Gully Gully: Travels Around India during the 2023 World Cup

by Aditya Iyer

For all but the final day of six electric weeks during the winter of 2023, India’s campaign at a home World Cup blazed and sparkled, warming the soul of a cricket-crazed nation. As Rohit Sharma’s dominant side took their show on the road, from one delirious city to another hysterical town, stretching from the sunburnt coast of Chennai to the frozen mountains of Dharamshala, the greatest cricket team to not win a World Cup edition unified a vast and diverse country in their shade of blue.
Gully Gully reveals not only what cricket means to India, but also what Indians mean to cricket by capturing the best and the worst of us, along with the grit and the grime of the land. This book is as much about a fabulous team brimming with legends as it is about the game’s other, oft-forgotten nameless and faceless Indian fans, emerging from numerous gullies.

Genres: Sports, Travel

348 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 24, 2024

Reviews

[Tanmay Utkarsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreak, revisited.

[Kushan Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book in conversation with ones that came before it, particularly WMS. the writing is also terrific

[Simple · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this book after reading several reviews, but I ended up deeply disappointed. The tonality, theme, narrative style, and the constant political propaganda shoved down the reader’s throat make this torturous 300+ page book a frustrating experience. The author seems intent on emulating Ramachandra Guha, inserting his political views into cricket through supposedly “subtle” means. Ironically, cricket itself becomes secondary, the very subject that is meant to be the book’s selling point.

There are far better examples of sports writing. In Beyond a Boundary, C. L. R. James celebrates cricket while also contextualizing and even defending fan behavior, even when it appears indefensible. Similarly, Eduardo Galeano, in his seminal writings on football, celebrates the game and its fans like no one else. He never portrays supporters as loud, irritating, or excessive; instead, he embraces their behavior. As he famously notes, “We play today before a match,” capturing how fans become one with the team and express emotions straight from the heart.

In contrast, this author adopts a detached, judgmental tone. He repeatedly criticizes the Ahmedabad crowd, constantly drawing comparisons with other crowds and unnecessarily invoking North–South divides. The author twice highlights the chanting of “Jai Shri Ram” by the Ahmedabad crowd during the match while greeting Rizwan, yet never once mentions that it was he and his compatriots who turned cricket into a religious spectacle, such as offering namaz after winning a T20 match in 2022, an act that was celebrated and hailed as heroic. Apparently, religious expression is acceptable only in certain forms.

The author also gushes over a Babar Azam press conference without offering any clear or substantive reason, reading more like appeasement than analysis. When a Prime Minister consoles his losing players, the author dismisses it as “staged,” revealing his own ideological lens. Not everything needs to be interpreted through political drama.

As for the cricket itself, the little that is actually discussed, the narrative is bland and shallow. It offers nothing beyond basic match summaries. There is no serious discussion of strategy, planning, key decisions that changed games, exceptional spells, or memorable shots. There are no insights that a genuine cricket reader would value.

Overall, this book was a complete waste of time, preachy, ideologically loaded, and utterly lacking in meaningful cricketing substance.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic Read.