I am not sure why I use the word review, I don’t really review. Mostly I give broad sweeping good thoughts. And the reason i don’t give bad thoughts is because i don’t review things here I don’t like.
Gideon Haigh’s new book, his 736th, is something i like.
Online the book is still called, “The Ultimate Test: The Story of the 2009 Ashes Series“.
Gideon knew that no one would take that seriously and instead has used the extremely self-aware comment from Strauss upon England winning the Ashes.
The book is not without fault, there is no chapter about Gideon meeting me, and the front cover has a ginger northern man making the international symbol for the letter Y.
Once inside the book, it is a thing of beauty, a joy forever. Which makes it nothing like the series itself.
Reading Gideon is like drinking the top single malt Scottish Whisky. It’s a smooth enjoyable feeling, and even when he is talking about Brum you feel like you are in your happy place.
Gideon is the cricket writer’s writer.
Friends of mine talk about him like goth schoolgirls talk about those moody looking vamps in Twilight.
In 2005 this book would probably already be a best seller, but in the wake of the Bopara Hauritz series people aren’t looking forward to shelling with their cash, for this book they should.
This is a small section on Ian Bell:
“Perhaps the most intriguing is Bell. In mathematics, a bell curve describes the mathematical depiction of data clustered around a mean. In cricket, a Bell curve describes a tendency in scores to produce a Test average of 40 while nonetheless remaining largely devoid of character or authority. “
Imagine if I wrote that, it would end up with Ian Bell naked in a bird cage. Gideon makes it classy while slipping his velvet slipper nicely into Bell’s ribs.
If you are going to buy only one Ashes book this year, perhaps you should wait a month or so, but if you are going to buy a couple I suggest this should be one of them.
Available with free worldwide delivery here.
What the picture doesn’t show is what happened afterwards – the ginger man making the symbols for M, C and A.
The book was fixed jrod – the only possible reason someone would write about that series is that they were already commissioned to do so.
Bell – i think its the name that does it – you just cant take him seriously. Now if the nudger was called Harlot, or say, Hussey, we would really respect him.
Cricket loving geeks dream of being Gideon Haigh in a parallel universe.
What’s in “a month or so”?
Another book on the Ashes that people who read this site might like as well.
You’re being vague about this jrod, like that other guy talking about that thing the other day.
really? I thought that was clear. In about a month’s time there will be an Ashes book available for purchase that readers of this site, cricket with balls, may also like. What is unclear about that, book, month, ashes, you guys, like.
How will I know which one it iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis
Because this website will promote it so endlessly that the name of it will be forever imprinted on your brain.
What about a couple of working titles?
‘The Ashes 09 – ‘the mainstream palimpcest as pissed on by Cricket with Balls’, aka ‘not the dogs bollocks’
a chapter on Hilditch called ‘Sublimation, a process by which formerly solid performance can be excused with hot air’?
nice article jrod. but hafta ask is your nose all brown now.
Bell’s a soft target, isn’t he? It’s like laughing at the royal family.
Poor sod, a test average of 40 means stuff all these days anyway, though English fans seem to think it means some sort of real class.
Vim, we’d all stop bagging him if he just went away.