By Dr. C.G. Narasimhan 

Title: ‘Cricket Jagattu Mattu Allina Amogha Ghaligegalu’

Author: E.R. Ramachandran

Year:     2025

Pages:  240

Price:     Rs. 300

Publisher:  New Wave Books

Cricket in India has become a household name with great excitement and euphoria more so if our boys and girls do well and win a match and tournament. It is watched and talked about by millions of people, young or old. Quite a number of books mainly in English in the form of ‘how to play cricket’ and biographies by former players have come out but very few in Kannada.

Recently I came across one such book written by a good friend E.R. Ramachandran (ERR) of Mysuru, who is an avid cricket buff, a writer in Kannada and who is contributing to many magazines. The title of the book is ‘Cricket Jagattu Mattu Allina Amogha Ghaligegalu’  (QæPÉmï dUÀvÀÄÛ ªÀÄvÀÄÛ C°è£À CªÉÆÃWÀ WÀ½UÉUÀ¼ÀÄ). The book was released recently by none other than our own ‘Mysore Express’ Javagal Srinath. It is a nicely designed and printed 240-page book with 23 black and white photographs. There are 24 chapters each of about 7 to 8 pages which  one can finish reading in about four hours.

There are several interesting topics right from the history of cricket, how it originated in England, when it came to India, about many erstwhile and present cricketers of India and other countries, to some scoreboards and statistics of a few important matches. A diagram on page 16 is a useful guide to know the fielding positions. It is amazing being an engineer working in many cities across India and abroad how Ramachandran could store all the data of over several decades. He has left no stones unturned covering most of the noted events and cricketers of the world. For the present generation to know, he has written about the old timers of India Col. C.K. Nayudu, Vijay Merchant, Vijay Hazare and also about L.T. Adisesh, L.T. Subbu, Kasturirangan and other cricketers of Karnataka (Mysore then).

Each chapter is thoughtfully titled in Kannada like naming Don Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar as ‘Lion and Cub of Cricket’, naming Hanif Mohammad of Pakistan, Sunil   Gavaskar, G.R. Vishwanath and Tendulkar as ‘Little Masters of Cricket’, Kapil Dev and M.S. Dhoni as ‘Priceless Jewels’  and the list goes on. There are interesting stories starting from Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath to Virat Kohli and Rohith Sharma.

The writer has taken care to mention about women’s cricket and about Karnataka’s Shantha Rangaswamy to Mithali Raj also. The preface of this excellent compendium in Kannada is written by none other than our esteemed nonagenarian Bapu Satyanarayana. Being a connoisseur of music, he has very aptly compared Test, ODI and T20 cricket to classical music, light music and pop music respectively.  Continuing in the same vein, I would like to compare the T20 cricket to hit film songs. Myself being a cricketer during my younger days, I would strongly recommend Ramachandran’s book to all Kannada & cricket buffs of Mysuru.