The administrators of the Indian Premier League are to cricket what the proponents of the theory of love jihad are to inter-faith marriages – heartless interlopers who insist on poisoning the idea of romance to achieve their dubious goals. The former have commodified cricket as never before, even going to the extent of fixing matches, as is alleged. The latter have turned love into a conspiracy against the society. The continuing rise of these two groups threatens to bring the era of innocence to a definite end. Not surprisingly, they are conjoined through familial ties – Home Minister Amit Shah's son is the Indian cricket board (BCCI) secretary; its treasurer is Union Minister Anurag Thakur's brother.

The fading away of innocence underlies historian Ramachandra Guha's The Commonwealth of Cricket, his latest book, which exuberantly sketches out the origin of his enchantment with cricket, his relative lack of exploits in school and college games, his passion for watching matches, his adulation of players, from club to Ranji to national levels, and why they and their performance became his memory. His exuberance segues into pessimism as he narrates his experience of trying to reform BCCI, after he was drafted into a Supreme Court-mandated four-member Committee to do so.