No Australian can really answer these questions, so I was glad to see Ramachandra Guha's "A Corner of a Foreign Field" which is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

For such a cricket mad nation, India has been surprisingly lax about chronicalling it's cricket history, but Guha has done what digging he can.

The cover of my copy is swathed in praise; the Literary Review calls it "wonderful". From a literary point of view, I cannot own that it is that good; the prose occasionally plays out a few maiden overs and it struggles to maintain a proper length.

From a historical point of view, though, it is excellent, and explains a great deal not just about how the game started in the subcontinent, but also it explains the attitudes of the people to the game. And, it might be said, about other things. The communal hatreds of India and Pakistan make a lot more sense when you understand the Pentagular tournament that was the focus of Indian cricket until India became a serious Test nation.

As an Australian, I got a mild sense of embarrassment reading this tome. It is clear that India's board and cricketing society have faithfully copied everything crass, commercial and nationalistic in the Australian game, and applied it to the subcontinent. Australians, cynical as we are, have managed to cope with this; Indians have not, and the result is displays like the 1996 World Cup semi-final.

This book is not exactly the Indian version of `Beyond a boundary' but it is well worth a read, especially for the "Anglo" reader.