When it comes to reviewing a book by Gideon Haigh, the question is never going to be whether the book is any good, but just how good it will be. Few writers possess his incisiveness and eloquence. Haigh returns to his favourite topic in this book about the complexities of one of the oldest and most-analysed sports—cricket—and how it is in danger of being both outdated and under-analysed in key areas. As he outlines in his introduction, the onfield issues of ‘sledging, appealing, chucking, cheating’ and the off-field worries of traditional versus Twenty20 are well covered. However, the big issues of governance and the global economy, he argues, are excluded with ‘a kind of studied indifference’. Spheres of Influence is Haigh’s attempt to ‘make sense of cricket’s new order’: the rise of Twenty20, of private ownership, of India, and of the issues with Pakistan (a timely topic given the latest match-fixing allegations). With his background...

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