ABOUT THIS BOOK
Nothing comes even remotely close to the excitement that cricket evokes in both the young and the
old in India. Cricket in India is a religion, with cricketers revered as gods. While we have grown
up watching cricket on our televisions, we have felt the tension, euphoria and joy that cricketers on
the field may have experienced while playing.
Of Spins, Sixes and Surprises: 50 Defining Moments in Indian Cricket is a humble attempt at reliving
those occasions. Authors Shom Biswas and Titash Banerjea present an amazing journey of Indian
cricket, from the time when the greatest Indian cricketer of his time (Ranji) used to represent
another country (England) to a time when India has become the nerve centre of the world game.
The emergence of women’s cricket also forms a key theme.
AUTHOR OF THE BOOK
Soumyadipta ‘Shom’ Biswas is a senior sales executive, a newspaper columnist, a short-story writer
and a dabbler in sundry other things. He used to write a weekly column on books in The New Indian
Express, and his short stories have been published in literary magazines in India and Singapore,
notably the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Out of Print, The Bombay Review and Spark. A
regular quizzer, he was a semi-finalist at the University Challenge Quiz (2003–04) televised on BBC
World. He is a collector of antique sports books, especially Wisdens, and is an active member of the
Bangalore Writers Workshop (BWW).
Quizmaster, entrepreneur and a true knowledge seeker, titash banerjea has been actively involved
with the world of quizzing for more than 10 years. He has hosted many events, including the
Starmark Open Sports Quiz, the Cycle Heritage Quiz on Indian Heritage for schools, the Nairobi
Rotary Quiz Night and many more. He has been a champion quizzer, with victories in the Karnataka
Quiz Association (KQA) Annual Sports Quiz, the KQA Cricket Quiz and Prahelika (organized by
the ISI Kolkata) to name a few. After working with two multinational companies, he started his own
knowledge services venture, Gyaanspace, which had been the primary content providers for CricIQ,
the biggest ever online cricket quiz organized by ESPNcricinfo. He is currently based in Bengaluru.
