Uncertain Corridors

Uncertain Corridors PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147113279X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
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.

Uncertain Corridors

Uncertain Corridors PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147113279X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Cricket and Contemporary Society in Britain

Cricket and Contemporary Society in Britain PDF Author: Russell Holden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131729307X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
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.

Cricket's Changing Ethos

Cricket's Changing Ethos PDF Author: Jon Gemmell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319763393
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
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.

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471131742
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
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.

Mystery Spinner

Mystery Spinner PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925626261
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
‘[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

Shelf Life

Shelf Life PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1761105248
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
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.

From the Colonial to the Carnival

From the Colonial to the Carnival PDF Author: Dr. Siddhartha R., Dr. Rani P. L.
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1685389007
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
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.

Learie Constantine and Race Relations in Britain and the Empire

Learie Constantine and Race Relations in Britain and the Empire PDF Author: Jeffrey Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135006985X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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.

Certain Admissions: A Beach, a Body and a Lifetime of Secrets

Certain Admissions: A Beach, a Body and a Lifetime of Secrets PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Penguin Group Australia
ISBN: 1743485956
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
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

Sphere of Influence

Sphere of Influence PDF Author: Gideon Haigh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857209000
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
'Does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money?' In the last three years, cricket has changed more completely than in the preceding three decades, revolutionised by a racy new format, Twenty20, and a glamorous new competition, the Indian Premier League. How did India come to run world cricket? How did clubs owned by billionaires and Bollywood stars begin to shove international competition aside? How did money unite players and divide administrators, amid allegations of massive corruption? Gideon Haigh has followed cricket's biggest story since Kerry Packer's 'World Series' from the beginning: Sphere of Influenceis the result. This insightful collection brings the struggle to save cricket's soul into sharp and disturbing focus.