Ranji : the strange genius of Ranjitsinhji

Aurum has built up an extremely successful cricket list - indeed, unquestionably the best in London, thanks to authors like Derek Birley, Gideon Haigh and David Rayvern Allen, and superb books like Mystery Spinner and A Social History of English Cricket.

Now it re-issues Simon Wilde's radically revisionist and acclaimed biography of one of the most exotic and legendary cricketers ever to have played in England: the Sussex batsman and Indian prince, Ranjitsinhji.

That Ranjitsinhji was a peerless stroke player both for his county and, before that, Cambridge University, is beyond dispute - indeed, he all but invented the late cut.

But, as Simon Wilde reveals, what has not been so widely acknowledged is how impecunious he was - leaving a trail of debts wherever he went; how his overriding life's ambition was not cricket but to become the princely ruler of the Indian state of Nawanagar; and how thoroughly opaque his private life was.

Simon Wilde's previous cricket book for Aurum on Hansie Cronie and the