Lala Amarnath was the first Indian to score a century when in his first Test match, against England, with the score at 21 for 2, he chose to counter-attack rather than stonewall. He reached his 100 in just 117 minutes, but never made a Test century again.
A strong-willed and plain-spoken man, he was sent back from England during India’s 1936 tour before the Tests started accused of “indiscipline”. In this book his son Rajender tells what really happened.

The war curtailed his best years; his fourth Test, in England in 1946, coming 13 years after his first. That tour was memorable for his becoming India’s top wicket-taker, with five wickets in the first innings of the Lord’s Test.

He was drawn into the establishment when he captained India to Australia in 1948, where his aggressive, imaginative captaincy drew praise from Don Bradman. But he never became truly part of it although he also made a name for himself as a selector and commentator.
Two of his three sons, Mohinder and Surinder, played Test cricket for India while the author Rajender played at first class level in India and in League cricket in England.

This is a well-told tale... it all adds to the exotic personality of someone for whom cricket was his life. A great read.
David Llewellyn, The Independent
http://sport.independent.co.uk/cricket/article2838590.ece

This could turn out to be a groundbreaking book. Biographies and autobiographies of Indian players have been few and far between. So often they are just a collection of scores in Tests, sometimes purely statistical; sometimes just too forelock-tugging of those in authority. Never before have I seen such an in-depth study of the Indian scene in the 1930s and 1940s. Rajender, the non-Test playing Amarnath brother, not only tells us his father's story but makes sense of all those Cups, and Trophies and whatnot in different parts of India, and should wake us up to the fact that the cricket we have classified as first-class in pre-Independence India is only half the story.
Bob Harragan, Association of Cricket Statisticians
http://acscricket.com/Research/index.html
click on BOOK REVIEWS FOR THE WINTER JOURNAL 2007

This book was published in India by Rupa & Co and SportsBooks has the rights to Europe.