Short Introduction of six books on Cricket written by Sujit Mukherjee
British have introduced the game of Cricket and English language into
India and Indians become the master of both. Today, cricket and English
language are playing important role in Indian Society. The evolution of
sport literature is originally the Western concept. The great literature work
on sport has capacity to change the individual and society and evolved and
gained popularity throughout the world. In India also, popularity of sports and
sportsperson is increasing and it has lot of impact on sport literature. Due to
this, number of books has been written on game of cricket. Many sport writers
like Mihir Bose, Boria Majumdar, Gautama Bhattacharya, R.A. Kaushik and Suresh
Menon have written excellent books on game of cricket. Most of the writers are
Bengali speaking but they are excellent in English writing. Their writings are
based on proper research of the game. There is one more Bengali who had played
first-class cricket and had written an excellent books about cricket with the
combination of skill and experience and his name is Sujit Mukherjee.
From: Yogesh Gogwekar.
Sujit Mukherjee born on 21st August 1930 in the village of
Ariadaha near to south Kolkata, grown up and educated in Patna and completed
his MA from Patna College and PhD in English language from university of
Pennsylvania. He started his career in teaching in Patna College and Pune
University. Later on he joined as Chief Publisher Orient Longman first in New
Delhi and then in Hyderabad. He worked there for nearly twenty years. His first
book was Passage to America where he had given detailed information of USA tour
of Rabindranath Tagore. Later on, he has written literary history of India and
started translation of many Bengali stories and novels into English language.
On cricket, he has written six books and all six books are excellent to read.
He had also done the Radio commentary from 1975 to 1979 for test cricket. Thus,
throughout his life, he was an Indian writer, teacher, translator, literary
critic, publisher, and cricketer and cricket commentator.
Sujit Mukherjee also played cricket. He was a middle order batsman in
university, club and first-class cricket. He played Ranji Trophy for Bihar from
1951 to 1960. His first book on Cricket was The Romance of Indian Credit which
he had written in 1968. Later on he has written Playing for India in 1972,
Between Indian Wickets in 1977, Autobiography of Unknown Cricketer in 1997,
Match Winners in 1996 and finally in 2002 An Indian Cricket Century.
Following are the six books.
1. The Romance of cricket is nothing but tribute to his
Childhood heroes Nisar, Amar Singh, Vinu Mankad, Vijay Hazare, Vijay Merchant
and Lala Amarnath. It is presented in excellent way and one can enjoy at the
time of reading.
2. Playing for India is the evaluation and comparison of
statistical records of India’s participation in international Test cricket and
also the evaluation of records of Indian tests Cricket players. This is the
first book on Indian cricket with such records.
3. Between the wickets is the portrait of famous
cricketers.
4. Autobiography of Unknown cricketer presents the story of
writer’s long life love affair with Cricket. Here, writer has discussed the
game played at all levels i.e. in gardens and by-lanes, club, in school and
colleges, etc. He also stated the way he enjoyed cricket by scoring every run,
by taking every wicket and holding every catch. It is a good book to read for
cricket lovers.
5. Matched Winners is an analysis of set of pairs of Indian Cricket
such as Gavaskar & Vishwanath, Bedi and Prasanna, Chandra and
Venketraghavan, Engineer and Kunderan. This book gives the analysis of their
performance against their domestic records from critical observation. By doing
this, he has not discussed the career of players against each others.
6. An Indian cricket Century is nothing but the collection of
essays he has written for last four decades through various news papers. It is
edited by historian Ramchandra Guha along with T G Vaidyanathan. It contents
the portraits of great cricketers like Vijay Hazare, Vijay Merchant, G R
Vishwanath, and Sunil Gavaskar. This book states that India has produced great
batsmen, bowlers and fielders to the cricket world bit not best wicketkeeper.
It has also recollected the memories of cricket played in locations like Patna
and Philadelphia. Some essays in book show the relation of Cricket to
Nationalism
Such a great author of the game died on 14th
January 2003 in Hyderabad. No doubt ,Sujit Mukherjee would be best Indian cricket writer.
Mumbai
19/11/2019
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