Book Review - The Vincibles by Gideon Haigh

 The Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Season by Gideon Haigh

Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2002               ISBN 1877008354

There is no doubt that Gideon Haigh is the doyen of current Australian cricket journalists, and little doubt that moniker can be applied worldwide. An insightful commentator on current cricket, a wonderful writer on cricket history, and a scathing judge of cricket administration, Gideon provides thoughtful insight on all aspects of this wonderful game.

And that includes suburban cricket...park cricket...village green cricket, call it what you will, Haigh has provided us in The Vincibles with a heart-felt, heart-warming and amusing expose of a season playing in the Fourths for his beloved Yarras (the South Yarra Cricket Club), where he was at the time Chairman of Selectors (and has gone on to be a life member).

While this is a book about a particular season at a particular club, Haigh has evoked every season at every club. For me, much of the humour in the book was when Haigh described incidents that evoked memories of my times playing club cricket in suburban Melbourne. For this is as much a book about characters and off-field incidents as much as it is the on-field action.

There are a few threads that run through this "diary". Money is a major one - getting enough to keep the club's head above water is a constant theme, helped by karaoke nights, trivia nights, and all those other activities that those of us who have been club members would remember. Because Haigh was Chairman of Selectors during the time he wrote this book, selection is another theme that runs through the book, from the early season struggles to field enough people to make up four teams, to the late season struggles of whom to omit from teams when you have a situation where the Firsts have failed to make the finals and the Seconds have been bumped out in the first week, but the Thirds and the Fourths have made the Grand Final. 

The characters that make up the club are what makes the club. Glorying in nicknames such as Churchyard, Moof, Castaway, Torqs and Rasputin, Haigh introduces us to a typical park cricket team - the devout Christian, the itinerant drunk, the pantsman, the barrister - they are all here, working (or bludging) for the common purpose of trying to succeed at playing cricket.

Note I didn't state winning games of cricket: despite the myths, club cricket in Australia is more about blokes getting together to enjoy each other's company while playing a game that they love rather than the all-out pursuit of victory. If victory happens to come their way all the better, but that is not what necessarily sustains clubs and clubmen. It is the camaraderie, the combined effort to master what is perhaps the hardest game to do well at, that we remember from our playing days.

I really enjoyed this book, where the denouement that describes the day that Haigh's Fourths lost their Grand Final while on the next-door oval the Thirds claimed a famous victory shows the reader that just being a part of a team is fulfilment in itself. As Haigh writes "The second-rate, when you think about it, are much maligned. Being second-rate is still pretty good. In fact, it's usually the best you can hope for, in a world where genuine first-rate anything is a rare commodity."

I really enjoyed this book - it almost makes me want to roll the arm over again and strap on some pads.....almost. Highly recommended. 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell