A cricketing anthology often provides a number of delights, delving into the game’s historical past, providing nostalgia’s heat notes, and serving to us take care of varied views, be it from gamers or journalists. Seen in that mild, Indian Cricket: Then and Now, edited by former first-class cricketer Venkat Sundaram, ticks many of the bins.
Want to know the Parsi and royals’ join with this game? Dive into the opening bit from Raju Mukherji, and from there on both learn in chronological order or choose chapters you fancy. It may very well be a profile on M.S. Dhoni or Shashi Tharoor waxing eloquent about his fandom for this specific game. This is also about establishing a join with a author you idolised from childhood and so we do have the late Okay.N. Prabhu and R. Mohan’s despatches.
Fresh look
In the foreword, Rahul Dravid, legend and additionally an avid reader of the elegantly written piece, states: “I have always held cricket writers in high esteem.” And these sporting chroniclers lend muscle and the odd chuckle to this 341-page tome. There is R. Kaushik describing stylist G.R. Viswanath and Vijay Lokapally focussing his lenses on Virat Kohli. Incidentally, each these gents have written books on these two great people and it’s apt that Sundaram requested them to distil their impressions into a couple of pages.
Other veterans like Clayton Murzello, Suresh Menon and Partab Ramchand additionally dip their pens and the ink emerges with contemporary tales about mighty gamers. From the late Vijay Merchant to Dilip Vengsarkar, gamers too specific their ideas with the latter unabashedly declaring: “Lord’s has indeed been my ‘Theatre of Dreams’.” Meanwhile, former India spinner V.V. Kumar delves into anecdotes which have a theoretical contact and a humorous vein and then he will get critical and declares: “No bowler can be termed great unless he can run through the opposition on a good wicket.”
Diverse voices
The ebook isn’t nearly gamers and journalists, even when they do occupy a outstanding slice of the papyrus on provide. There are viewpoints from match officers as evident in V.Okay. Ramaswamy’s ‘My Umpiring Journey’ and good previous Narottam Puri delves into cricket and commentary. And certainly you can’t hold Shashi Tharoor away from the game and he provides a private perception into the best way he embraced cricket and reveals his childhood fondness for Budhi Kunderan. “It was exhilarating stuff, and I was hooked for life,” Tharoor remembers.
Being the quintessential wordsmith, Tharoor attracts threads from Salman Rushdie, and additionally finds a hyperlink between Kunderan, Virender Sehwag and Rishabh Pant, all being free-spirited gamers. Sundaram has executed properly in collating numerous voices and shelling out a cricketing refrain that may be sampled as particular person models or as an evolving monolith. The selection rests with the reader.
Indian Cricket: Then and Now
(Edited by Venkat Sundaram)
