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Out Of The Box — Watching The Game We Love FOR a man under a spell of the charm that Indian cricket is, Harsha Bhogle has managed to still keep his objectivity up and running in all his years with the microphone. Apart from his TV commentary, Harsha has been writing a column for the Indian Express, and that is the source of his book? Out of the box — Watching the game we love? The book is a compilation of his articles and offers the reader an opportunity to refurbish their memories of the last decade.
Harsha is among the very rare commentators who have not played professional cricket, but that rather than being a shortcoming, turns out to be the biggest forte of his writing. He sees it from the point of view of someone, who cries and smiles when Indian cricket goes on its whimsical hyperbole. He reads the game the way a spectator would, and then with words like "sensex of batting" and "blue chip stocks" adds his own dynamism to it. The book is an honest account of Indian cricket’s journey in the last five-seven years and that too from someone who has witnessed it from close quarters. You feel his exhilarated thoughts when he writes about the 2007 T20 WC win, or the angst when he touches upon the fall at the ODI WC in the Caribbean. He sure has an opinion on every important happening in the world of cricket, mostly related to India though, and although one might not agree with all he thinks, it’s hard to keep his written words out of your mind, just as is the case with his spoken ones too.
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The book is divided into
five parts? T20s, ODIs, Tests, Cricketing Greats and Rules,
regulations, infrastructure. As with his commentary, even in his
writing Harsha’s love for Indian cricket is visible, but never does
it border into the realm of being a prejudice. He has written about
controversial things like the need for a successful Indian Cricket
League, to the callous approach of the BCCI in running the sport. He
talks about his unabashed admiration for Sachin Tendulkar, his respect
for the "Australian Way" and also why Indian cricket, which
has been full of promise for so many years now, has not been able to
get the recipe for success right.