Selection Day

Acknowledgements

Over a period of five years, my friend Ramin Bahrani read and edited several drafts of this novel. In the jungle of my life, he has been the white tiger — the only one who ever believed.

Makarand Waingankar, the dean of Bombay cricket writers, shared his knowledge of the game with me over several months in 2011 and 2012. Thank you, Mac.

Ramachandra Guha, Jason Zweig, Malcolm Knox and Jeremy Kirk read early versions of this book and encouraged me to persist with it, as did my editors, Ravi Mirchandani, V.K. Karthika and Andrea Canobbio, and my wonderful agent, Karolina Sutton. I am grateful to each one of them — but above all to Dr Guha, who always found the time to write back.

Girish Shahane, Naresh Fernandes and Jehangir Sorabjee (in Mumbai), Vikas Swarup and Sudeep Paul (in New Delhi), Shalini Perera and James Payten (in Sydney) have helped me more than I deserved to be helped.

Over the oceans that separate us, I send my thanks to an old friend, Mark Greif — and to a new one: two-year-old Simone Greif, who will surely grow up to be every bit as compassionate and intelligent as her father. Some families, I am forced to conclude, work.

When I finished Selection Day, I knew for whom I had written it — my mother, Usha Mohan Rau, who died on 20 January 1990.