Why new book on IPL rags-to-riches stories has at its core a flawed social assumption

Among cricket writers who struggled to make sense out of all this, the main interrogation centred around unknown young cricketers from suburbs and villages staking their claim to cricketing greatness. They bowled at 140 kmph and hit sixes to relieve boredom.

Authors Aayush Puthran and Samod try to dig deeper into this rags-to-riches phenomenon, or rather, maidan-to-Modi stadium (Ahmedabad’s international Narendra Modi Stadium, the world’s largest cricket stadium, for the unversed), glitter in their new book Chasing like Dhoni: Exploring the Underbelly of Indian Cricket, released earlier this month. Most of the stories they write of, however, are known already and nothing revealing comes out of their investigation. This could be one reason why Penguin has published the book under a new imprint called Penguin Play. The publisher, in its turn, however, misleadingly flaunts Dhoni’s name in the title, though the book is not his biography, nor has any cricketing tips from the ace player and former captain of the Indian cricket team.

Rags-to-riches stories

There is a flaw in the basic presumption of the authors that only those in cities can become rich or play for India or get Rs 1 crore for playing for four months. There is also a sense of elitist envy in this presumption that poor guys are coming into the cities and taking the big money. This is a general feeling in the country among sports lovers, too. But the authors have tried to do a sociological analysis connecting Indian sports with the various levels into which lives are divided in India. It is the subaltern view of cricket. Or rather, how the aspiring classes have purportedly captured cricket and almost made it their own.

The problem with this train of thought is that it discounts the fact that sports have always been a working class product. It was the working class during or after the Industrial Revolution that gave football its shape and ambition. Three games which developed first on the streets of England, then Harlem (US) and then across Europe, today rule the world of sports: Football, Basketball and Boxing.

To this we can now add cricket, which had started out as an elitist passion. The reason: All these sports can be played on the street corner. You don’t need permission or the glamour of stadiums to learn to hit a ball, score a goal or dunk to wide applause. Nor do you need a club membership, as in the case of tennis.

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If we look at the members of the various football teams landing in the USA for the FIFA World Cup 2026 (to start this month and being co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico), we can see working-class backgrounds and stories of sweating on the streets of Argentina or Manchester (UK), where the cotton mills were responsible for the growth of football in that area.

Also, provincialism has been central to the growth of sports everywhere, though not fully in the case of cricket in India. Paris St-Germaine (PSG) is the only famous football club which carries the name of a city. Most clubs bear the name of provincial towns like. In his book Soccernomics, written more than a decade ago, Simon Kuper had mentioned that PSG has no chance of winning the league, till it underwent a transformation under Nasser El-Khalefi-led Qatar Sports Investments, which acquired PSG in 2011. At the time of acquiring the club, El-Khalefi said PSG is the only club that was situated in a big European capital. In a sense PSG was bringing the big city into the big league.

The PSG won the 2025/26 Champions League. But "Even in 2011 London, Paris ,Berlin Rome and Moscow had won a total of zero championship leagues. Provincial cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Barcelona and Milan dominated European football," Kuper wrotes in an article this week. So the strength of provinces in present-day Indian cricket has precedence across games.

Cricket has now become universal because of the success of IPL, with some American and European billionaires also reportedly trying to bite into the humongous cake. The league is now valued at above $16billion, approximately, second only in valuation to the NBA [America’s National Basketball Association], which has an estimated worth of approximately $20 billion.

Of dreams and hard work

Another basic premise that the authors forget is that it takes hard work in childhood to achieve anything big. You cannot start learning math at 18 and hope to make it into the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). You cannot start cricket practice at 20 and hope to make it to IPL at 21. So there is nothing revealing about the stories of hardship that fill the pages of this book.

But the book does take the trouble of trying to look at what drives the aspiring classes to achieve something in cricket. “Every year, the IPL picked players from obscurity and gave them enough to build a house.” That is the basic premise of the book.

But that is also the basic premise of all sports and all achievement. That from obscurity you struggle your way up. Many stories are lined up in the book, the prime example being of Yashasvi Jaiswal, who left home with nothing and rose up from the maidans of Bombay.

Various small-town academies and their unknown coaches, who are often reduced to being cogs in the wheel of this cricket revolution, but where dreams are birthed, are also profiled. “Line lagi hui hai. Hundred per cent dena wale sau mil jayenge. You need to find something extra (there is a queue . You will find hundreds willing to give 100 per cent), a coach, Masood is quoted as saying. What is revealing is the hundreds of cricket academies where coaches, mostly defeated players, teach cricket and ambition to kids.

Much like the oft-maligned coaching centres in Rajasthan’s Kota, working as incubators of NEET and JEE entrance exam success. If you dig beyond the surface of study pressure and student suicides, there are likely to be more than one bitter parent who couldn’t be an engineer or doctor, hoping to find success through their child’s achievements.

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“Most of life’s lessons have come through cricket often by watching the mistakes others made. Some of my peers had smoother trajectories but there are many whose careers turned out worse. I saw so many players get carried away by small moments of success, only to never repeat those feats. That taught me one of my biggest lessons: to stay grounded and don’t get swayed by fleeting successes,” Priyank, a player who had initial successes in cricket, is quoted as saying.

Perhaps the most tragic story of unaccomplished dreams despite consistent performance is that of Jalaj Saxena, the most prolific performer in the domestic circuit, who did not even get a call up once. Stories of broken dreams, shattered lives, abound in cricket like in other aspects of life.

The book can be viewed as a study of India’s aspiring classes as they struggle to have their names carved on the registry of achievers or the rich. The gleaming bungalow along the main city boulevard is the final stop. It is every society’s story. And despite the flaws in their analyses, what is commendable is that the authors have made a beginning in sports reporting with this sociological study.