did a rather honest account of what SA scrucket is about! I do believe that he couldn't disclose more than he could in this book, It was interesting to read what happens behind the scenes, what he and his pals got up to and of course, the hansie Cronje matchfixing scandal! What stood out was herschell's dedication to the sport from such a young age! I am sure that most sportsmen have similar stories! The manner in which the book was written it felt like he was talking to you.
A good holiday read! need to read King Kallis or Graeme Smith, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, It is truly a no holds barred autobiography, If you enjoy the game of cricket this book is a must read, An awful book from a child of a man, Avoid. The writing wasn't brilliant. But I enjoyed the stories Hersch is a fuckboi but he's honest about it, He doesn't pretend to be deep or mature, and he wears his alcoholism and philandering on his sleeve, He doesn't ask for forgiveness, or try to mitigate the damage he did to his career and others, A great book not because of the way it was written but because of how it changed my opinion of HH Gibbs, Being an avid sports fan, with a huge love of cricket, I was very excited when I saw that Herschelle Gibbs was going to be releasing his own book.
He has long been the subject of many conversations in the cricketing world for his antics on and off the field, I think that this book was amazing, It was well written and very informative, A lot of people judge him for this book and say that he should not have mentioned so many things or he should have kept his mouth shut but he just wrote about the facts.
The things that he wrote about in the book did happen, He wasn't making things up to get books sold, he was telling the truth, I think that a lot of people didn't like this because they knew this, If you have something to hide or something that you don't want people to know about, it would make sense that you would be angry when someone wrote about them.
Herschelle Gibbs was one of the best cricketers that South Africa had and this book, while also commenting on non cricket related things, reminds us of his amazing achievements and contributions to cricket as a whole.
Proper trashy. Look he was amongst the most talented players of the game in his time but this is just a book boasting about how much money he made, how much drugs he took and how many hot chicks he fd.
Doesn't seem like much between those ears but who am I to judge : Interesting to get a behind the scenes view, as I've always admired Gibbs as a cricketer.
I didn't love what I saw behind the scenes, But he's very honest about his shortcomings, which makes it a good autobiography in terms of reflecting the man accurately, You'll really like it if you into cricket and admire Gibbs's abilities on the field,
Not the best written book, but its written as if Gibbs was talking, so makes even more personal, but could be slightly off putting to some, Honest and like the title to the point I found this book to be a lot more honest than normal sports biographies, I quite liked Gibbs's sense of humour, This was truly to the point and more controversial than Shoaib Akhtar's Controversially Yours, But the controversies were surrounded around Gibbs and there was no blames, all confessions and his story, I believe it's really an honest admission, and importantly it is written very well, unlike Shoaib's book, He doesn't pretend to be a saint nor does he has any excuses, It's an entertaining journey of one of the most entertaining cricketers, .
Luckily this book wasn't released widely in India, or else he could have been crucified for not mentioning Sachin's name in the Topcricketers he played with.
. . And also could have certainly misinterpreted the hairline comparison of hisat Jo'burg with Sachin'sat Gwalior,
All in all, I enjoyed reading it, . I believe we do need different flavours, which all add to the taste, As a cricket fan, I was always intrigued by the high quality of worldclass players South Africa produced over the years, Gibbs is definitely one of those players, He played cricket for South Africa for fourteen yearsto, He was the first cricketer to hit six sixes in an over in an international ODI game and has scored over aruns inworld cup games one of the highest.
He was also an excellent fielder and has effected the eighth highest number of runouts in the one day game, He playedtests andone day internationals, He scored,test runs and,one day runs for South Africa, This is his background as a cricketer,
However in this book, he gives us an understanding of his life beyond the field, I was quite surprised by the number of chapters about the game in this book like ChapterThe big games, ChapterMy teammates, ChapterMy topish players, and ChapterThe Proteas and me.
In the other chapters, he talks about his family, his problems with alcohol, his marriage, his relationship with his son, and his journey as a student, It is quite honest and Steve Smith does an excellent job to bring Gibbs and his whole personality into this book as the coauthor of the book, South Africa has a reputation to perform badly in crunch situations at the World Cup, You will understand how one of the core players in three South African World Cup campaigns,,felt about that in this book, You also get a glimpse into the psychology of an international cricketer in terms of their reaction to team culture, ego clashes, personal insecurities and the role of selfconfidence behind every performance at the international level.
Read this book if you want a firsthand perspective of the inner workings of a worldclass international cricket team betweento, Gibbs enjoyed alcohol and women, played a bit of cricket, He liked pretty much everybody except Darryl Cullinan I liked this book because I love cricket and I love Herschelle's style of playing cricket, It fell short because it did not cover the sociopolitico aspects in which cricket is played in South Africa
It was candid, and exposes what goes on behind the scenes,perhaps it could have gone much further.
I liked the fluid writing style though, . I would expect more from a black cricket player, . especially at the time that he was playing cricket The book seems pretty honest, Although we accept that Herschelle Herman Gibbs had his temptations like women,
booze n grass, he was and is a great entertainer remembermatch, mind blowing catches but not to "dropped the World Cup" off Steve Waugh,sixes offballs off poor Dan van Bunge ahhh.
. . Tilak Raj, Malcolm Nash amp Stuart Broad too and the effortful opposite of effortless hundred against India in ICC Champions TrophySemiFinal, Although I felt that the book is becoming more like a Memoir of a Megalomaniac cricketer, Gibbs is honest and knows about his natural talents and above average statistics.
A must read for a cricket believer, Cheers! Excellent book. No holds barred. Anyone who is a cricket fan should read this book, I found myself reading this book and thinking that I was right about what was happening behind the scenes with the cricketers and the administration, And it brought to light that there are some serious changes needed in SA cricket, This was actually a decent book, I had followed the fortunes of the South African cricket team since they came back into international cricket and I was sickened by the match fixing linked to the team.
I was angry at the players like Gibbs who had brought shame to the nation,
This book is well named, No Holds Barred. Gibbs tells his story honestly and you can see that he would have been an easy target, He talks frankly about the string of women he attracted when he got into the South African team, the excess drinking, the fact that he let the publicity and admiration go to his head.
He talks about the lure of easy money dragging him into the match fixing scandalgetting paid to lose a game in a series that was already finished as a contest Sure, why not It meant greater financial security for his family.
I finally understood that he wasn't a bad guy, He was a young man confronted with more money than he had seen in his life and a celebrity lifestyle, the chance to raise his family financially, the chance to live the dreambut with no sense of how to cope with all the attention and the massive changes to his life.
I liked his brutal honesty, accepting responsibility for his actions and showing the good and bad sides to his life, It was quite refreshing! Perhaps if he had received more guidance, he could have avoided a lot of the trouble he found himself in, No great shakes. Gibbs is candid about his public and private life but as a cricketer he achieved little to make it a great sports auto biography, .