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Mystery Spinner: The Life and Death of an Extraordinary Cricketer
It is no mystery that today Jack Iverson is virtually unknown. An unexceptional estate agent who died in obscurity, by his own hand, he was a clumsy fielder and a hopeless batsman. But for four years he was the best spin bowler in the world. Iverson took up cricket, at the advanced age of 31, as capriciously as he left it â?? joining a club 3rd XI in Melbourne one day, and instantly announcing himself as the most prodigious and improbably spinner of a cricket ball. Using a technique that he appears to have perfected with a ping-pong ball, he doubled back his middle finger and found he could bowl leg breaks, top spinners and googlies, every one dropped on a perfect length and impossible to pick. Within four years he was bowling the Australian Test side to victory over England in the Ashes series of 1950-51. Then, in his moment of triumph, he retired from international cricket, and was never the same bowler again. Gideon Haighâ??s quest for the truth about this enigmatic, elusive man, with the strangest grip any spinner had ever used, is not just a story of a forgotten hero, but an attempt to solve the enduring riddle of Iversonâ??s life. Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year , and voted Cricket Book of the Year , with the judges commending a 'stunning and most moving book', Mystery Spinner is a truly compelling study of how, at the highest level of sport, skill is only half the battle.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
7 people are currently reading
169 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 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 10, 2021
Picked this up on a whim, not really knowing anything of Iverson, and it turned out to be a compelling read of an otherwise ordinary life that took an extraordinary turn in Jack's thirties when, never really having had anything other than a passing interest in cricket, he suddenly developed a new style of spin bowling that had been hitherto unseen. Armed with this 'mystery ball' (some thought it a googly, some an off break, most batsmen simply had no idea how to play him), Jack began a meteoric rise through first suburban club cricket, then intrastate Sheffield Shield for Victoria and finally culminating in a brief but unforgettable career playing for Australia.
While Haigh, whose stock in trade is cricket writing, describes the games and the cricket characters beautifully, the book is really about a forgotten time in what some prefer to think of as a simpler world and the themes of filial obligation, service to country, family and ultimately and tragically, depression, run through this book.
While Haigh, whose stock in trade is cricket writing, describes the games and the cricket characters beautifully, the book is really about a forgotten time in what some prefer to think of as a simpler world and the themes of filial obligation, service to country, family and ultimately and tragically, depression, run through this book.
January 29, 2022
This book is about Jack Iverson, an Australian spin bowler who appeared, quite literally out of nowhere, played cricket for 4 years (from the age of 31), earned himself the 10th best bowling figures that have ever been produced in test cricket, only to disappear just as fast because of an injury to his ankle, his spinning finger, and his confidence.
As I said, this is a biography, but it's a slightly weird biography. Iverson was never a "coming man" who people would tag for greatness (the author admits that one of the reasons he remembers Iverson so fondly was because of his freaky looking bowling action). He live an innocuous life before his brush with fame, and it was innocuous after fame had passed him by. As a result, Gideon Haigh (the author) regales us with how he tried to find anything out about Iverson's life.
This is an interesting book about an "ordinary man" who has a momentary brush with fame, before fading back into his earlier life. If that sounds like the sort of book that would interest you, then read this book. You'll enjoy it.
As I said, this is a biography, but it's a slightly weird biography. Iverson was never a "coming man" who people would tag for greatness (the author admits that one of the reasons he remembers Iverson so fondly was because of his freaky looking bowling action). He live an innocuous life before his brush with fame, and it was innocuous after fame had passed him by. As a result, Gideon Haigh (the author) regales us with how he tried to find anything out about Iverson's life.
This is an interesting book about an "ordinary man" who has a momentary brush with fame, before fading back into his earlier life. If that sounds like the sort of book that would interest you, then read this book. You'll enjoy it.
June 14, 2013
The doyen of cricket writers on a rarely talked about cricketer, Jack Iverson. Cricket, social history & mental illness are all unpacked in trying to understand this mysterious and brilliant, not to mention completely forgotten, bowler.
December 14, 2020
one of the great Australian sports writers; well-researched biography of a forgotten test cricketer; beautifully written - if occasionally a touch verbose; elevating the topic to intellectual rigour is a hallmark of Gideon Haigh's writing - applause
October 6, 2017
A book that creates a legend of a little known cricketer deserves all the praise one can direct at it. A superbly researched effort from Haigh.
