A walk down memory lane
Whether the subject is batting, bowling, or simply archival history, there’s something to cherish and celebrate every few pages.
The book, Indian Cricket : Then and Now, by Venkat Sundaram marshals well-selected plotlines and combines them with valuable player stories and insights to cast illumination on how Indian cricket rid itself of its colonial hangover and became the behemoth it is today.
It has six parts: The Early Years, Legends of the Past, Winds of Change, The Modern Age, Domestic Stalwarts, and Beyond the Pavilion. Each section tells a part of India's cricketing journey, contributing to the overall purpose of the anthology.
In his foreword, batting great and current India coach Rahul Dravid writes: “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."you could glean from this book's 340 pages a history of inspiration, reaffirming Dravid's views.
For instance, there is a first-person account of the legendary Vijay Hazare fondly recalling the experience of becoming the first Indian batter to score a century in both innings of a Test. It was the fourth Test against Australia on the 1948 tour, and Hazare was chuffed to bits to have achieved the landmark in front of his "cricketing guru", Aussie leg-spinner Clarrie Grimmett. "I had graduated with honours in his eyes," writes Hazare.
What also makes the book a wonderfully enjoyable potpourri is that it anchors its reminiscence around different timelines and subsets of Indian cricket. From batting stalwarts Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath to
Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, from World Cup-winning captains Kapil Dev and M.S. Dhoni to spin bowling royalty Erapalli Prasanna, then Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, then S. Venkataraghavan, and finally Bishan Singh Bedi, what shines through is the variety and quality of the short pieces. Whether the subject is batting, bowling, or simply archival history, there’s something to cherish and celebrate every few pages. It also touches upon the emergence of the Indian Premier League and the evolution of women's cricket.
These narratives are also punctuated with photos soaked in nostalgia for fans of a certain vintage. That said, the number of images used could've been more.
All in all, it is a work that compels its reader to take a walk down memory lane.