Offers a social history of Indian cricket between 1780 and 1947. This book considers cricket as a derivative sport, creatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs, fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations.

It is concerned not only with the game but also with the end of cricket as a mere sport, with Indian cricket's commercial revolution in the 1930s, with ideals and idealism and their relative unimportance, with the decline of morality for reasons of realpolitik, and with the denunciation, once and for all, of the view that sport and politics do not mix. This book was previously published as a special issue of the "International Journal of the History of Sport".