October 5, 2025
"So here, perhaps, lies a little truth in the life and death of Jack Iverson. More than 2000 men have played cricket for their countries, and what have we really known about any of them? Even today, when we study and write about the players so exhaustively, the idea that we can obtain a measure of their character seems essentially a journalistic vanity. Those who watched or wrote about Jack Iverson can have had little conception of his frail sporting self-worth. No-one who played with him could have fathomed the depths of his disappointments and fears. By a man's sporting deeds, we can know only the merest fraction of him."
This, the second-last paragraph of this book, seems to me to explain why the previous 350-odd pages of this book are so fascinating, and why indeed a cricket biography of a man who only played 23 days of Test cricket in his 58 year life can be one of the better cricket books I've read - as C.L.R. James famously wrote "what do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?". Haigh has given us here the life of a complex man, who happened to be a very unusual cricketer.
The spark for this book came from Haigh's curiosity about Iverson - they both attended the same secondary school, but Haigh could not find Iverson's name on any cricket honour boards or in the record books, so he wondered how Iverson made it to the top.
Almost everything about Jack Iverson's cricket career was unconventional, whereas nearly everything about the rest of his life was completely conventionally middle-class. Son of a self-made father who became a successful real estate agent, Jack boarded at Geelong College, and spent time after school Jackarooing in country Victoria. He joined up at the start of World War II and served in an anti-aircraft battery in the Middle-East, Africa, and the Pacific. It was during the down-time during his service where his cricket career began. When he was young he was not interested in cricket, but rather golf (he was a fine golfer who won many tournaments). He had the habit in his youth of spinning table-tennis balls between his thumb and third finger as a bit of a party trick. While he was playing cricket in New Guinea, he made the decision to try this "trick" when bowling a cricket ball, and met with some success.
After the War he went down to his local club in Melbourne (Brighton) and immediately began to take wickets. His unusual method of spinning the ball (which batsmen found hard to decipher), his unerring accuracy, and the height and pace of release made him a dangerous adversary.
His rise through District and State ranks was meteoric, until he became the sensation of the 1950 Ashes Series. This height of his career was brief, mainly due to Iverson's character. Because Iverson had not come up through the ranks of cricket in the usual manner, he had not developed what Haigh calls a 'cricket brain'. Iverson's lack of experience manifested itself in a few ways. Iverson seemed unable to vary his mode of bowling - he essentially had two different types of deliveries and seemed unable to easily vary his line, length, or speed. Some of the better batsmen he bowled to worked this out and managed to survive and even make runs against him. His character and relative lack of experience meant that he was unable to cope with lack of success: if he failed, he felt it very personally. In fact as Haigh points out, it seems that Iverson felt that his "trick" as he put it, would be found out sooner or later, and that he would be exposed as some sort of fraud. After his final game for Victoria he explained that he was retiring from First-Class Cricket because "they are playing me easily."
Iverson's life after cricket descended into depression and eventual suicide: it seems to me that the depressive turn to his character was always within him, even before he started playing cricket. He was always a slightly aloof figure, and it seems that Iverson's father dominated his life, bringing him into the family business. Jack seemed to do what was expected of him rather than what he wanted to do - perhaps it was not only on the cricket field that he felt he was an imposter.
This is a fascinating book, well-written and full of nuggets of information - Haigh, in the course of Iverson's story gives us essays on the development of spin bowling and its first exponent, and on the only other man to take Iverson's method into the Test arena.
Even if you are not a cricket fan, there is much in this book to enjoy.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
This, the second-last paragraph of this book, seems to me to explain why the previous 350-odd pages of this book are so fascinating, and why indeed a cricket biography of a man who only played 23 days of Test cricket in his 58 year life can be one of the better cricket books I've read - as C.L.R. James famously wrote "what do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?". Haigh has given us here the life of a complex man, who happened to be a very unusual cricketer.
The spark for this book came from Haigh's curiosity about Iverson - they both attended the same secondary school, but Haigh could not find Iverson's name on any cricket honour boards or in the record books, so he wondered how Iverson made it to the top.
Almost everything about Jack Iverson's cricket career was unconventional, whereas nearly everything about the rest of his life was completely conventionally middle-class. Son of a self-made father who became a successful real estate agent, Jack boarded at Geelong College, and spent time after school Jackarooing in country Victoria. He joined up at the start of World War II and served in an anti-aircraft battery in the Middle-East, Africa, and the Pacific. It was during the down-time during his service where his cricket career began. When he was young he was not interested in cricket, but rather golf (he was a fine golfer who won many tournaments). He had the habit in his youth of spinning table-tennis balls between his thumb and third finger as a bit of a party trick. While he was playing cricket in New Guinea, he made the decision to try this "trick" when bowling a cricket ball, and met with some success.
