BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 106 of 143

Correct — C, R. Ashwin and S. Monga. In June 2024 Ravichandran Ashwin released his memoir I Have the Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story, co-authored with the sports writer Sidharth Monga and published by HarperCollins India. The title is the fastest route to the answer for anyone who has not read the book: 'kutti' is Tamil for small or little, and the memoir is about the small-time cricket of Ashwin's Chennai childhood — the street games, the gully rules, the local leagues — rather than about international cricket, which the book barely reaches. Note that the option names two people, and that is not a trap but an accurate description: the book is a sportsman's memoir written with a professional writer, a standard arrangement in cricket publishing, and BPSC has simply reproduced the credit line as the book carries it. Ashwin himself is the natural subject for such a book. Born on 17 September 1986 in Madras, now Chennai, he became India's foremost off-spinner, took a five-wicket haul on Test debut against the West Indies in 2011 — the seventh Indian bowler to do so — was part of the sides that won the 2011 World Cup and the 2013 Champions Trophy, and was named both ICC Cricketer of the Year and ICC Men's Test Cricketer of the Year for 2016 after a season of 48 wickets and 336 runs in eight Tests. He had already received the Arjuna Award in 2015. There is a striking coincidence of timing here that is worth remembering with the question: candidates sat this paper on 13 December 2024, when Ashwin was still an active Test cricketer, and he announced his retirement from all forms of international cricket five days later, on 18 December 2024. The Padma Shri followed in January 2025.

• (a)Suresh Raina — Raina has written a memoir, which is what makes him a credible distractor, but it is a different one — Believe: What Life and Cricket Taught Me, published in 2021 and co-written with the journalist Bharat Sundaresan. He is from Uttar Pradesh and played for that state, so a Tamil title about Chennai street cricket does not fit him in any respect.
• (b)S. Sreesanth — Sreesanth has been the subject of a great deal of writing, most of it about the 2013 spot-fixing case and his ban, but he is not the author of an autobiography of this name. The initial-plus-surname form of his name resembles the way Ashwin is usually printed, which is the only real pull the option has.
• (d)Rahul Dravid — The most tempting wrong answer for a general reader, because a great deal exists in print about Dravid — including the 2006 biography The Nice Guy Who Finished First by Devendra Prabhudesai. But a biography is written about a subject, not by him, and Dravid has not published an autobiography. The stem's word is 'autobiography', and it is doing work.

Books-and-authors is a fixed sub-section of Indian competitive current affairs, and it rewards a specific habit: attach every recent title to its author, and note whether the book is an autobiography, a memoir, a biography or an authorised account, because examiners use that distinction as a discriminator. The difference matters here. An autobiography or memoir is written by the subject, usually with a named co-writer in the case of sportspeople; a biography is written about the subject by someone else. Cricket publishing in India has produced examples of every kind in the last few years — Suresh Raina's Believe: What Life and Cricket Taught Me with Bharat Sundaresan in 2021, Ashwin's I Have the Streets with Sidharth Monga in 2024, and, decades earlier, a biography of Rahul Dravid by Devendra Prabhudesai. A second habit worth building is to read the title for internal evidence. A regional-language word in a title is almost always a clue to the author's home region, and 'kutti' is Tamil, which points at the only Tamil cricketer among the four options.

Suppose you had never heard of the book. Two of the four options can still be removed by reasoning. Start with the stem's own word, 'autobiography': that eliminates any name attached only to books written about him, which disposes of Rahul Dravid, whose best-known volume is a biography by another writer. Then read the title. 'Kutti' is a Tamil word, and the subtitle promises a story of small-time cricket, so the author is likely to be a Tamil cricketer whose story begins in Chennai's street and club game. Of the four names, only Ashwin fits — Raina is from Uttar Pradesh and Sreesanth from Kerala. Finally, notice that option (c) is the only one naming two people. On a books question that is usually a signal rather than a distraction, because a sportsperson's memoir is generally a collaboration, and an examiner reproducing a title page will reproduce both names. Three independent readings therefore converge on the same option, which is what a well-set current-affairs question should allow.

• I Have the Streets: A Kutti Cricket Story was released in June 2024, written by Ravichandran Ashwin with the sports writer Sidharth Monga and published by HarperCollins India
• 'Kutti' is Tamil for small or little; the memoir covers Ashwin's Chennai childhood and street cricket rather than his international career
• Ashwin was born on 17 September 1986 in Madras (now Chennai), took a five-wicket haul on Test debut against the West Indies in 2011, and was a member of the 2011 World Cup and 2013 Champions Trophy winning sides
• He was named ICC Cricketer of the Year and ICC Men's Test Cricketer of the Year for 2016, received the Arjuna Award in 2015 and the Padma Shri in January 2025
• He announced his retirement from all forms of international cricket on 18 December 2024 — five days after this paper was held on 13 December 2024
• Comparable titles in the option set: Suresh Raina's Believe: What Life and Cricket Taught Me (2021, with Bharat Sundaresan), and The Nice Guy Who Finished First (2006), a biography of Rahul Dravid by Devendra Prabhudesai

• Ignoring the word 'autobiography' and picking a cricketer who has been written about rather than one who has written
• Rejecting the option because it names two people; a sportsperson's memoir is normally credited to the player with a co-writer
• Confusing memoirs of the same period — Raina's Believe (2021) is a genuine cricket autobiography, but not this one

BPSC's current-affairs block runs a books-and-authors question almost every year, usually a book from the previous twelve to eighteen months, and often about a prize or a sportsperson, so the practical preparation is a running list of titles from the year before the exam. UPSC asks books far less often now, and when it did the titles were literary or political classics matched to authors, which is a memory of the canon rather than of the current year's publishing.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The cricket memoir “Believe : What Life and Cricket Taught Me” was written by

  • (a)Suresh Raina
  • (b)Yuvraj Singh
  • (c)Harbhajan Singh
  • (d)Virender Sehwag

  Answer(a) Suresh Raina — published in 2021 and co-written with the journalist Bharat Sundaresan.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  R. Ashwin, who announced his retirement from international cricket in December 2024, represented which team in Indian domestic first-class cricket ?

  • (a)Karnataka
  • (b)Kerala
  • (c)Tamil Nadu
  • (d)Andhra

  Answer(c) Tamil Nadu — he played for Tamil Nadu and South Zone in domestic cricket, and announced his international retirement on 18 December 2024.