John Wright's Indian Summers

This book by John Wright, ex-coach of the Indian mens' national cricket team came in for some flak recently after its release. It was first released in New Zealand and based on some excerpts, people here got riled. However after its release here, its proved to be a pretty reasonably book, with lots of good things to say about the Indian players and India in general. I bought the book to send to Arvind. I did a speed read of it as I am not that into cricket and here is what stood out for me (if you want to read the book, the following may be a bit of a spoiler) :

the Indian cricketing establishment is really what is standing between us and having the best cricketing team in the world. The selectors do all kinds of nonsense in doing the team selection and that damages the effectiveness of the team a lot. The stars like Dravid and Tendulkar come across as fairly beleagured -- highly talented guys but without full support from the system. Other than that there are other things like the huge weight of the expectations of the country, the difficulty of handling the huge material rewards when things go well. And the training and fitness need to go up a notch. None of this is very new, but its good to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Basically, nice book

PS: Right now the TV is on and the channel we are on is advertising a special: "The King is Back" on Sachin Tendulkar.