Mahatma on the Pitch

Book excerpt: How the most important man of our national movement viewed the most important sport in our country. Did Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi ever play cricket? Did cricket ever figure in the Gandhian world of thought? What were the views of the most important man in the history of India's freedom struggle on the game that dominates Indian national consciousness in the twenty-first century? Were there any connections between Gandhi and cricket during the high tide of national movement? Did Gandhi or his ideas make any impact on the game? Did he ever oppose the cause of cricket? Did cricket ever invoke Gandhi after his death? These questions seem as remote as Gandhi's tryst with cricket! Mahatma on the Pitch tries to find answers to these apparently quirky questions by exploring the untold relationship between two of the most enduring phenomena of modern India: Mahatma Gandhi, arguably the greatest Indian icon of the twentieth century and Indian cricket, probably the most assertive Indian national emblem in the twenty-first-century world.