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Ramachandra Guha
Introductory note:
Guys and girls, Rediff presents a new columnist -- Dr Ramachandra Guha, to give him a name.
We've been discussing this column with Dr Guha for over a month now. The reason for our persistence is the same as the reason for our wanting his presence on our site in the first place.
There is so much cricket happening these days, that cricket writing has become as immediate, instant. A match report today, another one the day after tomorrow -- that's how it's been, and given our schedule, that is how it will continue to be.
In the process, however, we are missing out on a lot. The classic 'past forward' type of writing, which looked at the present in terms of the past, is rapidly dying out. And in this death, we all lose -- a sense of history, of perspective.
It is this perspective that we hope Dr Guha will bring back to cricket writing.
A social historian by profession and inclination, Dr Guha has taught at Yale University, the Indian Institute of Science, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he was Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor in 1997 and 1998.
In his own words, he writes on history to make a living, and on cricket to really live. His books on cricket include Wickets in the East (hailed, at the time, as the best book written about cricket by an Indian) and Spin and Other Turns, which Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack called "a book of high quality, written with a warmth and perception admirable in one whose early studies and adherences were of Marxism". Indian cricketers, remarked Wisden, had now ‘found a writer to emulate the stylishness of their best players.’
Guha’s column, which will be fortnightly to start with, will free-wheel its way through the game, its literature, its history, its politics and its styles.
Without further ado, it is over, now, to Ramachandra Guha...
• Litany of loss- October 16, 1998
• The uttakh-bhaitakh breed- October 8, 1998
• Different strokes- September 23, 1998
• Cricket's Salman Rushdie- September 10, 1998
• Quicksilver!- August 29, 1998
• Tuk-tuk! - August 13, 1998
• The most famous duck in history - August 3, 1998
• Bowling them over... - July 21, 1998
• Past forward! - July 9, 1998
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