Have We Got Enough? "Over and Out: Cricket Umpires and Their Stories" by John Gascoigne (ed) and "The Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Season" by Gideon Haigh. [review]

Abstract

When you bump into people who know Gideon Haigh - and that happens a lot in Geelong - they will tell you about his encyclopedic knowledge of cricket, his dedication to detail and his casualness with money. He also has a delicious ability to turn the mundane into the magnificent. For this is exactly what "The Vincibles" is to we weekend warriors - a magnificent vindication of our very existence. A book on umpiring seems to defeat the whole purpose of umpires. If they are doing their jobs proficiently, they should not be noticed. But they are people with egos and ambitions, too, and more than a few go out of their way to be noticed. In the end, Gascoigne has managed a bit of a Haigh: taking something that might seem pretty ordinary and making it a good read, one of those books you can jump into almost anywhere and find something to keep your interest until the train or tram gets you to where you're going - probably to watch the Yarras play.