Gideon Haigh
Encyclopedia
Gideon Clifford Jeffrey Davidson Haigh (born December 29, 1965) is an English
-born Australia
n journalist
, who writes about sport (especially cricket
) and business. He was born in London
of a Yorkshire
father and an Australian mother, and was raised in Geelong, Victoria
.
newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian
from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over twenty newspapers and magazines, both on business topics as well as on sport, most of it cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian
during the 2006-07 Ashes series
, and has featured also in The Times
and Financial Times
.
Haigh has authored nineteen books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical work 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
Book of the Year, short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year
and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times
; 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 publishes mostly with Aurum Press
.
That his writing is held in high regard was shown in the decision to appoint him 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's 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 deification of Sir Donald Bradman
and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy". 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".
Haigh won the John Curtin
Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier
's Literary Awards in 2006 for his essay "Information Idol: How Google
is making us stupid", which was published in The Monthly
magazine. Haigh 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 is blog
ged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer
.
. Haigh's partner from 2002 to 2005 was Sally Warhaft, who edited The Monthly until April 2009. Haigh stated that he would not write for The Monthly after Warhaft's departure. He is also a regular contributor to the podcasts of www.testmatchsofa.com – the alternative cricket commentary.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
-born Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, who writes about sport (especially cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
) and business. He was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
of a Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
father and an Australian mother, and was raised in Geelong, Victoria
Geelong, Victoria
Geelong is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia, south-west of the state capital; Melbourne. It is the second most populated city in Victoria and the fifth most populated non-capital city in Australia...
.
Career
Haigh has been writing about sport and business for over twenty years. He began his career as a journalist, writing on business for The AgeThe Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over twenty newspapers and magazines, both on business topics as well as on sport, most of it cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
during the 2006-07 Ashes series
2006-07 Ashes series
The 2006–07 cricket series between Australia and England for the Ashes was played in Australia from 23 November 2006 to 5 January 2007. Australia won the series and regained the Ashes that had been lost to England in the 2005 Ashes series...
, and has featured also in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
.
Haigh has authored nineteen books and edited seven more. Of those on a cricketing theme, his historical work includes The Cricket War and Summer Game, his biographies The Big Ship (of Warwick Armstrong
Warwick Armstrong
Warwick Windridge Armstrong was an Australian cricketer who played 50 Test matches between 1902 and 1921. An all-rounder, he captained Australia in ten Test matches between 1920 and 1921 and was undefeated, winning eight Tests and drawing two...
) and Mystery Spinner (of Jack Iverson
Jack Iverson
John Brian Iverson was an Australian cricketer who played in 5 Tests from 1950 to 1951. He was known for his unique "bent finger" grip, with which he briefly perplexed batsmen across Australia as well as the touring English cricket team...
), the latter pronounced The Cricket Society
The Cricket Society
The Cricket Society is a charitable organisation founded in 1945 as the Society of Cricket Statisticians at Great Scotland Yard, London. It has grown steadily to be the largest body of its kind in the cricket world...
Book of the Year, short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year
William Hill Sports Book of the Year
The William Hill Sports Book of the Year is an annual British literary award sponsored by bookmakers William Hill. It claims to be "the world's richest sports book prize" at £22,000...
and dubbed "a classic" by The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
; 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
James Hardie
James Hardie Industries Ltd. is an industrial building materials company headquartered in Ireland and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange which specialises in fibre cement products. James Hardie manufactures and develops technologies, materials and processes for the production of building...
asbestos controversy) and Bad Company, an examination of the CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
phenomenon. He publishes mostly with Aurum Press
Aurum Press
Aurum Press is an independent English publishing house located in London. It was founded in 1976. Aurum concentrates on non-fiction titles and publishes approximately 75 new books every year. One of its titles in 2009 will be the biography of Neville Staple, vocalist in The Specials, Fun Boy...
.
That his writing is held in high regard was shown in the decision to appoint him editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia was a cricket annual and reference book, the Australian version of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, generally known as Wisden...
for 1999–2000 and 2000–01. Since March 2006, he has been a regular panellist on the ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
Television's sports panel show Offsiders
Offsiders
Offsiders is an Australian television sports program, that is currently airing live on Sunday mornings at 10.30am on both ABC1 and ABC News 24 networks . It began airing in 2005...
. He was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine
Jon Faine
Jon Faine is an Australian radio presenter and host of a morning program on 774 ABC in Melbourne.Faine was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, and emigrated to Sydney with his parents at a young age. Later they moved to Melbourne, where he attended Melbourne High School.In the late 1970s and early 1980s...
on 774 ABC Melbourne
774 ABC Melbourne
774 ABC Melbourne is an ABC Local Radio station in Melbourne, Australia. Originally known by its callsign 3LO, it began transmission on 13 October 1924 – Melbourne's second radio station after 3AR.-History:...
until near the end of 2006.
