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You watch, drifting, surrounded by the thing. It’s like living underwater.’
This is how Men in White: A Book of Cricket,an armchair view of Test cricket, describes the experience of living with a game in a country where the sport occupies mind space like nothing else can. Mukul Kesavan himself is keen on the sport, but in a non-playing way. With a top score of 14 in neighbourhood cricket and a lively distaste for fast bowling, his self-professed credentials for writing about the game are founded on the spectatorial axiom: distance brings perspective.
The book looks back authoritatively at everything: at the ‘Pandara Park’ cricket of his childhood, at the usurpation of radio commentary’s domain by television, changes in Test cricket brought about by the one-day international, as well as variations in cricketing fashions and attire over the years. Kesavan also examines the health of Test cricket, the problem of chucking, the increasing influence of technology on the on-field decision-making processes, and the wickedness of the ICC. In-between, he does profiles of his cricketing heroes and denunciations of modern cricket’s villains.
Written with a novelist’s talent for making things up, a historian’s dedication to facts and a fan’s unwinking commitment to his team, Men in White is an indispensable book for cricket fans everywhere.
ISBN: 0670999539
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Pages : 296
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