It can be safely said that in a cricket-mad country like India, there is no dearth of literature on the subject available to the public at large. Biographies, reminiscences, reviews of test matches and one-day internationals, we are spoilt for choice. However, rarely have we come across a literary effort that artfully combines cricket fiction with a historical and geo-political backdrop. One such recent noteworthy release is ‘Final Innings’ by Sunil Gupta.
‘Final Innings’ is a work of fiction on a grand scale, an ambitious project that creates for the reader a set of imagined characters, who operate in a world of real-life, recognisable people — be they cricketers, politicians, backroom strategists and just common people like members of a family or doctors and nurses in a hospital. While the story revolves around the protagonist, an Indian cricketer who travels with his national team to various parts of the globe where the game of cricket is passionately followed and experiences the vicissitudes of the game both on and off the field, the sub-text of the plot takes on a fascinating complexity.
A tale told well
From cricket the author deftly moves to a much larger theatre — that of the birth of India and Pakistan and all that that entailed in terms of the fraught history, the never-ending conflict and the simmering tensions that constantly hover over the sub-continent. However, other leading cricket playing nations like Australia, England, South Africa and so on, feature prominently as locations for plot development, as well as characters around which the story flits back and forth. The cricketers and other fictional players swoop in and out of the pages of Sunil Gupta’s tour-de-force, providing the reader with a real page-turner. He takes the telling of the tale from cricket and interweaves the narrative into how these two historically attritional nations, India and Pakistan, are inextricably linked umbilically, joined at the hip and perpetually at loggerheads. The Kashmir powder keg is an important and highly relevant element of the story.
It is tale told well. At 482 pages, you need to take your time to savour the nuances brought out by the author of the lead actors, who are all fully fleshed out. Without giving away any plot details, it must be said Sunil Gupta is both a cricket aficionado and a serious talent when it comes to storytelling. His descriptive powers are enviable and he possesses that indefinable quality we call style. His eye for detail is also clearly evident and the reader will have his fill of cricketing memorabilia combined with sparkling and witty dialogue. This review has deliberately eschewed revealing details of characters or the storyline. Suffice it to say that if you love cricket and if you love India, ‘Final Innings’ is a must read and a worthy addition to your home library.