He's back! Last year, he stunned cricket with his blog, Fake I*L Player, a supposedly true insider account of the turmoil, scandals and other juice from within the Kolkata Knight Riders team. Now, as promised in one of the posts in that blog, he's here with the book. And it's much more than the blog.
It's called The Gamechangers. Written by The Fake I*L Player – for obvious reasons. The T20 tournament in question is the aptly named Indian Bollywood League (IBL). And the names of the players, coaches and key characters are different from those in the blog. Appam Chutiya, sadly, is just Prashanth. Continue reading below
A very clever plot which centres on an investigation to find the identity of the blogger, the book shifts part of the spotlight on the controversial, eternally-scheming mastermind of the IBL, Lalu Parekh. And a larger picture emerges – of world-domination ambitions, conniving administrators, sex, drugs though not rock 'n roll and, yes, some cricket too.
Here, then, are ten reasons why you must read The Gamechangers (Harper-Collins India, 401 pages, Rs 199):
10. There'll be no blog covering the current edition of the tournament. At least, not in the way of the classic blog from last year. So, for a taste of that original writing and insights – spurious or otherwise – you only have the book.
9. It's a compelling cast of characters. Each cricketer - temperamental, whining, heroic - Bollywood star, flamboyant team-owner and cricket-administrator is etched out in details that make guesswork very simple. Which, of course, is all the fun. No matter that there are the mandatory assertions of its all being fictitious. For an example, look no further than the director/close friend character who's part of the entourage of the Bollywood star who owns the Calcutta Cavalry. He's pictured in very short pink shorts!
8. The low blows which pepper the story. For instance, Sou… er… Goutam Sarkar appears in a monkey-cap during a fire scare at the London hotel – in the month of June! Elsewhere, the batsman known as God speaks to the character named Rocky in a baritone.
7. The little romance side-story. It makes the whole sordid saga human in a way that only fiction can. Chick-lit at its best, this little story does, however, soften the contents.
6. The insights into the conspiracies, politics and machinations that are known to invade cricket in India. These are abundantly evident in the plots that players, factions and administrators are seen hatching against one another. The cricket is clearly secondary – and that, as many people will confirm, is uncomfortably close to the reality of big bucks T20.
5. The readability. It may be 400 pages long, but this book is a start-to-finish read. With action on every page, in every paragraph.
4. Goutam Sarkar. For good or for bad, he emerges as the most astute personality in the entire cast, becoming the manipulator instead of being manipulated. Like him or hate him – or the real-life cricketer with whom he obviously has no resemblance - you have to admire the way he turns a crisis into an opportunity. And the book portrays that extremely effectively.
3. PMS. No more to be said. Read the book.
2. Lalu Parekh. This thinly veiled version of you know who goes about his coldly-hatched plan of ruling world cricket with the kind of precision and focus that every aspiring or actual CEO must be craving. While it's hard to say how many of the incidents that Lalu engineers in the book have their real-life equivalents, there is little doubt about the accuracy of the overall picture. Including, apparently, the witch-hunt he sets up to identify the blogger.
1. And the number one reason is: for the first time, a book about cricket shows in graphic detail that T20 games are not won and lost on the playing field alone. Not in a philosophical or psychological sense, but in terms of the off-the-field action in determining team composition, strategy, captaincy, and larger issues – actions in which everybody but the cricketers themselves are involved in decision-making.
Enough said. Read. This. Book.
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