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Book Of The Year Award > 2011 > Blood Sweat and Treason Henry Olonga My Story
Henry Olonga, Vision Sports Publishing.
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 Everything about this book promised so much. There can be few, if any, people who cannot have felt great sympathy with Henry Olonga's predicament, admired his principled stand and thrilled to the bravery of a man who gave up his career and his country because he simply could not stand to act as a standard-bearer for a corrupt and brutal regime. Unfortunately, the book itself could well devalue the extraordinary story because it is so poorly written.
The original assumption was that Henry Olonga had written the book himself, so there would be a deal of understanding for the style and format but the presence of a 'ghost' and the quality of the format and print which makes the book difficult to read mean that that excuse doesn't really work. The lack of any index also doesn't help.
Without venturing too far into the world of personal belief, although Henry is a sincere and patently religious man, there would seem to have been a highly selective supreme being who sustained Henry Olonga but managed to miss everything else that was going on in Zimbabwe. It is a difficult thing to criticise anyone who took such a brave decision to end his career but the part of Andy Flower, who was the cricketing originator of the protest, is downplayed in the book and there seems to be some personal animosity there on the author's part as, unfortunately, there seems to exist with most people Henry Olonga has played with. Heath Streak, particularly, is portrayed in a very unsympathetic light.
Like most people, I wish Henry Olonga well and hope there can be a rapprochement with old friends, team-mates and others in Zimbabwe but the book, I'm afraid, was not something that will stay in the memory.
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