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Nick name
Biku -
Bio
A Rhodes scholar and author of many books on cricket, including the acclaimed Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom-A social history of Indian cricket. -
Favourite team/sport
Cricket, a Bengal and India, fanatic
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Did you know?
That the Calcutta Cricket Club goes back to 1780 and predates the MCC. -
Programme credit
Cricket Columnist
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Full Biography
Boria Majumdar, a Rhodes scholar, is a Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has taught at the Universities of Chicago and Toronto and has written extensively on the history and politics of cricket in India and across the world. Deputy Executive Academic Editor of the International Journal of History of Sport and Executive Academic Editor of Sport in Society, he is General Editor of the Routledge Series, 'Sport in the Global Society'. Some of his books include Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket (2004), Goalless: The Story of a Unique Footballing Nation (2006) and The Illustrated History of Indian Cricket (2006).
Career: Boria Majumdar has been a Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia since 2006 where he was previously a Distinguished Visiting Fellow. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Chicago since 2003 and at the University of Toronto in 2007 and is a Fellow of the International Olympic Museum at Lausanne, Switzerland. He was Deputy Director of the International Research Centre for Sport, Socialisation and Society at De Montfort University, UK in 2004 and Director of the Centre for Academic Excellence at the Cricket Association of Bengal, India.
A well-known media figure, he has done television programmes for Times Now, ESPN, NDTV, Headlines Today and has written books on the history and politics of cricket in India and across the world and articles for the Times of India, Outlook, Wisden and Anandabazar Patrika. Boria Majumdar is Executive Academic Editor of the journals Soccer & Society and Sport in Society, Deputy Executive Academic Editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport and General Editor of the Routledge Series, Sport in the Global Society.
Honours and awards: Rhodes Scholarship for Doctoral Dissertation, St John's College, Oxford 2000–03, Research Fellow, International Olympic Museum, Lausanne 2005
Publications include: monographs: Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket 2004, Lost Histories of Indian Cricket: Battles of the Pitch 2005, Goalless: The Story of a Unique Footballing Nation (with Kausik Bandyopadhyay) 2006, The Illustrated History of Indian Cricket 2006, Cricket and Beyond – Essays on a Sport at a Crossroads 2007; edited collections: Cricketing Cultures in Conflict: The 2003 World Cup (with J. A. Mangan) 2003, Sport in South Asian Society – Past and Present (with J. A. Mangan) 2004, Indian Cricket: A Reader 2005, Revisiting 1857 – Myth, Memory, History (co-edited with Sharmistha Gooptu) 2007, Olympism: The Global Vision – From Nationalism to Internationalism (co-edited with Sandra Collins) 2007, Cricket, Race and the 2007 World Cup (co-edited with Jon Gemmell) 2008; numerous articles in newspapers and professional journals
Question & Answer with Boria Majumdar
Q: How did you come to be in your current position in your broadcasting/writing career?
BM: I realised very early in my career that the only subject I could do a doctoral degree was Cricket History. Married my profession to my passion for very practical reasons. I am incapable of doing anything else. The rest, as they say, followed.
Q: Is reporting on sport the next best thing to playing it? And what was the pinnacle you reached in your favourite sport?
BM: I’d say better than playing it at times. You get a world perspective, which is absent while paying it on occasions.
Q: What is your favourite sport outside of the one you are best known for? And how do you relax when you are not working?
BM: Soccer. Relax watching sport and dreaming of watching India winning the 2011 world cup.
Q: Who was the biggest influence on your life, either within your career or outside?
BM: My wife prodding to me try my hand at writing the history of Indian cricket when the discipline of sports history was practically non-existent in India.
Q: Who is the most memorable individual you have met during your playing or working life?
BM: Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare.
Q: Tell us the funniest story you have heard regarding your chosen, or any, sport.
BM: That the Indians did not participate in the 1950 soccer world cup because they were still playing bare feet and did not have boots.
Q: Do you/did you have a nickname?
BM: Biku.
Q: Tell us something we may not know about you.
BM: That I’ll die watching India play in a tense Test match against Pakistan someway down in future.
