Author(s): Ramachandra Guha

Sport

A book that seamlessly 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, in arresting and unexpected ways, do Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The Indian careers of those great English cricketers, Lord Harris and D. R. Jardine, provide a window into the operations of Empire. The extraordinary 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 extraordinary passions now provoked when India plays Pakistan.

An important, pioneering work, essential for anyone interested in cricket and India, A Corner of a Foreign Field is also a beautifully written meditation on the ramifications of sport in society at large, and how sport can influence both social and political history.