Reviews

Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot That Changed Cricket by Gideon Haigh

a_o_on_the_go's review

4.0

Essentially about a photograph - initially, this book is heavy, and somewhat tangled, with voluminous, and perhaps overwhelming, historical detail. However, the path of the superbly researched, and deeply insightful narrative becomes easier to follow as the author, Gideon Haigh, moves from the era leading up to George Beldam taking his 1905 photograph (known as 'Jumping Out') of Australian cricketer Victor Trumper, to the image's contemporary reception, and moves - with great relevance - through the following decades, to the current day - tracing what the photograph has meant, does mean, and could mean to photography, cricket and the Australian nation.

cupiscent's review

5.0

I enjoyed this book so much, but I am nothing like objective, being rather more like the perfect target audience for what it was doing. I'm an aficionado of both cricket and its complicated history; I already knew a bit about Trumper and that photo; I came seeking more of Haigh's complex writing, beautifully lyrical and putting cricket into a wider context in which it tells us so much about ourselves as humans. This book gave me everything I wanted and left me absolutely thrilled with all of it.

I was particularly enthralled by the overlapping and interwoven considerations of "amateur" vs "professional", in both cricket (and sport more widely) and photography - the ideal of striving for "the good of the art/sport", alongside that thorny question of, y'know, being able to eat. And the book's investigation and themes of the creation and endurance of history and legend - what story is told, what is cast aside, by whom, and for what purpose - were absolutely fascinating.