NEW DELHI, Nov. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — HarperCollins India presents a fascinating portrait of modern India woven around epochal events in India’s cricketing history, ‘Not Just Cricket’ by Pradeep Magazine releasing in December 2021.
Praise for the book
“Pradeep Magazine combines a deep knowledge of cricket with a sturdy independence of mind, and his wonderful memoir is richly insightful both about the game he loves—and sometimes despairs of—and the strife-torn states of India in which he has himself lived and worked. Lovers of sport and students of contemporary history will warm equally to this fine and often deeply moving book.”– Ramachandra Guha
“Not Just Cricket is a ride through the ups and downs of Indian cricket, seen from the eyes of one of India’s finest sports journalists. Pradeep Magazine has the experience, wisdom and self-awareness to tell a story that is as honest as it is thoughtful. While cricket is very much at the heart of the book, the author’s own story and that of his political beliefs threads the narrative to create a fuller and altogether more vivid picture of the times that it documents. The author’s humanity and straightforwardness shines through in every word that he has written.” – Santosh Desai
“Insightful, expansive, warm and truthful—a rare kind of book about India and cricket.”– Sharda Ugra
On his forthcoming publication, Pradeep Magazine, says: “This work is a culmination of lifetime experiences—social, political, cricketing—that I have lived through while reporting on Indian cricket worldwide. It is as much a personal journey as it is about the world of cricket stars, fans, ordinary people intermingling to create the mosaic that is India. I am hopeful that the effort and care I put into writing this book will find resonance among the lovers of cricket as well as those who care about people and their aspirations in a society that is living in challenging times.”
Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher, HarperCollins India, says: “Pradeep Magazine is a highly respected journalist and writer, and his journey through modern India, as he has seen it evolve, makes for fascinating reading. As the title indicates, this is not a book just about cricket—though there are some truly memorable cricketing encounters and anecdotes that make up an important part of the narrative. The keen insights into India’s troubled history that the book offers are extremely valuable. Not Just Cricket is an absolute pleasure to read; we at HarperCollins are delighted to be publishing it, and I hope it will prove engrossing to many a reader.”
About the book
Eminent journalist Pradeep Magazine’s memoir is a story of lived, real experiences, of joy, sorrow, fear, loss and hope, and about how an uprooted identity shapes one’s attitude towards society and the nation. From the Kashmir of the 1950s to terror-stricken Punjab, from the Mandir–Masjid divide and the impact of Mandal politics to the tragic consequences of the Kashmir situation—Magazine paints a fascinating portrait of modern India. 
At the core of the book are accounts of some of the most epochal events in India’s cricketing history, woven around personal encounters with several well-known cricketers. The author lays bare the vicious machinations that are a staple diet of sports governance and reveals hitherto unknown facts about the frictions and ego clashes that are inevitable in a game that dominates India’s sporting discourse.
Whether it is cricket that you’re keen on, or India’s troubled history, Not Just Cricket is a must-read.
Supported by New India Foundation
Releasing in December 2021
About the author
Pradeep Magazine is a cricket writer, columnist and former sports editor of The Pioneer, the India Today e-paper and Hindustan Times. He began his journalistic career in 1979 with the Chandigarh edition of The Indian Express and was its cricket editor in 1999–2000. Widely travelled, Magazine has covered international cricket in every Test-playing nation; he is the author of the book Not Quite Cricket that exposed the match-fixing scandal much before it surfaced in 2000.  
About HarperCollins Publishers India
HarperCollins Publishers India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins Publishers India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins Publishers India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins Publishers India is also the only publisher to have been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.
About New India Foundation
The New India Foundation, based in Bengaluru, uniquely matches public-spirited philanthropy with ground-breaking and relevant scholarship. In the seven-and-a-half decades since Independence, there has been a large body of work produced by Indian historians and social scientists. Taken singly, many of these studies are very impressive; viewed cumulatively, they add up to much less than what one might expect. The chief reason for this is the determining influence on the scholarly practice of one single date: 15th August 1947.
Given India’s size, its importance, and its interest, and given that this is our country, the lack of good research on its modern history is unfortunate. It is this lack that the New India Foundation seeks to address, by sponsoring high-quality original scholarship on different aspects of independent India. Its activities include the granting of NIF Fellowships for highly researched original work, Translation Fellowships for bringing historical Indian language works to English, the publication of books on the history and culture of independent India, organizing the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture, and the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize.
Please send any enquiries to Krishna Arora, HarperCollins India: Krishna.Arora@harpercollins.co.in
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