Cricket in India has always been more than a sport. It is an obsession. Indians, from the lower to the upper class, love the game, and have loved it even more ever since Kapil Dev led the Indian cricket team to victory in the finals of World Cup 1983 against the seemingly invincible West Indies. A lot has happened since then. For one,

youngsters from small towns, usually from the lower-middle class, have taken to the game in a big way. K.R. Guruprasad’s Going Places: India’s Small-Town Cricket Heroes, is a fine, if somewhat gushing, tribute to the grit and dedication of cricketers from non-metropolitan India who have made it to the national side in Tests, One-Day Internationals and Twenty20s.
The stories of Guruprasad’s cricketers have several common elements — a heroic, often inspiring struggle, and the faith, blood, sweat and tears of a coach.
Suresh Raina, a very successful batsman in ODIs, and now a Test player of promise, was coached by S.P. Krishan at the Sports College in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Krishan, who has coached hundreds of “boy-cricketers”, spotted Raina, a lower-division government clerk’s son, playing against the Lucknow College XI in Ghaziabad. The 12-year-old Raina impressed Krishan enough for him to ask the boy’s father and elder brother, a teacher, to send him to Lucknow for coaching. Krishan’s hunch proved right. And young Suresh, now 25, is contemplating an appropriate guru dakshina — a house for Krishan, who now grooms young boys at his cricket academy in Jalandhar, Punjab.
Ravindra Jadeja is from a lower middle-class family in Jamnagar, Gujarat, a former principality that produced great batsmen like Kunwar Saheb Ranjitsinhji and his nephew K.S. Duleepsinhji, who covered between them the first three decades of the 20th century in British India. Jadeja’s father, Aniruddha Sinh Jadeja, had to give up athletics and a career in the Indian Army after a serious injury. His friend, Mahendra Singh Chauhan, a quick bowler and batsman of talent, too had to give up cricket after injuring himself. But Chauhan, instead of turning bitter, decided to dedicate himself to coaching promising boys without charging a penny; he earned his living by running a small eatery. It was to Chauhan that Anniruddh took his eight-year-old son Ravindra. The canny coach put the boy through grueling tests and was sufficiently impressed to accept him as a pupil. The rest, as they say, is history. Jadeja, since his debut for India in the shorter versions of the game in 2008 when he was only 20, has proved his worth as an orthodox left-arm spin bowler, useful lower middle-order batsman and a sharp fielder. He could do well in Test cricket as well. He has the staying power and the peculiar talent that the longer version of the game demands. Ravindra shares a hunger for knowledge about cricket and, by extension, about life, with other cricketers who feature in the book. The self-effacing Chauhan is proud of his protégé.
Then there are others, like the fast bowler Ashok Dinda, a farmer’s son from West Bengal, and R. Vinay Kumar, a Karnataka all-rounder whose father toiled to earn a decent living. Another farmer’s son is Munaf Patel.
A difficult to handle but nevertheless very talented fast-medium bowler, Munaf is from a family of cotton-growing Muslim farmers. He has played Tests with some distinction, having bowled particularly well in the West Indies five years ago. His Test cricket career has floundered because of his supposed mood changes, but he bowled consistently well in ODIs. Handled with care, Munaf could prove an asset in both, the longer and shorter versions of cricket. A villager at heart, Munaf is given to spontaneous acts of generosity, and his friends from Ikhar, Gujarat, remember him as a kind and giving man.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni, wicket keeper-batsman, and India’s most successful captain in recent years, today does more commercial endorsements than his colleague, the batting genius Sachin Tendulkar. Dhoni’s father started life as an unskilled labourer and fought his way up slowly. He was duly worried about the family’s future when his son began to play cricket with increasing devotion!
Every cricketer featured in this small, endearing book comes from an economically-stressed background, and sometimes, sudden acquisition of wealth at a young age leads to extravagance that are comical. Santhakumaran Sreesanth, a temperamental but fine fast-medium bowler from a Kerala village, has bought himself several cars, including two very expensive BMWs.
But, at the end, this is a touching book about small-town cricketers — the most courageous and talented amongst them. Men like Virendra Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh, who continue to bring honour to their team and their fans.

Partha Chatterjee is a documentary filmmaker and critic