A Conversation With: Author James Astill When it comes to cricket, "nothing unites Indians, in all their legions and diversity, more than their love for it," writes James Astill in his book "The Great Tamasha: Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India" which was released earlier this year. This love for the game has been tested by a recent spate of corruption scandals that have left Indian cricket fans "jaded and cynical," according to Mr. Astill, who served as South Asia bureau chief for The Economist from 2007 to 2010. Mr. Astill, now The Economist's political editor and author of its "Bagehot" column, was in Mumbai last weekend for The Times of India Literary Carnival where he spoke on a panel about corruption in cricket. After the panel, Mr. Astill spoke with India Ink to share his prescription on how to fix the game. You covered politics and business for The Economist. What led you to write a book on cricket? I wanted to take a theme that would allow me to tell a story about politics, business and society in this country undergoing enormous change, and I found that in cricket. It was an obvious fit for me because I'm crazy about the game. I was brought up on it and played it quite seriously when I was younger. Even so, when I started doing my research I had no idea just how apposite cricket is as a lens to view modern India and its changes of the last 20 years. The growth in the media industry has brought an enormous amount of money into Indian cricket. With money, politicians have flooded into the game. How they conduct their affairs in cricket is a lesson in how power operates in India's corrupt, patronage-based, feudalistic democracy more broadly. How else does cricket parallel Indian society? All of the big schisms in Indian society revolving around class, caste and religious community have been richly manifest in cricket. You've had the same fights and pressures, such as the almost complete exclusion of Dalits and lower-caste Hindus from the higher echelons of Indian cricket for almost its entire 200-year history. That's indicative of their broader fortunes in the economy. There have also been surprising inclusions in cricket that have then been followed in Indian society more broadly. At the end of the day, it's just 22 guys playing a game of bat and ball, so it's easier to get Hindus and Muslims together on a field. The terrible wrenching divide of Partition was reflected very painfully in cricket. India lost many of its best players to Pakistan and ever since then, India-Pakistan contests are unbelievably politically sensitive and speak to relations between the governments of the two countries. The phrase "cricket diplomacy" was coined in the early 1980s, whereby cricket games between India and Pakistan are seen as a serious peacemaking initiative. There have been recent headlines of corruption in English football. Is there something unique about corruption in Indian cricket or is it simply a part of all professional sports? Corruption is not unique to Indian cricket. Sport is often corrupt because of certain common themes in sports administration, which tends to be an opaque, unaccountable, politicized, bogus volunteer pursuit. But cricket in the context of India, a country already much more corrupt than many others, is that bit more rotten, and its scandals are that much more extravagant because the game is so enormous here. The sums of money are measured in billions of dollars, which is a lot for any sport, but staggering for a sport in a developing country. The corruption, maladministration and politicization of Indian cricket is a story of Indian public life more broadly. What is the effect of this corruption on the average Indian cricket fan? The worrying thing is there is a discernable weary resignation, the feeling of "Well, I knew that anyway. Of course the game is corrupt. That is pretty dismal. Cricket is deeply associated with national pride. It's a game that Indians revere, and they expect their heroes to be fine human beings as well as good cricketers. The extent to which they have been disappointed recently is depressing. The point to which they are no longer shocked speaks to a worrying cynicism in the society at large. What can be done to turn around this cynicism? You won't get rid of the cynicism until you improve the standards of governance and you won't do that very quickly, but there are certain things you could do if you have the political will to clean the game up. You would start by legalizing and regulating the Indian betting industry. It is enormous, and a vast amount of it is dedicated to betting on cricket, which is illegal. That is nonsensical and as a result it is de facto criminal and prone to gangsterism and all the corruption that comes with that. The fiendishly difficult part is trying to hold the rulers of Indian cricket, the B.C.C.I. [Board of Control for Cricket in India], to account. They reflect all the worst aspects of Indian democracy - not surprisingly, considering many Indian cricket administrators are politicians without the cleansing promises of five-yearly elections. It is very difficult for public rage about corruption to actually change their standards of governance. What do you see as the future of test cricket? It will continue. Formally there is an acknowledgement that test cricket is the most important format of the game and that the shorter formats should be played in part to create revenues to subsidize test cricket. I think that's right because test cricket is something very special. When you play a single game over such a long period, five days, especially a game as complicated as cricket, you open the possibility for dramatic confrontation which no other game - and I love many other games - has. Test cricket will be protected in England and Australia where it still draws crowds. But it is hostage to the Indian cricket economy and the whims of the Indian cricket administrators that bubble to the top. It so happens that the current ruler of the Indian cricket board [N. Srinivasan] - who has an extremely patchy record in terms of scandals that he has overseen and abuses of power that he has been accused of - nonetheless loves test cricket. But you may only be a couple of elections in the B.C.C.I. from getting a different kind of administrator who only cares about the revenues that cricket generates and not at all about test cricket. That could kill test cricket in this country quite quickly, and that is a worrying prospect. "The Great Tamasha" includes critical depictions of Lalit Modi, who helped launch the I.P.L. but has since been banned from Indian cricket. What was his reaction to the book? Lalit loved it. He came to the book launch and was the life and soul of the party. What is the most memorable game of cricket you played in India? When I pitched up in India, I was asked to play on a team of foreign correspondents against members of Indian Parliament. In my naiveté, I assumed we would be playing a bunch of fat old men. We were indeed playing a team of mostly fat old men, but about half of them had played cricket for India, and they ran us ragged. That was a pretty painful experience. Read more of their work at chaiwallahsofindia.com. Follow them on Twitter@TheChaiWallahs