On a Bangalore night in April 2008, cricket and India changed forever. It was the first night of the Indian Premier League – cricket, but not as we knew it. It involved big money, glitz, prancing girls and Bollywood stars. It was not so much sport as tamasha: a great entertainment. The Great Tamasha examines how a game and a country, both regarded as synonymous with infinite patience, managed to produce such an event. James Astill explains how India's economic surge and cricketing obsession made it the dominant power in world cricket, off the field if rarely on it. He tells how cricket has become the central focus of the world's second-biggest nation: the place where power and money and celebrity and corruption all meet, to the rapt attention of a billion eyeballs. Astill crosses the subcontinent and, over endless cups of tea, meets the people who make up modern India – from faded princes to back-street bookmakers, slum kids to squillionaires – and sees how cricket shapes their lives and that of their country. Finally, in London he meets Indian cricket's fallen star, Lalit Modi, whose driving energy helped build this new form of cricket before he was dismissed in disgrace: a story that says much about modern India. The Great Tamasha is a fascinating examination of the most important development in cricket today. A brilliant evocation of an endlessly beguiling country, it is also essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the workings of modern India.

The aim of this book is to familiarize the readers with topics that make news, with the subjects that invariably draw the attention of the journalists because they may matter to the audience, and with the themes that are newsworthy and recurring. The book explains those words that could be confusing, and which are utterly Indian or may not echo all over the country. The book is useful for student journalists and media professionals; for those whose interests or careers are closely related with journalism, media and public relations; and for those who want to know and report on India, or from Bharat, or out of Hindustan. KEY FEATURES • Highly useful and informative • Covers all platforms of journalism and media: newspapers, magazines, radio, television and Internet • A Journalism and Media Calendar at the end • Reference to news items, published in real newspapers/websites

This book is the first of its kind to discuss doping within Non-Olympic Sports. Sports like American football, cricket and dance sports have, in recent years, been in the news for doping activities. The scale of the incidents may differ in each of these sports, but they present interesting questions about the legitimacy of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Code. Doping in Non-Olympic Sports: Challenging the legitimacy of WADA? argues against the International Olympic Committee (IOC)-run regime where WADA Code compliance is used as the only parameter to define an activity as a sport. The book argues that the definition of modern sport is based on certain factors identified through sociological and historical research. These parameters are common across the board and do not distinguish between Olympic and Non-Olympic sports. However, the use of the word Olympic in the Non-Olympic sport terminology subjects such sports to IOC dictates. Consequently, the IOC exploits its monopoly over the word Olympics to insist on WADA Code compliances. The numerous instances of doping, as reported, go on to prove that WADA is turning a blind eye to these Non-Olympic sports. This book is the first to dissect the issue of doping within Non-Olympic sports and questions the very idea of WADA compliance as a condition precedent to defining sports going on to highlight the inbuilt inequity within the existing anti-doping system wherein a private regime is usurping the State’s discretion. The new, cutting edge research book is key reading for academics and researchers in the fields of Coaching, Sport Pharmacology, Sport Medicine, Sports Law, and the related disciplines.

Wisden has grown through the years to embrace innovation and maintain its status as the most revered and cherished brand in cricket. The 'Bible of Cricket', Wisden Cricketers' Almanack has been published every year since 1864. Wisden's Cricketers of the Year Awards, one of the oldest honours in the sport, dates back to 1889. The Almanack, known for editorial excellence, has been a perennial bestseller in the UK. The second edition with India-specific content is even more engrossing. Contributors include Bishan Singh Bedi, Anil Kumble, Mahele Jayawardhene, Sanjay Manjrekar, Shashi Tharoor, Gideon Haigh, Kamila Shamsie, Shehan Karunatilaka, Rahul Bhattacharya and many others...

The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother. Available from all major eBook retailers, Wisden's digital version includes the influential Notes by the Editor, all the front-of-book articles, reviews, obituaries and all England's Tests from the 2013 season.

The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother. Available from all major eBook retailers, Wisden's digital version includes the influential Notes by the Editor, all the front-of-book articles, reviews, obituaries and all England's Tests from the previous season. Brought together for the first time, here are the first five editions of The Shorter Wisden, distilled from the Almanacks published between 2011 and 2015.

This is a book about a writer, Islamic fundamentalism, mythmaking, and international literary politics. It is the story of Taslima Nasreen, a former medical doctor and protest writer who shot to international fame in 1993 at the age of thirty-four after she was accused of blasphemy by religious fanatics in Bangladesh and her book Shame was banned. In order to escape a warrant for her arrest, the controversial writer went underground and, as the official story has it, fled to the West where she became a human rights celebrity, a female version of Salman Rushdie. Taslima Nasreen's name almost became a household word in 1994, when she was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, and she was feted by presidents, chancellors, mayors, and famous writers and intellectuals around Europe for two years. She is still remembered and widely admired as a modern-day feminist icon who fought the bearded fundamentalists in her own country and whose life was in danger. This is the official story that most people are familiar with, and the one that is widely believed by Taslima supporters around the world. However, as The Crescent and the Pen reveals, in the style of a literary detective tale, the true story behind the international campaign to save Taslima has bever been told until now. Following on the trail of Taslima, Deen questions the reasoning behind the international crusade to save her, in the process debunking much of the current thinking that has shaped Islam into the new global enemy. She discovers that the story of what really happened to Taslima is a fascinating labyrinth where memory and myth have merged, the tale having acquired a life of its own with a hundred different authors.