About the Book
The events leading up to the unification of black and white South African have become the stuff of legend. This book returns to those tumultuous times of the early 1990s. Reverse Sweep: A Story of South African Cricket Since Apartheid brilliantly shows how the broader political context intervenes in the Mike Gatting rogue tour, mainly through the imminent release of Nelson Mandela, nudging pro-and anti-tour groups to the negotiating table. From that moment on, the book takes the reader on a mesmerising journey through the unification process, the excitement of international cricket and the convolutions of transformation speak.
Its originality and power derives from the deft skill of the author to stitch the padding in the country�s Long Rooms, the changing of the guard from Bacher to Majola and events beyond the boundary into a riveting story that runs counter to the dominant narrative. This, though, is not just a story about the intricacies of sport and politics � it is also a memoir of a love for the game that takes you from the broken matting wickets� matters of Springfield grounds, to the non-white corral at Kingsmead, to the weighty matters of the changing nature of the game, all the time challenging existing ways writing the game.
About the Author
Ashwin Desai is Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. He has written extensively on sport, co-writing Black in Whites: A Century of Cricketing Struggles in KwaZulu-Natal and the edited collection The Race to Transformation: Sport in Post-apartheid South Africa. Among his other books are Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island.
