Book review: Indian Cricket Then and Now

By Rahul Banerji

Cricket fever is scaling new heights thanks to the World Cup in India. Accounts of vaulting viewership numbers are rolled out daily while newspapers, TV channels and social media are brimming with the feats of the Men in Blue.

With India’s cricket teams doing as well as they have of late, interest among fans and supporters has reached near-hysteria proportions, This success, however, has not been built in a day. Nor has it been an easy road.

Modern-day titans like Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, or those from preceding generations like Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev to founding fathers like Col C.K. Nayudu, and Vijay Merchant, are in a sense all chapters of a continuing story.

And as the clock ticks on, feats that laid the groundwork for Indian cricket’s current stratospheric status sometimes get pushed into the background, or forgotten altogether.

Which is why and how an anthology Indian Cricket Then and Now edited by former North Zone and Delhi opening batsman Venkat Sundaram earns its moment in the sun.

Vital document

In a time of Tik-Tok and Reels where attention spans rarely last more than a half-minute, a compilation of much that was good and great serves as a reminder that today’s soaring aspirations owe a great deal to the sweat and tears of the game’s founding fathers.

Former Bengal Ranji Trophy captain Raju Mukherjee sums up the sentiment in the very opening words of Indian Cricket Then and Now.

“This is a clarion call to all Indian cricket lovers to respect the heritage, traditions and spirit of our nation’s cricket by expressing our gratitude to its pioneers for laying the foundation of the sport in our country,” he writes.

The book itself is split into six self-explanatory parts – The Early Years, Legends of the Past, Winds of Change, The Modern Age, Domestic Stalwarts, and Beyond the Pavilion. Each section is well-populated and representative of the anthology’s eventual purpose, to chronicle the story of India’s cricketing journey.

Indian Cricket Then And Now in fact follows in the footsteps of several distinguished efforts, and does so in mostly bite-sized pieces that keep a reader engaged and interested.

Contributions include articles by legends like Vijay Merchant and Vijay Hazare, past internationals including Abbas Ali Baig, Dilip Vengsarkar, Anshuman Gaekwad, Shubhangi Kulkarni, Yajuvindra Singh, and Pranab Roy, and domestic stalwarts V.V. Kumar, Saad Bin Jung, Milind Rege, Mike Dalvi, and Sulakshan Kulkarni.

Well represented

Also represented is a goodly section of India’s best-known cricket writers, besides the legendary umpire V.K. Ramaswamy, long-time commentator Narottam Puri and self-confessed fan Shashi Tharoor.

In his foreword, batting great and current India coach Rahul Dravid notes, “From a game sponsored and nurtured by the royal class, cricket has come to be accepted as a game for everybody. It is the soul of our sporting society …

“It has been a privilege to be a part of this fabulous cricket journey and I am glad to see that we can now read the defining stories of Indian cricket in the form of a book.”

Adds Sundaram on the effort that went into putting the anthology together, “People responded from around the world, bringing to life history both well-known and obscure with the aim of documenting it for posterity.

“Cricketers, writers and commentators contributed new articles while older ones were resurrected from long-lost journals.”

All of this adds up to what will become an important and excellently-edited document chronicling the almost unstoppable march of the willow game in India, the new epicentre of world cricket.

Indian Cricket Then and Now is published by Harper Collins India and priced at Rs 599, It is also available on Amazon.

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