Best 15 quotes of Gideon Haigh on MyQuotes

A Writer says: read what I have written An historian says: listen to my lecture A critic says: listen to what I think A journalist says: let me tell you a story.

George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.

No cricketer is so dependent on the turf on which the game is played as the spinner; it can make, break, enfang or defang him.

Far from marking the end of nationalism, the IPL is the ultimate triumph of that principle: a global tournament in which the same nation always wins.

[I]f Modi is toast, it will in one sense be a tremendous pity. In his way, he represents a third generation in cricket's governance. For a hundred years and more, cricket was run by administrators, who essentially maintained the game without going out of their way to develop it. More recently it has been run by managers, with just an ounce or two of strategic thought. Modi was neither; he was instead a genuine entrepreneur. He has as much feeling for cricket as Madonna has for madrigals, but perhaps, because he came from outside cricket's traditional bureaucratic circles, he brought a vision and a common touch unexampled since Kerry Packer.

Nearly 30 years since his only tour of Australia, mention of Tavaré still occasions winces and groans. Despite its continental lilt, his name translates into Australian as a very British brand of obduracy, that Trevor Baileyesque quality of making every ditch a last one.

One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit like Bob Willis' bat with the "flow-through holes"; Saint Peter batting mitts are surely overdue a revival. The only genuinely intriguing step this year, bringing the IPL to YouTube, was forced on Modi by the collapse of Setanta; otherwise what Modi presents as 'innovation' is merely expansion by another name, in the number of franchises and the number of games.

Sambit Bal may be right that this is a scandal the IPL needed. It certainly brings fans face-to-face with the tangled reality of their amusement, based as it is on a self-seeking, self-perpetuating commercial oligarchy issued licenses to exploit cricket as they please. Whether the fans care is another matter: one of the reasons Indians have embraced economic liberalisation so fervently is a shoulder-shrugging resignation about the efficiency and integrity of their institutions. Given the choice between Lalit Modi, with his snappy suits and his soi-disant 'Indian People's League', and the BCCI, stuffed with grandstanding politicians and crony capitalists, where would your loyalties lie?

Since inception, the IPL has worn its brand value like a corroboration of inner virtue. On the eve of this tournament, under the headline 'Brand IPL touches the sky', the league's website reverberated with the announcement that Brand Finance, a branding consultancy, had valued the brand value of the IPL brand at $4.13 billion worth of brand—which is a lot of brand, brand-wise.

Since Modi's Mumbai sign-off, much commentary has been focused on the brand-dilution potential inherent in its scandals. MS Dhoni doesn't think we should worry: 'IPL as a brand can survive on its own.' Shilpa Shetty, 'brand ambassador' of the Rajasthan Royals, tweets that we should: 'Custodians of Cricket must not hamper d Brandvalue of this viable sport.' Hampering d Brandvalue, insists new IPL boss Chirayu Amin, is the furthest thing from his mind: 'IPL's brand image is strong and nobody can touch that.' Harsha Bhogle, however, frets for the nation: 'Within the cricket world, Brand India will take a hit.' Not much more than a week after Modi's first tell-all tweets, the media was anxiously consulting Brand Finance's managing director, Unni Krishnan. Had there been any brand dilution yet? It was, said the soothsayer gravely, 'too early to say'. He could, however, confirm the following: 'The wealth that can be created by the brand is going to be substantially significant for many stakeholders. A conducive ecosystem has to be created to move the brand to the next level… We have to build the requisite bandwidth to monetise these opportunities.' Er, yeah… what he said. Anyway, placing a value on the IPL brand has clearly been quite beneficial to Brand Finance's brand.

Some years ago I adjourned with a friend to a nearby schoolyard net for a recreational hit. On the way, we exchanged philosophies of cricket, and a few personal partialities. What, my friend asked, did I consider my favourite shot? 'Easy,' I replied ingenuously. 'Back-foot defensive stroke.' My friend did a double take and demanded a serious response. When I informed him he'd had one, he scoffed: 'You'll be telling me that Chris Tavaré's your favourite player next.' My guilty hesitation gave me away. 'You Poms!' he protested. 'You all stick together!

Tavaré played 30 Tests for England between 1980 and 1984, adding a final cap five years later. He filled for much of that period the role of opening batsman, even though the bulk of his first-class career was spent at Nos. 3 and 4. He was, in that sense, a typical selection in a period of chronic English indecision and improvisation, filling a hole rather than commanding a place. But he tried—how he tried. Ranji once spoke of players who 'went grey in the service of the game'; Tavaré, slim, round-shouldered, with a feint moustache, looked careworn and world-weary from the moment he graduated to international cricket.

The assumption now is that the interests of the brand and of the game overlap to the degree that cricket need hardly be mentioned.

The IPL, involving the socialist principle of a salary cap and the protectionist mechanism of quotas, is not perhaps the best example of a market left flourishingly to its own devices and dynamics.

The risk is, as ever, that the hyperbole of IPL will simply smother the cricket; perhaps the members of the IPL's cheer squad should stop listening to each other and start listening to themselves.