Eleven Gods And A Billion Indians review: On and off the field

The sweat on the field and the intrigue off it defines Indian cricket. Boria Majumdar attempts to deconstruct this juxtaposition in his Eleven Gods And A Billion Indians, a book that identifies the diverse strands which make cricket a revered sport from Jammu to Madurai.

Majumdar, a regular on the cricket circuit, often speaks in an emphatic fashion tinged with nationalistic fervour across television channels. He also authored Sachin Tendulkar’s autobiography Playing It My Way, an exhaustive tome that was hamstrung by the maestro’s politically correct tenor.

Two stories

In chronicling India’s cricketing history, Majumdar has stepped into a terrain occupied by Ramachandra Guha and Mihir Bose. In the initial pages, Majumdar reveals his preamble: “To write an accurate account of Indian cricket one needs to first understand that it is not simply a history of what is happening on the field. What is played off the field is equally important and fascinating. These two stories, which run concurrently on and off the field, make Indian cricket what it is.”

With gusto, Majumdar wades into his endeavour. It helps that he holds an unenviable position of trying to be a detached analyst while also being a part of the inner circle of legends like Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly. Over a decade and a half, Majumdar has been privy to cricket’s biggest stories as well as the ‘behind the scenes’ drama. It is a strength that comes through when he attempts to fathom the squads that Ganguly and Virat Kohli, split by a generation but fused by an incendiary competitive streak, built.

Majumdar admits that the match-fixing controversy in 2000 shook his faith but the quality of cricket played under Ganguly’s leadership assuaged his spirits. “While I was growing up in urban Kolkata, Tendulkar, Ganguly and (Rahul) Dravid stood for the fact that not all was lost,” Majumdar writes. The book spread over 435 pages, sticks to these themes of excellence on the turf and the politics and deals in the backrooms.

Split into thematic chapters, the book delves into the way the British propagated the game, beginning as indulgent evenings between the Old Blighty’s troops and Indian sepoys when the sport enlivened their lives. The patronage of the princes, often to curry favour from the colonial rulers, their machinations to even wrest a spot in the national playing eleven, all these get ample exposure through Majumdar’s pen.

The author also humanises Ranjitsinhji, who has been romanticised for his wristy shots while turning out for England besides being an enduring memory, thanks to the Ranji Trophy in India. Majumdar highlights Ranji’s days of penury and his poetic streak, evident in his missives to his lady-love Madge. And lines like these — “Happy is the man to whom they whisper their love story” — show that Ranji was creative beyond the 22 yards too!

Mixing sport and politics

That sport and politics do mix is driven home when Majumdar narrates the rise and fall of the Pentangular championship in Mumbai where teams were divided on religious lines.

Though the cricket had no communal tinge, politicians queered the pitch and even Mahatma Gandhi questioned the validity of the tournament. Majumdar quotes the ‘Father of the Nation’: “I would discountenance such amusements at a time when the whole of the thinking world should be in mourning over a war (World War II) that is threatening the stable life of Europe and its civilisation and which bids to overwhelm Asia... And holding this view I naturally welcome the movement for stopping the forthcoming match.”

Sudden rifts

Majumdar chronicles those early days of strife and even the cussed nature of dressing room battles which nearly unhinged the likes of C.K. Nayudu and Lala Amarnath. That bad-blood continues to spring at inopportune moments is evident when the author, in his back-and-forth style, focuses on the rifts between Ganguly and Greg Chappell, and Kohli and Anil Kumble. The truism about the captain having the last word becomes obvious but you cannot escape the lingering feeling about Majumdar perhaps turning soft on Ganguly and Kohli. “Once he [Kohli] starts winning, and does so away from home, all talk of treating Kumble poorly will go out of the window. The very same people who called him a brat will then say he is the best thing to happen to Indian cricket,” Majumdar writes.

The book has a large canvas as it deals with history; the glory days of 1971, 1983 and 2001; women’s cricket illuminated splendidly by Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami; TV rights; IPL; BCCI’s legal quagmire and the resultant reforms; and larger-than-life players.

It has its personal moments too like when during a research-visit to Lord’s, an ecstatic Majumdar gets to hold the 1983 Prudential World Cup that ‘Kapil’s Devils’ won. It shows that cricket has imbued us with varying emotions, significant enough to overwhelm any lingering cynicism.

Eleven Gods And A Billion Indians;

Boria Majumdar,

Simon & Schuster,

₹699.