When Ramachandra Guha began following the game in the early 1960s India was utterly marginal to the world of cricket: the country still hadn't won a Test match overseas; by the time he joined the Board of Control for Cricket in India fifty years later India had become world cricket's sole superpower.
The Commonwealth of Cricket is a first-person account of this astonishing transformation. The book traces the entire arc of cricket in India across all levels at which the game is played: school college club state country. It presents vivid portraits of local heroes provincial icons and international stars.
Cast as a work of literature The Commonwealth of Cricket is keenly informed by the author's scholarly training the stories and sketches narrated against a wider canvas of social and historical change. The book blends memoir anecdote reportage and political critique providing a rich insightful and rivetingly readable account of this greatest of games as played in the country that has most energetically made this sport its own.