Cricket country : an Indian Odyssey in the age of empire
- United Kingdom Oxford University Press 2019
- xx, 423
Cricket is an Indian game accidentally invented by the English, it has famously been said. But India was represented by a cricket team long before it became a nation.
Conceived by an unlikely coalition of imperial and local elites, it took twelve years and four failed attempts before the first Indian cricket team made its debut on the playing fields of imperial Britain. Drawing on an unparalleled range of original archival sources, Cricket Country is the story of this first 'All India' national cricket tour of Great Britain and Ireland. It is also simultaneously the extraordinary tale of how the idea of India took shape on the cricket pitch long before the country gained its political independence.