All That You Can’t Leave Behind: Why We Can Never Do Without Cricket

If one were to do a nationwide poll of Indians born after Independence and ask which is the one date they remember most, the answer may well be 25 June 1983, the date on which India won the cricket World Cup. It is often said that cricket in India is like a religion; nothing could be more misleading. Religion has scarred the nation more deeply than anything else. Cricket is the balm that heals.

In our collective consciousness, there is nothing quite like cricket. As the most visible expression of national identity, as an obsession or a dream, cricket is the only thing that possibly unites a country as diverse and as contradiction-ridden as India.

In this brilliant book, Soumya Bhattacharya shows how we have made this game our own, given it our own colour, our own customs, our own codes. And how cricket in turn has come to permeate every aspect of our public life, from popular culture to politics—so that, when a game is on, the rest of life happens strictly between overs.

In the end, All That You Can’t Leave Behind is as much about India as it is about cricket.

‘‘ ‘This book is a vivid and empathetic account of the highs and lows of cricket watching in contemporary India. The portraits of the great moderns—Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble, Laxman and Tendulkar—are deft and charming.’’
Ramachandra Guha

‘‘Spanning two decades, combining personal touches and socio-economics, emotions and statistics, [Bhattacharya] tells the story of Indian cricket’s greatest moments and finest players, explains what they meant to him and the part they played in creating New India . . . It is a rich tale told with the sentiment of the supporter and the acumen of the historian.’’
Peter Roebuck