Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266925 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
A book that interweaves biography with history, the lives of cricketers with wider processes of social change. C.K. Nayudu and Sachin Tendulkar naturally figure in this book, but so too do Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The Indian careers of the English cricketers, Lord Harris and D.R. Jardine, provide a window into the operations of Empire. The life of India's first great slow bowler, Palwankar Baloo, introduces the reader to the still-unfinished struggle against caste discrimination. Later chapters explore the competition between Hindu and Muslim cricketers in colonial India and the passions now provoked when India plays Pakistan. This book is a meditation on the ramifications of sport in society at large, and how sport can influence both social and political history.

Customer Reviews

great concept - too textbookish for me.
Having lived in India, and being a great cricket fan, I was really looking forward to this book. The subject matter looks great and the idea for a great book is here.

That said, this book is very hard work. It is meticulously researched and the author has left no corner unturned. I simply found it hard to enjoy. Opening it up to read the next few pages came to be a chore not very far into the book.

I feel this is more like a textbook, something that a student of Indian history may be happy to plough through, but as somebody just reading it for leisure and pleasure, I just felt like there was simply too much information to absorb. I don't read textbooks for pleasure.

Would love to give this more than the 3 stars, but I didn't finish it, and to be honest I am only giving it 3 stars because I figure the amount of work the author has clearly put into it doesn't deserve less.

Cricket and social history superbly combined
I've never bothered much with cricket books, aside from stats compilations, compendia of cricket journalism, and a few snatches of Brian Close's autobiography in the school library over 20 years ago when I should have been reading Jane Austen. However, I'm unreservedly recommending this one.

It's a social history of both India and the game there, following its founding in colonial times up until the latter-day clashes with Pakistan. It only really describes matches when they're relevant to the socio-political context, concentrating especially on the Bombay Quadrangular, a competition in the 1920s and 30s where the teams competed along religious/ethnic lines. It highlights the early, and unsung, heroes of Indian cricket - Baloo Palwankar and CK Nayudu - and evokes the country's irrational love of an imported sport brilliantly from start to finish. Good debunking too of the myth behind Lord Harris - proven here not to have been the game's founding father in India at all - and a great account of England's first tour there in the 1930s under one D Jardine, the year after Bodyline.

Meticulously researched and written throughout, it has to be a better bet than self-serving autobiographies and tedious tour diaries.