Geoffrey Moorhouse

"I first fell under the spell of cricket, as every other small boy will have done, by batting and bowling on the nearest available space the moment I got home from school."

"No other country has lived with so complicated a past so equably, assimilating everything that has happened to it, obliterating naught, so that not even the intricate histories of European states have produced such a rich pattern as that bequeathed by the Mauryas, the Ashokas, the Pahlavas, the Guptas, the Chalykyas, the Hoysalas, the Pandyas, the Cholas, the Mughals, and the British - to identify a few of the people that have shaped India's inheritance. " "Religion, flourishes here as it does nowhere else. Other lands may surrender themselves totally to a particular faith, but in India most creeds are deeply rooted and acknowledged fervently. Virtually the whole population practices some form of devotion: the Indian without the slightest feeling for the divine, without a spiritual dimension to his life, is exceedingly rare." Incomparable and inimitable she is, India is also our great paradigm."