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The Ultimate Test: The Story of the 2009 Ashes Series by Gideon Haigh
Hardcover
First published September 17, 2009
25 people want to read
About the author
Gideon Haigh
101 books113 followersGideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh (born 29 December 1965) is an English-born Australian journalist, who writes about sport (especially cricket) and business. He was born in London, raised in Geelong, and now lives in Melbourne.
Haigh began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over 70 newspapers and magazines,[2] both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series and has featured also in The Times and the Financial Times.
Haigh has authored 19 books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical works includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society's "Book of the Year", short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times;[3] anthologies of his writings Ashes 2005 and Game for Anything, as well as Many a Slip, the humorous diary of a club cricket season, and The Vincibles, his story of the South Yarra Cricket Club, of which he is life member and perennate vice-president and for whose newsletter he has written about cricket the longest. He has also published several books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP, Asbestos House (which dilates the James Hardie asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO phenomenon. He mostly publishes with Aurum Press.
Haigh was appointed editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC television sports panel show Offsiders. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.
Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as the deification of Sir Donald Bradman and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy".[4] He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly, entitled "Sir Donald Brandname". Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry, writing in The Australian that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".[4]
Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[5] for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid",[6] which was published in The Monthly magazine. He asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. He believes the pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is inevitably limited and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences.
He blogged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer.[7]
On 24 October 2012 he addressed the tenth Bradman Oration in Melbourne.
Haigh began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over 70 newspapers and magazines,[2] both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series and has featured also in The Times and the Financial Times.
Haigh has authored 19 books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical works includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society's "Book of the Year", short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times;[3] anthologies of his writings Ashes 2005 and Game for Anything, as well as Many a Slip, the humorous diary of a club cricket season, and The Vincibles, his story of the South Yarra Cricket Club, of which he is life member and perennate vice-president and for whose newsletter he has written about cricket the longest. He has also published several books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP, Asbestos House (which dilates the James Hardie asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO phenomenon. He mostly publishes with Aurum Press.
Haigh was appointed editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC television sports panel show Offsiders. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.
Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as the deification of Sir Donald Bradman and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy".[4] He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly, entitled "Sir Donald Brandname". Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry, writing in The Australian that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".[4]
Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[5] for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid",[6] which was published in The Monthly magazine. He asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. He believes the pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is inevitably limited and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences.
He blogged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer.[7]
On 24 October 2012 he addressed the tenth Bradman Oration in Melbourne.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 26, 2018
Great writing, bizarre series.
April 26, 2010
Although I am a complete cricket anorak, attended 3 of the 5 Ashes Tests last year in person, and barely missed a minute of the rest of the series either on TV or online - I'm afraid this book, the author's "diaries" of the series - left me completely cold.
Talked up as the modern day Neville Cardus, I have enjoyed some of Gideon Haigh's previous works - but I'm afraid this particular offering fell way short of the mark. It comes across as a series of tweets, blogs and texts to mates interspered with the odd well researched and written piece. It's as if the whole lot was put to print as they were written - unedited, and unexpurgated. Much of the writing was verging on the incomprehensible - sentences which rambled on and on, lacking any sort of punctuation. It was very, very difficult to read at times - and even on a third or fourth close reading, the point(s) of the multi faceted sentence was still lost on the reader.
Even the stats bit at the back was disappointing - the bare scorecards and averages of the series.
I hate to to sound negative about anything in life, but I'm afraid that ploughing through this book was a tortuous experience.
Talked up as the modern day Neville Cardus, I have enjoyed some of Gideon Haigh's previous works - but I'm afraid this particular offering fell way short of the mark. It comes across as a series of tweets, blogs and texts to mates interspered with the odd well researched and written piece. It's as if the whole lot was put to print as they were written - unedited, and unexpurgated. Much of the writing was verging on the incomprehensible - sentences which rambled on and on, lacking any sort of punctuation. It was very, very difficult to read at times - and even on a third or fourth close reading, the point(s) of the multi faceted sentence was still lost on the reader.
Even the stats bit at the back was disappointing - the bare scorecards and averages of the series.
I hate to to sound negative about anything in life, but I'm afraid that ploughing through this book was a tortuous experience.
July 23, 2013
Enjoyed revisiting the 2009 series during this years start to the Ashes. Although England won they certainly made heavy weather of it. The author does seem a touch quick to give credit to luck, pitch, and umpiring decisions rather than England and it is certainly written for an Australian audience with plenty of good natured jibes towards England and the English. Most prescient line in the book? "We've griped for a long time about umpires. It probably won't be long until we're moaning about technology". Assuming Haigh is working on the 2013 Ashes, expect copious articles about DRS. This was a nice easy read, but not a patch on the 2005 book. Then again, there might never be another Ashes quite like 2005 anyway.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews