Sep 6, 2013
In the strangest and most distressing cricket story of the summer, it appears that New York police have compiled lists of the city’s cricket grounds, along with cafes and restaurants where people gather to watch international cricket on TV, in order to facilitate surveillance of the Muslim population. Some years back I was passing through… Read more
Mar 12, 2011
This tribute to Tendulkar has just been published in SACHIN : Genius Unplugged, edited by Suresh Menon. “Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle,” wrote CLR James in Beyond a Boundary. “It is so organised that at all times it is compelled to reproduce the central action which characterises all good drama from the… Read more
Mar 1, 2011
The Mercury, Durban, South Africa Monday February 28 2011 With the 10th World Cup now under way, 50-over cricket and the event itself are on trial, says one of the game’s most provocative, passionate and analytical followers, Mike Marqusee. Patrick Compton spoke to him. THE famous dictum of historian CLR James: “What do they know… Read more
Feb 21, 2011
Outlook (India), 21 February The 10th cricket World Cup opens with the format, and the event itself, on trial. That’s curious, for through most of its history, the World Cup has been an extraordinary success story. It came about more by accident than design (to plug a gap left in the English season by the… Read more
Sep 6, 2010
Outlook (India), 6 September On top of floods, war, bombs, a corrupt and incompetent government with a much feared military in the wings, the long-suffering people of Pakistan have now been betrayed, once again, by their cricketers. Most will not be shocked or will profess not to be shocked: over the last 15 years there… Read more
May 8, 2010
Frontline (India) 8 May 2010 An abbreviated version of this article has been published on the Guardian’s Comment is free website. In the flush of its success, the IPL was held up as the face of the new, thrusting, ambitious India and its swelling status. “It is a global representation of India,” Lalit Modi argued,… Read more
Jan 12, 2010
The Guardian, Comment is free 12 January 2010 Visiting friends in Delhi, I found the local media celebrating India’s performance at Copenhagen, from which it had emerged unburdened by the slightest commitment to reducing carbon emissions. This “climate nationalism” seemed particularly grotesque given that north India’s river systems are threatened by receding Himalayan glaciers and… Read more
