Anecdotal account of cricket history

G Rajaraman

The back cover of Boria Majumdar’s Eleven Gods and a Billion People serves a delightful appetiser. It has a facsimile reproduction of a hand-written letter signed by Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman, requesting the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to take steps to assist head coach Anil Kumble and Captain Virat Kohli in resolving their differences, if any.

As one of the latest issues in a series that has dotted Indian cricket’s journey over time, you are drawn to see what more intriguing stories sports historian Boria Majumdar has in store in the book. For those who love a spicy story, it may be a page-turner. For those used to Majumdar’s scholarly, rather academic efforts earlier, this book is largely anecdotal.

Of course, Eleven Gods and A Billion People has different things for different people. The author comes across more as the cricket analyst he now is, presenting his opinion on different medias like television, radio and print, than as the cricket annalist he set off in the new millennium. Truth to tell, he straddles the two roles throughout the book. 

To be fair, Majumdar has been as relentless in his pursuit of history as in his passion to chronicle it in book form. It is just that the vastness and the beauty of Indian cricket is such that no labour of love would seem complete. Yet, when you read the book, you would expect more from someone who has carefully crafted an image as a sports historian.

It cannot even be called a follow-up book for Majumdar’s 22 Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket (Penguin Viking Books, 2004). It would appear that some chapters in this book draw from that earlier landmark effort. The chapters on TV rights, quadrangular and pentangular cricket, and cricket in colonial Bengal are some topics that are familiar from the earlier book.

Of course, much water has flown under the bridge since 2004 and Indian cricket has undergone a massive change. There is always a need to update history so that not only contemporary readers but also researchers in the future get an accurate account of what transpired. No matter what approach a historian takes — scholarly or anecdotal — it is a given that facts remain sacred.

Sourav Ganguly’s quote underlined on the cover of the book reads: “Boria has documented the history of Indian cricket with precision and elegance.” Precision? The former Indian captain, who has clearly spent hours with the author, has apparently overlooked factual errors such as naming Nayan Mongia as one of the three cricketers whose ban the courts had over-turned.

It does not take much to remember that besides Ajay Jadeja and Mohammed Azharuddin, it was Ajay Sharma who had moved court. Mongia was not found guilty either by the CBI or the BCCI’s Commission of Inquiry headed by K. Madhavan. You would expect historians to pay attention to even the minutest of detail, especially in such sensitive matters as match-fixing.

Similarly, former England captain Nasser Hussain must be forgiven for calling Eleven Gods And A Billion Indians the definitive book on the history of Indian cricket. For, anything to be ‘definitive’, it would have to be complete in many respects. India’s conquest of the ICC World Twenty20 2007 and the Indian Cricket League, propped up by Zee Telefilms, find no mention.

You would also expect any attempt seeking to be the story of cricket in India to try and touch upon the domestic cricket at great lengths. And, the evolution of women’s cricket, especially in the wake of the Indian team’s entering the final of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2017 needed more than a postscript and a promise of another book another day.

Then again, the book may make for exciting reading for those who do not deal with cricket on a daily basis. The concern, though, stems from the fact that such books can become the cornerstone for students of Indian cricket in the future. May be sports writers now understand the impact of a history told from one perspective.