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HomePageTurnerAfterword'Selection Day' is also about finding one’s place in post-liberalisation urban India

‘Selection Day’ is also about finding one’s place in post-liberalisation urban India

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The homosexual overtones seem contrived and dissonant, but provide a certain depth to the novel that would otherwise have been about cricket and unfulfilled aspirations.

We all yearn for success stories. We are all trying to prove our worth. Sports has always been an arena where this exhilarating anticipation manifests. It is lining up for that crucial free throw and making it, it is taking your position at the crease and knowing you’re going to score a six, it is scoring that goal. Sports are all about magnificent success stories, and in India, cricket is its main protagonist.

Aravind Adiga’s Selection Day is about chasing success. Constructed around the crucial selection day for the Mumbai Under-19 cricket team, the novel revolves around Radha and Manju. They are declared the soon-to-be best and second-best batsmen in the world, respectively. The two brothers are young teenagers living in a slum in Mumbai with their obsessive, exploitative father, Mohan Kumar, who is hell-bent on his sons becoming cricketers.

The family’s entire life revolves around cricket. Their social status and well-being is anchored to the game as much as their time is. As the boys get more recognition, they also start doing better financially. They don’t have the privilege of treating cricket as a hobby; it is very much their livelihood.

The cast of characters includes Javed, Radha’s biggest rival and later Manju’s best friend. His influence is the reason the novel unfolds the way it does. Anand Mehta is a businessman who sponsors the brothers in a burst of self-motivated philanthropy, hoping that their success will bring him some as well, and Tommy Sir is a talent scout and coach who knows his destiny is moored to that of the boys.

In the backdrop, Mumbai greasily expands and works its corrupt magic on the story. Like White Tiger, Selection Day is also about finding one’s place in post-liberalisation urban India. In this world, cricket is torn away from its romanticised image, and presented like the money-making industry it has become. It is an all-male novel, deliberately challenging heterenormative conventions, but incongruently so. The homosexual overtones seem contrived and dissonant, but provide a certain depth to the novel that would otherwise have been about cricket and unfulfilled aspirations.

Strangely enough, it never seems like they truly love cricket as a sport. Instead, disappointment permeates their interaction with the game. It is never as fulfilling as they want it to be.

Selection Day feels like the thrill of watching your favourite batsman, the one you’ve always rooted for, take his position and squint at the bowler—but never actually see him hit that ball for a six.


 This book is shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, 2017 whose winner is to be announced 18 November, 2017.

Read reviews of other books shortlisted for the prize:

Anjali Joseph: The Living
Aravind Adiga: Selection Day

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