Game For Anything : Writings on Cricket

272 Pages·2005·1.44 MB·English

by  Haigh

Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
PAST MASTERS
A Brief History of Cricket
Victor Trumper His Own Sweet Way
Ranjitsinhji The Indian Juggler
Sir Jack Hobbs The Master
Jack Gregory The Mighty Atom
George Headley Atlas
Bradman’s 254 Cracking Noises
Bradman at Ninety Sir Donald Brandname
Bradman Redux The Greatest No-longer-living Australian?
Eddie Gilbert and Mark Waugh Dark Victory
Richie Benaud The Face of Cricket
Sir Garfield Sobers The Awkward Hero
Wasim Akram Reversals
Steve Waugh World Waugh
Steve Waugh Undefeated
Shane Warne Positive Spin
CRICKET TRAGICS
R.W. Wardill The Hero and the Ham
G.H.S. Trott The Madness of King Harry
THE SECOND XI
H.V. Hordern Googlies
Reg Duff The Second
Peggy Antonio The Girl Grimmett
David Hookes Living in the Seventies
Mohinder Amarnath Jimmy
Tony Greig Smiling, Damn’d Villain
John Wright Trying
Chris Tavaré Gentle Man
Len Pascoe Fast Times
Arjuna Ranatunga Stumbling Block
Lawrence Rowe The Enemies of Promise
PRESENT DISCONTENTS
World Series Cricket Interesting Times
The Qayyum Inquiry The Incredible Exploding Cricket Team
The King Commission ‘The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight’
The Condon Report The Dog in the Night-time
Match-fixing Cronje’s Fall
The ICC What Is the Point of Cricket Administrators?
Australian Crowds Noises Off
Umpiring Inglorious Uncertainty
Throwing The Great Taboo
The Allan Border Medal Playing with Ourselves
Sledging F*** It
Zimbabwe A Test of Integrity
THE WRITING GAME
E.W. Swanton Lord Jim
Roland Perry No Ball
Tim Lane Voice of Summer
Ramachandra Guha East Is East
Wisden Size Matters
Peter McFarline Journo Man
C.L.R. James Boundaries
HOME AND AWAY
Club Cricket Naughton’s Old Boys
Amateur Sport Struggletown
The MCG Place of Sense
Australians in England At Home Away
EXTRA COVER
Batting The New Golden Age
Batting Less Is More
Fielding Ground Force
Slow Bowling Think
Fast Bowling and Captaincy Just Do It
The Future A New World Order?
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
WHEN THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY WRITER Ring Lardner died, young, after a
career that never quite fulfilled its rich promise, E Scott Fitzgerald was quick to
finger the culprit. Lardner, he pointed out, had poured much of his youthful
energy into working as a beat reporter for the Chicago Inter-Ocean following the
Cubs and White Sox, and thus down the drain of sports journalism: ‘During
those years when most men and women of promise achieve an adult education,
Ring moved in the company of a few dozen illiterates playing a boy’s game. A
boy’s game, with no more possibilities in it than a boy could master, a game
bounded by walls which kept out novelty or danger, change or adventure.’ So
there.
In the years I have written about cricket, Fitzgerald’s admonition has always
had a faintly familiar ring. Why bother doing it? Would there not be more
gainful avenues for expression? At book launches and literary events, a hint of
condescension lurks behind the smiles. Still writing about cricket, eh? Oh dear.
There is even, at times, a hint of resentment, sport in Australia being seen as
somehow antagonistic to culture, an alternative to thought, an opiate of the
people. A curious country, this – where it is often those boasting loudest of their
demotic sympathies who are most inclined to dismiss the widely enjoyed as
base, vulgar and jejune.
Which is not to say that these questions are without force. Yes indeed: why do
it? When I ask any of the scores of young people I’ve met aspiring to careers
writing about sport for newspapers, the answer is always invariable: ‘Because I
love sport.’ I cringe inwardly at this; perhaps the only answer worse is: ‘Because
I love writing.’ It isn’t that enjoyment always ceases once one turns a pleasure
into a job; but one’s relationship to that pleasure changes. When I meet them