Haigh has been known to be critical of what he regards as deification of Sir Donald Bradman
Donald Bradman
Sir Donald George Bradman, AC , often referred to as "The Don", was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time...
and "the cynical exploitation of his name by the mediocre and the greedy". He did so in a September 1998 article in Wisden Cricket Monthly
Wisden Cricket Monthly
Wisden Cricket Monthly was a cricket magazine that ran from June 1979 to September 2003.The driving force behind the creation of WCM was its first editor, David Frith, formerly an editor of its rival, The Cricketer. At first, it operated under the Wisden name using license from John Wisden & Co;...
, entitled Sir Donald Brandname. Haigh has been critical of Bradman's biographer Roland Perry
Roland Perry
Roland Perry is a Melbourne-based author best known for his books on history, especially Australia in the two world wars. His Monash: The Outsider Who Won The War, won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' 'Melbourne University Publishing Award' in 2004...
, writing in The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
that Perry's biography was guilty of "glossing over or ignoring anything to Bradman's discredit".
Haigh won the John Curtin
John Curtin
John Joseph Curtin , Australian politician, served as the 14th Prime Minister of Australia. Labor under Curtin formed a minority government in 1941 after the crossbench consisting of two independent MPs crossed the floor in the House of Representatives, bringing down the Coalition minority...
Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier
Premiers of Victoria
The Premier of Victoria is the leader of the government in the Australian state of Victoria. The Premier is appointed by the Governor of Victoria, and is the leader of the political party able to secure a majority in the Legislative Assembly....
's Literary Awards in 2006 for his essay "Information Idol: How Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
is making us stupid", which was published in The Monthly
The Monthly
The Monthly is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer Morry Schwartz...
magazine. Haigh 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 is blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ged on the 2009 Ashes series for The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer is the world's best-selling monthly cricket magazine.It was created in 2003 by a merger between The Cricketer magazine and Wisden Cricket Monthly....
.
Personal life
Haigh lives in Melbourne with his wife Charlotte, whom he married in January 2009, his daughter Cecilia and his cat TrumperVictor Trumper
Victor Thomas Trumper was an Australian cricketer known as the most stylish and versatile batsman of the Golden Age of cricket, capable of playing match-winning innings on wet wickets his contemporaries found unplayable. Archie MacLaren said of him, "Compared to Victor I was a cab-horse to a Derby...
. Haigh's partner from 2002 to 2005 was Sally Warhaft, who edited The Monthly until April 2009. Haigh stated that he would not write for The Monthly after Warhaft's departure. He is also a regular contributor to the podcasts of www.testmatchsofa.com – the alternative cricket commentary.
Books – cricket-related
- (1993) The Cricket War: the Inside Story of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket
- (1994) The Border Years
- (1995) One Summer Every Summer: An Ashes Journal
- (1996) On Top Down Under : the Story of Australia's Cricket Captains
- (1997) Summer Game: Australian test cricket 1949–71
- (1997) Australian Cricket Anecdotes (ed.)
- (1999) Mystery Spinner: The Story of Jack Iverson
- (1999) Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia 1999–2000
- (2000) Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia 2000–01
- (2001) The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket
- (2002) Many a Slip: A Diary of a Club Cricket Season
- (2002) The Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Odyssey
- (2002) Endless Summer: 140 Years of Australian Cricket in Wisden
- (2004) Game for Anything: Writings on Cricket
- (2005) Ashes 2005: The Full Story of the Test Series
- (2006) Peter the Lord's Cat: And Other Unexpected Obituaries from Wisden (ed.)
- (2006) The Book of Ashes Anecdotes (ed.)
- (2007) All Out: The Ashes 2006–2007
- (2007) Silent Revolutions: Writings on Cricket History
- (2007) Inside Story: Unlocking Australian Cricket's Archives (with David Frith)
- (2009) The Greatest Test: The Story of the 2009 Ashes series
Books – other
- (1987) The Battle for BHP
- (1999) One of a Kind: the Story of Bankers Trust Australia 1969–1999
- (2003) The Uncyclopedia
- (2004) Fat Cats: The Strange Cult of the CEO
- (2004) Tencyclopedia
- (2006) Asbestos House
- (2008) The Racket: How Abortion Became Legal in Australia.
External links
- The cricket war : the inside story of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket in Libraries Australia
- The Border years in Libraries Australia