The Great Tamasha is the riveting story of modern India - with its vastness and ever-proliferating complexities - told through the prism of the glitzy, scandalous and mind-blowingly lucrative Twenty20 cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League.
When Lalit Modi, an Indian businessman with a criminal record, a history of failed business ventures, and a reputation for audacious deal making, came up with the idea of creating a Twenty20 cricket league in India in 2008, the odds were stacked against him. International cricket was still controlled from London, where they played the long, slow game of Test cricket by the old rules. Indians had traditionally underperformed in the sport and the game was a national passion, rather than attracting the tribal following of a league sport. Adopting the highly commercial American model of sporting tournaments, merging the three powerful forces of politics, business and Bollywood, and throwing scantily clad western cheerleaders into the mix, Modi set himself 3 months to succeed. And succeed he did - dazzlingly.
The emergence of the IPL, transforming cricket and transfixing India, is a remarkable tale. Cricket, as a unique national passion, is at the heart of the miracle that is modern India. As WC a business, it represents everything that is most dynamic and entrepreneurial about the country's economic boom: including the industrious and aspiring middle-class consumers who are driving it. Most intriguing, as an unholy congregation of the rich and powerful, conspiring grubbily, the IPL reveals, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, the corrupt, back-scratching and nepotistic way in which India is run.
This is a truly original book. It is about an ongoing reappraisal of Indian nationality. It is about rapid economic growth, outlandish corruption and crony capitalism.
