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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnain.

And me, William Durimple.

Now this is our second in our little mini-series about Empire and cricket, and we've been looking at the way in which imperial politics sort of weaves in and out of the world of

international test cricket.

We had an absolute corker last time talking about the ashes, which is in full swing at the

moment.

But now we're going to be talking about pre-partition India. So when we talk about India, we know, we know, we know that Pakistan and Bangladesh are test-playing nations. But when we talk about this, we're going to talk in the context of India for this. And once again, we are in the company of the brilliant Tim Wigmore, who has a, well, show us the book. It's a lovely book. History of Test Cricket. It's

called Test Cricket, so it does what it says on the tin. And it's, I mean, it's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant read, wonderful read. And it's also augmented so well with your entire encyclopedia of knowledge, Tim. So thanks very much for being with us. What we're here to talk about is India and cricket. And if you want to

gauge the passion that the subcontinent has for cricket, you need look no further than

Bollywood's treatment of this period of history when India takes on England. It's a film

called Lagarn. A film called Lacan. It is the legend, the blockbuster called Lagarn. You've been living in

London too long. Listen, even in London, this was an absolute fever pitch moment. So Lagan,

for those of you who may not have seen it, it's set in 1893 during the height of British colonial

rule. And it's a little village called Champaner in central India.

The villages are struggling under the heavy taxation, land tax burden of Lagarn.

And they are being ground down by the British authorities.

There's a particularly sadistic captain called Andrew Russell,

and he keeps putting up the taxes, and the villagers keep begging him, stop doing this, you know, you're killing us. And the leader of the villages is Bhuvan,

played by the marvellous Amir Khan, whose absolute Bollywood royalty. Let me tell you,

...