The book, handed back cover up to this reviewer, seemed all wrong as Rajdeep Sardesai's endorsement of it was above S Venkataraghavan's. That is like a spelling mistake in a dictionary, right? Both had liked it, though, or so they said, and, read subsequently, it helped one realise why books shouldn't be judged at least by their back covers. If that sounds trite, the book should be welcomed because it is about Test cricket, the format that refuses obligingly to wither away despite so many know-all obituaries of it being routinely dished out for bread and butter here, there and everywhere.

The authors have looked back at 28 Tests which make India proud of itself, their marshalling of facts, coupled with the relevant research, underlining patient labour undertaken with a real love for the game. Viewed as part of India's growing self-confidence in terms of its expectations of being looked upon as a country rich in cricket writing, it is an effort that is quite self-consciously, and praiseworthily, distinct from the avalanche of playing-tothe-gallery printed text that we have come to be saddled with in the wake of the basically commercially underpinned proliferation of the limited-overs formats.

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If profusion counts, India can surely be counted on to do more than its logical justifiable bit year in and year out nowadays, but that does not really pass muster. When a lot of the superficial stuff persuades us to look upon 1983 as the starting point of all that comforts our national ego, they are, of course, distorting facts. Marvellous as that achievement was, it had taken decades of hard work at several levels of the game for Kapil Dev's team to get there.

Also, a lot of the hagiographical outpourings that followed our periodic discoveries of indigenous, iconic exponents of the skills and grit that we rightly glory in the glory of is so pathetically conceived and executed that it all leaves you wondering what the superstars Sachin Tendulkar, for instance thought when the highprice offerings sank without a trace.

Comparisons with England and Australia, to name but two countries, are inevitable in this context, and innings defeats had better be acknowledged by us for the sake of honesty.

And there is something else that Giridhar and Raghunath should be complimented on: in reviewing the more recent past, they, quite unlike many of their chronicling peers, don't seem to have been left stupefied by the glitz, glamour and wealth that characterise top-level cricket today.

Where the new wave writer comes across as someone subliminally calling for unquestioning obeisance by cataloguing a megastar's varied acquisitions, tangible as well as intangible, the partnership that has resulted in this addition to the Indian cricket library is dutifully, sincerely focused on the game.

Denis Compton was obliged to supplement his income from cricket by playing football for Arsenal, but that would not mean Manoj Tiwari, with his rich Indian Premier League pickings, would be a bigger, and more rewarding, subject. Implicit in the authors' serious approach could be the unexceptionable assertion that the game supersedes all players and the pomp that surrounds them.

The game today is what it is because the heroes of yesteryear pushed its frontiers back  and they were marvellously successful in what they were doing. That all these messages are driven home remarkably easily is yet another plus-point.

While the selection of matches is good enough for too many teacup storms to be avoided, what the buff will like is that victory alone is not the criterion for inclusion.

The third India-New Zealand Test in 1965 in what then was Bombay is chosen despite its inconclusive ending, and the story of India being shot out for less than 100 on a fresh Brabourne Stadium wicket, following on, and then threatening a tableturning finish in the last few hours of the match is fascinating in itself. What we are perhaps urged simultaneously to consider is that it is only Test cricket, affording ample opportunity for twists and turns over a much longer period than limited-overs games, that can make for such spine-tingling entertainment.

If drawn matches were an apparently persuasive argument against the conventional format when result-oriented One-Day Internationals were being hawked in the media and elsewhere, it would have taken deliberate by passing of such events for ulterior, commercial objectives to be superimposed on the very fragile game that was cricket. And this book abounds in such vignettes of a past the serious cricketlover would surely love, since sport cannot do without history.

The 1979 India-Pakistan Test at the Kotla is gone back to with such wistfulness that the narrative takes on a wonderful life of its own, even if you do not believe this sub-continental battle to be superior to Ashes contests.

But for Indian cricket writing in English to be taken really, and persistently, seriously by discerning critics abroad, especially in a period of the game which is marked by an allembracive Indian domination, the home-grown historian's emphasis will have to include our domestic game. There is no getting away from it.

To say that is not to mean that we must equal Sir Neville Cardus' reports of Yorkshire-Lancashire matches, or try imitative take-offs on RC Robertson-Glasgow's celebration of the archetypally English countryside backyard battles, with all their fun, frolic and romance, but there is more to it than we tell foreigners about ourselves when we wish to be thought of in a particular way. The domestic game segues into the international one, funnelling talents galore.

What had once been a colonial bequest aimed primarily at the native elite, grew years ago into a glittering career option for those who had what it takes. Just how major are the changes that have been taking place can be gauged from the fact India recently played a Test match in Mumbai, which once dominated the team overwhelmingly, without any local cricketer in their firstchoice 11. At home too, Indian cricket has travelled a long way, and regardless of where it finds itself now, it has been a journey worth our – as well as posterity's – attention.

The reviewer is sports editor, The Statesman, Kolkata