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A review by cupiscent
Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot That Changed Cricket by Gideon Haigh
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.
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.