'A wonderful memoir . . . richly insightful, and deeply moving' - Ramachandra Guha
'A fascinating and insightful read.' - Vir Sanghvi
'Delightful... A wonderful read.' - Pritish Nandy
Eminent journalist Pradeep Magazine's memoir is a story of lived, real experiences, of joy, sorrow, fear, loss and hope, and about how an uprooted identity shapes one's attitude towards society and the nation. From the Kashmir of the 1950s to terror-stricken Punjab, from the Mandir-Masjid divide and the impact of Mandal politics to the tragic consequences of the Kashmir situation-Magazine paints a fascinating portrait of modern India.
At the core of the book are accounts of some of the most epochal events in India's cricketing history, woven around personal encounters with several well-known cricketers. The author lays bare the vicious machinations that are a staple diet of sports governance and reveals hitherto unknown facts about the frictions and ego clashes that are inevitable in a game that dominates India's sporting discourse.
Whether it is cricket that you're keen on, or India's troubled history, Not Just Cricket is a must-listen.
Pradeep Magazine is a cricket writer, columnist and former sports editor of The Pioneer, the India Today e-paper and the Hindustan Times. He began his journalistic career in 1979 with the Chandigarh edition of Indian Express and was its cricket editor in 1999–2000. Widely travelled, Magazine has covered international cricket in every Test-playing nation; he is the author of the book Not Quite Cricket which exposed the match-fixing scandal much before it surfaced in 2000.