny as The Office, as sad as an abandoned stapler . . . that rare comedy that feels blisteringly urgent." (TIME) No one knows us in quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the Chicago ad agency depicted in Joshua Ferris's exuberantly acclaimed first novel is family at its best and worst, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells an emotionally true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment—the one we pretend is normal five days a week. One of the Best Books of the Year Boston Globe * Christian Science Monitor * New York Magazine * New York Times Book Review * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * Time magazine * Salon

Download or read book Is Nothing Sacred written by Salman Rushdie and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1990 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature Writings from the Mainland in the Long Twentieth Century written by Yunte Huang and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic vision of the Chinese literary landscape across the twentieth century. Award-winning literary scholar and poet Yunte Huang here gathers together an intimate and authoritative selection of significant works, in outstanding translations, from nearly fifty Chinese writers, that together express a search for the soul of modern China. From the 1912 overthrow of a millennia-long monarchy to the Cultural Revolution, to China’s rise as a global military and economic superpower, the Chinese literary imagination has encompassed an astonishing array of moods and styles—from sublime lyricism to witty surrealism, poignant documentary to the ironic, the transgressive, and the defiant. Huang provides the requisite context for these revelatory works of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and speeches in helpful headnotes, chronologies, and brief introductions to the Republican, Revolutionary, and Post-Mao Eras. From Lu Xun’s Call to Arms (1923) to Gao Xinjiang’s Nobel Prize–winning Soul Mountain (1990), this remarkable anthology features writers both known and unknown in its celebration of the versatility of writing. From belles lettres to literary propaganda, from poetic revolution to pulp fiction, The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature is an eye-opening, mesmerizing, and indispensable portrait of China in the tumultuous twentieth century.