Review of Aditya Iyer’s Gully Gully: Life on tour

Journeys with the Indian cricket team during World Cup 2023. Review of Aditya Iyer’s Gully Gully.

Travelogues that have cricket as their centrepiece serve twin purposes. They not only help remember the game itself, but also — when written well — sweep the readers off their feet and carry them on a jolly good ride around the landscapes that helped shape the sport.

Aditya Iyer’s Gully Gully is one such book. It chronicles the journey of one of the greatest Indian white-ball sides ever built, that went on a nine-city pilgrimage around the country mesmerising supporters through the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup.

India ended up losing to Australia in the final, agonisingly. But in the years to come, the quality of the cricket is sure to supplant the disappointment in fans’ memories, and Iyer’s work will go a considerable way in facilitating that.

The story is told in 11 chapters, one for each match. And it is done through myriad characters who fill the cities they dwell in with colour and paint a glorious — and sometimes not-so-glorious — picture of the prevalent cricketing culture, both past and present.

Cricket in India is said to have been embraced first by the royals and then mastered by the masses. Iyer spins his yarn through an eclectic mix of people that covers the full arc.

There are interviews with Chennai Super Kings superfan Saravanan Hari, Virat Kohli’s childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma in West Delhi, and cricketers Kedar Jadhav and Rishi Dhawan who have brought name and fame to Pune and Himachal Pradesh.

Ravikant Shukla’s tale in Lucknow is the story of many a cricketing subaltern, while the musings of advocate Fredun DeVitre and television anchor Mayanti Langer in relatively urbane settings throw light on the changing face of commentary and broadcasting.