NATION AT PLAY

Ronojoy Sen

Why have so many indigenous sports in India faded away, while cricket, a colonial import, continues to be popular? Ronojoy Sen explores how sport in India reflects the way the country itself is constituted and functions. With anecdotes and trivia collected from many unconventional sources, Sen discusses the rise and fall of sports such as wrestling, boxing, hockey, football, cricket and athletics, from the era in which sport was a royal pastime, through colonial times, to the decades since independence and the liberalisation of the economy.

Penguin India, 400 pages, Rs 599