again down the track, they have usually become either bored or boring, surfeited
and cynical or capable of discussing nothing else – chewed up and spat out or
chewed up and swallowed.
Looking back, even if I was incapable of articulating it, I think I’ve always
had in mind the possibility of such a fate. It was love at first sight when I found
cricket. I’ve tried not to jeopardise the relationship. I still play it, humbly, and
enjoy it, greatly. Thus I’ve shrunk from making cricket my job: where I’ve
written, it’s usually been because I’ve had something to say, or at least to add,
written, it’s usually been because I’ve had something to say, or at least to add,
wished to share it, and thought it time well spent. It’s meant to be fun, isn’t it?
We’re doing this because we want to, right? I’ve always liked a story about a
conversation between Gubby Allen, who between captaining England and being
a grandee of Lord’s worked in the City, and his Middlesex colleague John Warr.
‘If I had devoted as much time to stockbroking as I had to English cricket,’ Allen
declared loftily one day, ‘I should probably have been a millionaire by now.’
Warr hastily assented. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And just think how much better off
English cricket would have been.’
This book collects some of my cricket journalism from the last five years – the
stuff, anyway, that it’s not too shaming to revisit, and hasn’t been rendered
redundant by that terror of the sportswriter, glorious uncertainty – plus a couple
of earlier pieces. A few have been published in Australia before; most have not,
being commissioned from England, India and Pakistan. There are studies of
players old and new, essays exploring past events and present discontents,
satisfactions of my own curiosity and responses to events of the day. Some
subjects I have tackled several times, such as Sir Donald Bradman’s apotheosis
and Hansie Cronje’s disgrace. One section addresses lesser cricketers who, for
various reasons, have become personal favourites, from ‘Ranji’ Hordern to
Mohinder Amarnath. Another concerns writing and broadcasting, including
perspectives on five cricket critics I admire and one I do not. The Yarras, my
club, lurk in the background. A few of these pieces made their first appearance
in the club newsletter of which I’m editor – still my longest permanent cricket-
writing role. But to quote Ring Lardner himself, at the start of his wonderful
short story of sport and journalism ‘Harmony’: ‘Even a baseball writer must
sometimes work.’
Gideon Haigh
Melbourne, August 2004
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Behind every piece in this book has stood an editor, sometimes pleased,
sometimes puzzled, but usually good-humoured: Stephen Fay, Sambit Bal, Chris
Ryan, John Stern, Graem Sims, Graeme Wright, Peter Hanlon, Warwick Franks,
Rob Steen, Guy Rundle, Peter Rose, Max Suich, Sally Heath, Kathy Bail and
Garrie Hutchinson. Special thanks are due to Malcolm Schmidtke, who eased
my first faltering steps in journalism, and David Frith, who’s forgotten more
about cricket than I’ll ever know. I benefited, as always, from Philippa Hawker’s
critical clarity and George Thomas’s eagle eye when they read the manuscript.
It’s been another enjoyable and trouble-free experience to publish with Morry
Schwartz and Black Inc: that is, Rebecca Arnold, Eugenie Baulch, Thomas
Deverall, Chris Feik, Roisin FitzGerald, Meredith Kelly, Sophy Williams and
Caitlin Yates.
The confidence with which many of the judgements in this book have been
made testifies to how easy cricket is when perched behind a laptop. I am grateful
to my comrades at the Yarras for tolerating my efforts to bridge the gulf between
talking and doing, and to my partner Sally Warhaft for dealing with the
frustrations that flow from my repeated failures to do so. In all areas other than
sport, she has hugely enriched my life. I dedicate this book to her, in lieu –
temporarily, I promise – of a summer holiday.
Past Masters