Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians

Simon & Schuster India is proud to announce the acquisition of Boria Majumdar’s Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians: The On and Off the Field Story of Cricket in India and Beyond to be published in June 2018.

Majumdar’s latest book goes deep into every Indian cricket tour since 1886—taking the reader backstage to when India played its first test in 1932, and bringing the story forward to the more contemporary IPL—to provide a complex and nuanced understanding of the evolution and maturity of the game.

Equally, it comes with material that has have never entered the public domain so far—going behind the scenes of cases like Monkeygate, the suspension of Lalit Modi, spot fixing, and the phase of judicial intervention. It carries not just reportage and analysis, but also player reminiscences, personal interviews, photographs and letters never known or discussed so far in Indian sporting discourse.

Weaving together such material, Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians unflinchingly confronts questions that demand answering, among them: Has internal bickering impacted the on field performance of the Indian cricket team? Did some of our icons fail the country and the sport by trying to conceal important facts during the spot fixing investigation? And does it matter to the ordinary fan who heads the BCCI as long as there is transparency and accountability in the system?

In the end, in telling the story of the role of cricket in colonial and post-colonial Indian life, and the inter-relationship between those who patronize, promote, play and view the sport, Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians unravels the story of a nation now considered the financial nerve centre of world cricket.

Boria Majumdar, a Rhodes scholar, is recognized as one of India’s most influential commentators on sport in print and on television. Having covered international sport between 2000 and 2017, he is currently consulting editor, Sports, India Today Group and Senior Research Fellow, University of Central Lancashire. He was formerly sports expert at Times Now and visiting professor at the Universities of Chicago and Toronto.

Simon & Schuster India will be releasing Boria Majumdar’s Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians globally—first, in the cricket-playing regions of the world, such as the Indian subcontinent, UK, and Australia, and subsequently, in the USA and Canada.