In ‘Not Just Cricket’, Pradeep Magazine weaves cricketing history with lived experiences to build up a fascinating portrait of contemporary India | Books and Literature News,The Indian Express
The author’s inner journey and transformation, the search for his own identity make it a book about both life and cricket
To my surprise, Not Just Cricket is a book not only about cricket. It’s about changing India, with all its ups and downs. It busts myths and reveals the dark underbelly of not only cricket but also society. This is probably the only book of sports which starts and ends with turbulent Kashmir, not in cricketing terms, but with history, personal anecdotes, nostalgia and an oscillation between past and present and an imagination of the future. This is the narration of an author who is subconsciously haunted by memories of conflict; this is the reportage of an Indian who was born in Kashmir, whose community was thrown out of its home; who is desperate to keep his observation objective despite being burdened by the ghosts of time.
Magazine begins his narrative with a description of his family home in Srinagar’s Karan Nagar, where the author had lived till he was eight years old. That child has become an adult but inwardly he refuses to accept the sour reality of the lost world.
I have read Magazine for more than two decades but have personally known him only for a few years. But it was only through the book that I discovered that he was a Kashmiri Pandit, with deep roots in the Valley. In the book, he admits that he is not a sociologist, but he does try to find an answer to why Kashmiri Pandits were driven out. He recalls Nund Rishi and Lal Ded, Sufi saints of Kashmir, revered by Hindus and Muslims both, to trace the reasons behind the conflict between the two. Ironically, he ends up recalling an old Hindu lady, Rattan Rani, who refused to leave Srinagar: “She had the courage not to flee and abandon her roots. I felt, somehow, we had betrayed her.” Is he blaming his own people for leaving the Valley? Only Magazine knows the answer.
The beauty of the book lies in its smooth transition, from society to cricket. While reading contemporary history, the reader moves into the world of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Tiger Pataudi, John Wright and Greg Chappell.
This style of writing requires talent and the connection between both the worlds is magnificent. That makes the book interesting even for those who are not cricket buffs. In the opening chapter, the Kashmir narrative is offset by introductions to Clive Lloyd, the captain of the much feared West Indies team; Tiger Pataudi, the one-eyed charismatic captain of the Indian team, who cemented his place in our cricketing history by “shaping, forging and moulding a diverse group of players with disparate regional loyalties into a unified team.”
Rating: 5