12 best books on Indian cricket

In Runs ’n’ Ruins (1984), Sunil Gavaskar recounts tournaments post the team's 1983 World Cup victory. (Photo via Twitter/@Subhash_102)

As with any such selection, this shortlist of books reflects my opinion. The books are not ranked but listed in the chronological order of publication, and restricted to one per author.

1. Stray Thoughts on Indian Cricket (1905), J.M. Framjee Patel

While Framjee Patel was not the first to write a book on Indian cricket, his predecessors focused mostly on the Parsees, the first from the country to take up the sport. Stray Thoughts was the first book that, while focusing on the Parsees, looked beyond them to look at all-India cricket. Perhaps it helped that the author was a firm believer in a unified national team. The last chapter, Cricket as an Imperial Factor, may come across as jarring in 2023, but as a treasure trove of historical information, the entire book has few parallels.

2. Cricket Delightful: Mushtaq Ali’s Own Story (1967), Mushtaq Ali

Mushtaq was renowned for his aggressive style of batting in his playing days, and his autobiography is just as direct. His journey from a ‘commoner’ to one of the most loved cricketers of the era is worth a read. The humour is infectious, too. Very few autobiographies have been as vivid and – as the title suggests – delightful at the same time.

Read it here.

3. L.P. Jai: Memories of a Great Batsman (1976), Vasant Raiji

Given its volume, it is perhaps fair to call this biography a booklet, but it is more detailed than most books ten times its size. Jai, the first captain to win the Ranji Trophy, and a man Vijay Merchant called his ‘guru’, was an important cricketer on whom information was difficult to come by. The volume of research demonstrates why Raiji is revered so much as an author and researcher to this date.

4. Patrons, Players and the Crowd: The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket (1980), Richard Cashman

The only non-Indian to feature on this list, Cashman was an Australian academic who came to India for his PhD, was intrigued by Indian cricket… and wrote a definitive volume on the social history of Indian cricket. As evident from the name, the book deals with the sponsors, the cricketers, and the fans of Indian cricket. Some authors have discussed some of these in detail, but seldom has anyone dug so deep into all three subjects with an academic’s penchant for research.

5. Runs ’n’ Ruins (1984), Sunil Gavaskar

Four of Gavaskar’s books have been bestsellers. While Sunny Days is the most famous, his third book is arguably the best written, and the most human of them all, capturing the many highs and lows of a season in the life of Indian cricket’s first global superstar.

The book describes, in one-match-per-chapter format, the winter of 1983, when world champions India hosted Pakistan before being destroyed by the West Indies. Amidst the ruins, Gavaskar matched and then went past Don Bradman’s record of 29 Test hundreds, and underwent a multitude of emotions en route.

6. Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Cricketer (1996), Sujit Mukherjee

Mukherjee – of no known relation to me – played five times for Bihar. Thank goodness he did, because had he not, one of the best books on this list would never have been written. This is the everyday Indian cricketer who, despite his keenness, realizes at an early age that his cricketing career will never exceed beyond a certain point. Instead, he chooses to watch and observe, and write. The eye for detail, the prose, everything makes it an endearing read.

Mukherjee has penned several outstanding books on Indian cricket, but the personal touch makes Autobiography stand out.

7. A History of Indian Cricket (2002), Mihir Bose

Most cricket-playing nations have that one definitive book on their cricket that you want to own, gift, or recommend. For India, it is this humongous volume of work that begins with the start and spans decades. If you have heard of a story on Indian cricket, chances are very high that it is here, or better, quoted from here.

A History of Indian Cricket by Mihir Bose

8. A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport (2003), Ramachandra Guha

This was the book with which Guha reminded India, and the world, of the once-forgotten Palwankar Baloo, the Dalit cricketer who broke barriers of caste to play for an All-Indian XI over a century ago. Yet, there is much, much more to the book than Baloo. Guha narrates a social history of pre-Independence Indian cricket with a level of research so characteristic of him.

9. Pundits from Pakistan: On Tour With India, 2003-04 (2005), Rahul Bhattacharya

In 2004, India went on their first tour of Pakistan since 1989/90. The tour deserved a book, and Bhattacharya did justice to the historic occasion with easily the best cricket tour book in Indian history – though, to be fair, he has little competition.

As with great cricket tour books, he goes beyond the scorecards to immortalize the times, and goes beyond the matches to capture Pakistan cricket in rich detail. The interview of Abdul Qadir remains a personal favourite.

10. Beyond the Blues: A Cricket Season Like None Other (2009), Aakash Chopra

Chopra takes readers beyond the glamorous worlds of international cricket and the Indian Premier League (IPL) to the now-ignored Ranji Trophy, played at humble venues in front of sparse crowds. The book is about Rajasthan’s maiden triumph in the history of the tournament, but it is also about Indian domestic cricket, and the contrast between the two worlds.

11. The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women’s Cricket in India (2017), Karunya Keshav and Sidhanta Patnaik

It took two of India’s finest authors to pen the ultimate go-to book on the largely undocumented history of women’s cricket in India, updated until the 2017 World Cup. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this may well be the most important book written on Indian cricket.

12. Elephant in the Stadium: The Myth and Magic of India’s Epochal Win (2022), Arunabha Sengupta

(Note: To avoid any conflict of interest, it is perhaps worth a mention that I did part-edit this volume, and have been acknowledged by the author inside the book.)

Elephant in the Stadium stands out, not only among the books that celebrated India’s famous win in England in 1971 but in Indian cricket literature. Sengupta does not restrict himself to celebrating the triumph and the heroes: he goes beyond that, elaborating on the many differences between the two societies over time through the lens of cricket.