Fields of Play: Sport, Literature and Culture

The book is a collection of essays discussing the various aspects of sports in India. Apart from discussing the present status of the different sports and sporting formats, the essays also discuss the institutions attached to sports. At the same time, the essays also discuss the factors that make up the sport: the body cultures involved in various sports and corporeality in computer games. The book shows the strong sporting culture present in the Indian society through discussing the intimate relation between sports, literature and cinema, as depicted in books and movies like Harry Potter series and Iqbal respectively. This book will leave a mark on all, especially people interested in sports.

Contents: Introduction/Poonam Trivedi. Part I: Sporting Cultures. 1. Delhi commons: a public art project on the commonwealth games/Iram Ghufran. 2. The Indian premier league and the future of Indian cricket/Boria Majumdar. 3. Sporting legacies in India: Mohun Bagan’s 1911 football victory versus olympic hockey medals/Novy Kapadia. Part II: Sport and Literature. 4. Other histories: modernity, literature and football in India/Supriya Chaudhuri. 5. Sport, surveillance and speed in the hunger games trilogy/Sanam Khanna. 6. Quidditch incorporated: sport, fantasy and the consumer child/Paromita Patranobish. 7. In the long run: the modernist experience as long distance running/Sohini Banerjee. 8. The new girl and the British school story/Aishwarya Subramanian. Part III: Sporting Bodies. 9. The expressive body: notes on individualism and solitude in sport/Maitri Baruah. 10. Refugee city: football and other divides of the self in post-partition Kolkata/Debjani Sengupta. 11. The matter that matters-re-thinking corporeality in a computer game/Aratrika Das. Part IV: Sport and Cinema. 12. Shoonya (The Zero Zone, 2007)/Arindam Mitra. Playing Fair, Playing for Money: A Note 221on the Film Shoonya/Poonam Trivedi. 13. The underdog bowling to the cultural field in Kukunoor’s Iqbal/Anas Tabraiz. 14. The gender games: a study of Chak De! India and Meerabai not out/Mithuraaj Dhusiya. Bibliography. Index.