Cricket 2.0
Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde
Such has been the success of T20 cricket that it is easy to forget just what a babe in arms this all-conquering, all-action short form of the game is. The first games were played in England in 2003; the first T20 men’s international was played in 2005; the first game in the mega-money Indian Premier League took place in 2008. Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde’s book is a lucid and thoughtful guide to this phenomenon. They not only show how it has transformed cricketers’ pay-packets but their skill-sets, too. And the amount of money involved means there are more changes still to come.
Polaris, 320pp, £17.99
The Government of No One
Ruth Kinna
Intriguingly subtitled “the theory and practice of anarchism”, Ruth Kinna’s book is a history of politics by other means. Anarchism may bring chaos in its wake, she says, but from the Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War to Pussy Riot and the Occupy movement, it has also brought results and fundamental shifts in political opinion. Its different strands – individualist and collectivist, libertarian and structured – have made it a particularly adaptable creed. Being an anarchist, Kinna says, really means challenging the status quo.
Pelican, 432pp, £20
New Kings of the World
Fatima Bhutto
Coca-Cola, blue jeans and rock ’n’ roll: for much of the 20th century American popular culture ruled the world. In her eye-opening book, reporter and novelist Fatima Bhutto travels to Istanbul, Lima and Seoul to explore the new centres of cultural power. This change, she argues, responds to modernity’s latecomers – to the 763 million people who in 2015 moved from rural to urban areas in their own countries and longed for a popular culture more reflective of their “new, uncertain present”.
Columbia Global Reports,
206pp, £11.99
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This article appears in the 23 Oct 2019 issue of the New Statesman, The broken state