By Clare Skinner
20 April 2013
An Oscar-style countdown took place in the Lord’s Long Room on 15 April as it was announced that Australian cricket writer Gideon Haigh had won the Cricket Society and MCC book of the year award for his book On Warne.
Ian Marshall, of the publishers Simon and Schuster, accepted the award and a cheque for £3,000 on behalf of Haigh in front of an appreciative audience, which included MCC and Cricket Society members, authors, publishers, cricketing journalists and writers.
All short-listed authors or their representatives spoke about their work, with Haigh, via Marshall, assuring the audience that "Shane Warne is every bit as much fun to write about as he was to watch and would be pleased to be recognised in this way – he had never managed to get his name on the honours board at Lord’s".
Chair of judges Vic Marks surveyed the books considered by the judges and commented in detail on each of the six that had been short listed. Commenting on Haigh’s effort, Marks said On Warne was "commendably short, cleverly and unusually structured, and overall a convincing description of one of the greatest of cricketers". Marks went on to outline the challenges of choosing the short list and then a winner.
Keynote speaker Andrew Wingfield Digby spoke about his cricketing memories, including his time as spiritual adviser to the England cricket team, and paid tribute to Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who had keenly supported the competition.
The competition, run by The Cricket Society since 1970 and in partnership with MCC since 2009, is for books nominated by members and not publishers and is highly regarded by writers and publishers. A previous delighted winner, former Wisden Almanack editor Scyld Berry, hailed his award as "cricket’s seal of literary approval", while three years ago a prolonged search of the Lord’s dustbins failed to locate Anthony Gibson’s excitedly discarded winning cheque.
A starting list of 19 books was complied from nominations by The Cricket Society or MCC members, and not publishers. The number was whittled down to six by a panel of judges independently chaired by writer and broadcaster and former England and Somerset cricketer Vic Marks. The other judges were David Kynaston and Stephen Fay (MCC) and John Symons and Chris Lowe (The Cricket Society). Nigel Hancock is the competition’s administrator and chairman of the Cricket Society.
The six short-listed books (alphabetically by author)
Peter Gibbs: Settling the Score. Methuen
Gideon Haigh: On Warne. Simon and Schuster
Steve James: The Plan: How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Cricket. Bantam Books
Miles Jupp: Fibber in the Heat, Following England in India, A Blogger’s Tale. Ebury Press
Malcolm Knox: Never a Gentlemen’s Game. Hardie Grant
Andrew Murtagh: A Remarkable Man, The Story of George Chesterton. Shire Publications
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