by James Astill
14. Cricket on Oval Maidan in Mumbai, a surviving fragment of the 19th century Esplanade – where it all began.
15. Kapil Dev, India’s captain, lifts the World Cup at Lord’s in 1983. India’s shock victory unleashed enormous demand for the one-day game in India.
16. The progress of a megastar: Sachin Tendulkar as a diffident schoolboy prodigy alongside his friend and batting partner Vinod Kambli.
17. As a teenage India star.
18. Over two decades later, as India’s most-revered celebrity.
19. Wrestling at Nawab Ganj, eastern Uttar Pradesh, in 2010. Tournaments like this one, held to commemorate Gandhi’s birthday, draw big crowds in northern India. But they are becoming rarer, as cricket fever sweeps the countryside.
20. Men and boys gather in a Karachi street to watch a one-day game between Pakistan and India, held in Dhaka in March 2012. Pakistan would win this one.
21. Scenes from the National Stadium in Karachi during the first game of the 2004 India tour of Pakistan. Making a nonsense of pre-match fears, the Karachi crowd gave the Indian team a wonderfully warm welcome.
22. And was rewarded with one of the finest one-day games ever played. The Pakistani attack was led by Shoaib Akhtar, who bowled ferociously that day.
23. Heavyweights from Indian business, politics and film were all drawn to the IPL. Here Mukesh Amnbani (wearing a check shirt), India’s richest man and owner of the Mumbai Indians, talks to BCCI president Sharad Pawar (wearing a white shirt), Lalit Modi (wearing glasses) and Niranjan Shah.
24. Vijay Mallya (here chatting with Modi), added the Royal Challengers Bangalore team to his airlines and liquor empire.
25. Preity Zinta, Bollywood star and co-owner of the Kings XI Punjab team, watches with Ness Wadia, her sometime boyfriend and business partner, as Irfan Pathan is greeted by the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.
26. IPL cheerleaders represent a big cultural change to a conservative country. They are disapproved of by Hindu nationalist politicians and lusted after by millions of spectators.
27. Cricket in Dharavi, a giant slum in Mumbai. These are the sorts of conditions in which most Indian cricket is played.
Copyright © 2013 by James Astill
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Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Astill, James.
The great tamasha : cricket, corruption and the turbulent rise of modern
India / James Astill.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-1-62040-123-1
1. Cricket—India—History. I. Title.
GV928.I4A77 2013
796.3580954—dc23
2013011749
First U.S. Edition 2013
This electronic edition published in July 2013
www.bloomsbury.com
