At the age of 21, Gideon Haigh wrote a book.
A business book written by a business journalist.
70,000 words written over a few weekends. When he got a copy in his hand, he read the first couple of paragraphs written on the first page. There were some silly typographical errors. He never read beyond that first page.

In 1989, for a couple of years, he moved to London. The very next year, while watching a boring County Championship match, he thought of trying his hand at serious cricket writing.
He admired David Frith and the kind of work he did at Wisden Cricket Monthly. He wrote a piece and posted it to Frith. Within a week, Frith accepted it and published it in the next issue of the magazine.

Three years later, he wrote a book on Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket. Eleven publishers refused to take it. Then, someone told him about a new publishing house named Text. They liked his two-page teaser and agreed to publish it. The book flopped but the author, thankfully, decided to stick to cricket writing.

The Summer Game, Mystery Spinner and The Cricket War are probably among the finest cricket books.

In 2010, The Times' Richard Whitehead listed ‘The Fifty Greatest Sports Books’.
49 of those books were easily available in the market.
For the 50th, he rang Gideon Haigh.
Haigh borrowed his mother's copy and posted it to Whitehead.
A copy of The Cricket War.

I have been listing down 'ten favourite cricket books' of cricket writers all over the world and there's been only two who didn't include even one book by Haigh.
One of them was born on December 29, 1965.