Cricket, Portraits And Landscapes

Arun Jaitley October 30, 2006 00:00 IST Cricket, Portraits And Landscapes -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

Boria Majumdar’s book is a trip down memory lane. For cricket-crazy Indians who grew up on the game, the pictures and text vividly bring back the great events. There’s something here for even the most dedicated and informed cricket fans on how the game started in India. As Majumdar says, the book is an attempt to tell that story through pictures, many of them not seen before. It highlights the highs and lows of Indian cricket, including the ’83 World Cup win and the abysmal 42 all out in 17 overs at the Lord’s in 1974 with a picture of the Lord’s Score Board.

Boria captures the paradox of the game where blue-blooded aristocrats like Ranjitsinh, the maharajas of Patiala, Porbandar, the royal prince of Vijayanagaram and the two Pataudis played along with the great C.K. Nayudu whose bank ledger, reproduced here, shows a princely balance of Rs 306. He has gone to great lengths to collect copies of sports magazines of 1833, besides photographs across generations peppered with anecdotal facts. In Nagpur, for instance, a match was played between soldiers and the Nayudu Club...