Corner of A Foreign Field
The Indian History of a British Sport

By Ramachandra Guha
August 2002
Picador / Macmillan
ISBN: 0330491164[Hardcover]
ISBN: 0330491172 [Paperback]
511 pages, Illustrated, 6 1/4 x 9 1/2" [Hardcover]
512 pages, Illustrated, 5" x 7 ¾" [Paperback]
$47.50 [Hardcover]
$21.95 [Paperback]

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A Corner of a Foreign Field seamlessly interweaves biography with history, the lives of famous or forgotten cricketers with wider processes of social change. C.K. Nayudu and Sachin Tendulkar naturally figure in this book, but so too, in arresting and unexpected ways, do Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The Indian careers of those great English cricketers Lord Harris and D.R. Jardine provide a window into the operations of Empire. The remarkable life of India's first great slow bowler, Palawankar Baloo, introduces the reader to the still-unfinished struggle against caste discrimination.

Later chapters explore the competition between Hindu and Muslim cricketers in colonial India and the destructive passions now provoked when India plays Pakistan. An important, pioneering work, essential for anyone interested in either of those vast themes, cricket and India, A Corner of Foreign Field is also a beautifully written meditation on the ramifications of sport in society at large. Author and subject are especially well matched. Cricket is India's national passion, and Ramachandra Guha is one of India's leading historians, as well as a much admired cricket writer.

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