Out of the Box

India s Richie Benaud equivalent the guru of cricket from India. Adam Gilchrist Aptly described as India s first non-playing cricket celebrity Harsha Bhogle has captured the entire gamut of Indian cricket in his weekly column in the Indian Express from the advent of Dhoni to the decline of the Fab Four from the art of coaching the Indian team to the BCCI s money-mindedness from cricketers shooting commercials just before a match to the nail-biting finish of many an IPL clash. Out of the Box brings together the very best of Harsha s writing in a book that will be a veritable delight to any cricket fan. Knowledgeable frank and witty and with a sense of drama comparable to that of cricket itself Harsha is a master at evoking the many moods of the game. And he is at his best when paying tribute to cricketing greats Lara Jayasuriya Ganguly Laxman Dravid Sehwag and the incomparable Tendulkar. As he follows India s fortunes on the cricket field at home and overseas Harsha asks the question that is on everyone s lips today can India really be no.1 in all three forms of the game? The answer lies in our history and in the pages of Out of the Box. About the Author Born in Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh) in 1934 Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar (Gujarat) Dehradun New Delhi and Shimla. His first novel The Room on the Roof which was written when he was seventeen received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over 500 short stories essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley and A Flight of Pigeons) and more than forty books for children. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1992 the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He lives in Landour Mussoorie with his extended family.