Asian Window

In India, a billion people lay claim to this role. Ashis Nandy in the Times of India:

India has one billion experts on cricket. Most of them have not played the game or played it casually as a child or teenager. That has never deterred them from pronouncing their judgments on cricketers and cricket matches or from advising India’s national cricket team. I had a friend, an accomplished doctor, who had never played cricket. He would dismiss summarily most things well-known cricketers
said, often adding disdainfully, “He knows nothing about cricket; he has not read a single book on it.” Another, though an excellent player of chess and bridge, had his private theories only about cricket.

Cricket is that kind of a game and it invites such eccentricities. That has been one of its main attractions, particularly in South Asia. Globally too, no other game has produced the kind of literature cricket has done. And some of the greatest of them have been produced by persons with no experience in first- or second-class cricket. One of these greats, Neville Cardus, played little serious cricket but remains, till today, the model of all talented cricket writers. The play of imagination and the cadence of his writing came reportedly from his acquaintance with music. More:

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