Indian Summers

Martin Chandler | 10:00am GMT 22 December 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 341
Author: Haigh, Gideon
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Rating: 4 stars

Test cricket, for me, is the finest spectacle in sport by a distance. As an Englishman my greatest pleasure in life is watching England in the Test arena, but I am also happy to watch matches between any other countries whatever the time of day or night.

In the last few years however the devotion to England has waned, just a little, in the sense that the current series taking place in Australia for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has caught my attention in a way that no other non-Ashes series has before.

I know that I am not the only ‘neutral’ who feels this way and, I dare say, for your average Australian cricket tragic this rivalry must be becoming just as important as the four yearly contests for the Ashes, and indeed perhaps more so given the less than competitive England sides that have been visiting Australia for the last decade.

So, with his name gracing the covers of so many books about the Ashes, it is perhaps unsurprising that in the lead up to this year’s contest for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy Gideon Haigh has gathered together some of his writings on Indo-Australian cricket into this collection of his previously published writings.

Anthologies often claim to be the ‘best’ of whatever it is that they collect together. With Haigh however all his writing is of the same high standard, so he can concentrate on selecting the most significant elements of a rivalry that, in the last few years has become exactly what he states on the front cover, Cricket’s Battle of the Titans.

The book does begin with some ancient history, going right back to the Frank Tarrant arranged private tour in 1935/36, and most of that is culled from one Haigh’s early books, his 1997 published The Summer Game, but almost everything else is sourced from much more ephemeral origins, and would therefore otherwise be tricky to find for all but the diligent researcher.

And after that it really rather depends on what you want to read. Haigh’s contemporary accounts of the play in all of the more important matches are here. There was a time, before you could, in real time, watch a Test match going on anywhere in the world at the touch of a button or click a mouse, that we relied on the writings of men like Haigh to let us know what was going on.

The fact that such match reports are now otiose is the primary reason why the old fashioned accounts of Test series never now appear, yet despite that Haigh’s descriptions of a day’s play remain engrossing. I realise now the reason for that is that what Haigh provides is effectively an adjunct to his reader’s memory of what they have already seen rather than any attempt to offer a description of a day’s play unfolding.

There tends not to be too much in the way of reflection, something which in some ways was a source of disappointment to this neutral. That is not least because one such piece that is there, a look at the comments made by Tim Paine and picked up by the stump microphone in the 2021 series highlighted an issue that had otherwise passed me by.

But then, as always with collections, if something else were to come in then something else would have to be removed, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to lose any of the looks at the great Indian players of the not too ancient past, men like Bishan Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Dilip Doshi.

The great Indian batsmen figure as well of course, and, naturally the presence of Sachin Tendulkar looms large. Personally my favourite essay of them all is also the longest in the book, a portrait of Virat Kohli. The former Indian captain is a magnificent cricketer, and I do sometimes wonder why some Indian supporters lose patience with him. Haigh sums him up superbly albeit possibly, and Haigh being such a master of the English language I put it no higher than that, with a spelling mistake along the way!

So there is nothing new in Indian Summers, a succinct look forward to the series we are currently enjoying apart*, but it is nonetheless an essential purchase for anyone interested in what has become on one of the epic cricketing contests.

*Haigh, being a man of great wisdom, makes no attempt to predict the outcome.