After the War he went down to his local club in Melbourne (Brighton) and immediately began to take wickets. His unusual method of spinning the ball (which batsmen found hard to decipher), his unerring accuracy, and the height and pace of release made him a dangerous adversary.
His rise through District and State ranks was meteoric, until he became the sensation of the 1950 Ashes Series. This height of his career was brief, mainly due to Iverson's character. Because Iverson had not come up through the ranks of cricket in the usual manner, he had not developed what Haigh calls a 'cricket brain'. Iverson's lack of experience manifested itself in a few ways. Iverson seemed unable to vary his mode of bowling - he essentially had two different types of deliveries and seemed unable to easily vary his line, length, or speed. Some of the better batsmen he bowled to worked this out and managed to survive and even make runs against him. His character and relative lack of experience meant that he was unable to cope with lack of success: if he failed, he felt it very personally. In fact as Haigh points out, it seems that Iverson felt that his "trick" as he put it, would be found out sooner or later, and that he would be exposed as some sort of fraud. After his final game for Victoria he explained that he was retiring from First-Class Cricket because "they are playing me easily."
Iverson's life after cricket descended into depression and eventual suicide: it seems to me that the depressive turn to his character was always within him, even before he started playing cricket. He was always a slightly aloof figure, and it seems that Iverson's father dominated his life, bringing him into the family business. Jack seemed to do what was expected of him rather than what he wanted to do - perhaps it was not only on the cricket field that he felt he was an imposter.
This is a fascinating book, well-written and full of nuggets of information - Haigh, in the course of Iverson's story gives us essays on the development of spin bowling and its first exponent, and on the only other man to take Iverson's method into the Test arena.
Even if you are not a cricket fan, there is much in this book to enjoy.
Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/
October 28, 2009
Would a cricketer like Jack Iverson ever make it to the world stage today? Most definitely not! But in the late 1940s Iverson's most unusual delivery, with his middle finger tucked behind the ball, catapulted him to national fame in Australia and then to the Test team against England in 1950/51.
This book charts his rise, and his stay at the top was extremely brief, with lots of non-cricketing material as background. His exploits in the Test arena, while documented, perhaps do not come across as taking quite the centre stage that they should.
Iverson met a sad end and one of the best parts of the book is an analysis of his death, by his own hand, with some superb quotes about depression from Darkness Visible by William Styron.
The author feels that something said about an earlier English cricketer applies to Iverson, and after reading the book, who could not but agree. "He had his failings - who has not? - but he also had trials that fall to the lot of few men. He was a great cricketer, and a most kindly soul."
This book charts his rise, and his stay at the top was extremely brief, with lots of non-cricketing material as background. His exploits in the Test arena, while documented, perhaps do not come across as taking quite the centre stage that they should.
Iverson met a sad end and one of the best parts of the book is an analysis of his death, by his own hand, with some superb quotes about depression from Darkness Visible by William Styron.
The author feels that something said about an earlier English cricketer applies to Iverson, and after reading the book, who could not but agree. "He had his failings - who has not? - but he also had trials that fall to the lot of few men. He was a great cricketer, and a most kindly soul."
December 26, 2020
A biography of Jack Iverson whose's star shone brightly but very briefly as an Australian Test Cricketer.
A man who happened to discover a way to spin a cricket ball in such a mysterious way, that it catapulted him to the pinnacle of Australia cricket. For one magic test Ashes test series - 1950/51 - he was a match winner, at the age of 35.
But this is first and foremost the story of the life of an Australian suburban man - a man who served his country in World War 2 and then settled down to raise a family in the Australia of the 1950s. And of his struggles later in his life with mental illness.
A man who happened to discover a way to spin a cricket ball in such a mysterious way, that it catapulted him to the pinnacle of Australia cricket. For one magic test Ashes test series - 1950/51 - he was a match winner, at the age of 35.
But this is first and foremost the story of the life of an Australian suburban man - a man who served his country in World War 2 and then settled down to raise a family in the Australia of the 1950s. And of his struggles later in his life with mental illness.
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October 23, 2017‘One of the best cricket biographies I have ever read.’
Wisden Cricket Monthly
‘[An] unconventional journey…brilliantly documented.’
Courier Mail
‘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.’
SPNcricinfo
‘Magnificent.’
Roar
Wisden Cricket Monthly
‘[An] unconventional journey…brilliantly documented.’
Courier Mail
‘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.’
SPNcricinfo
‘Magnificent.’
Roar
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews