In the annals of Indian cricket writing, autobiographies or authorized biographies of cricketers have tended to be boring and boastful accounts. Former cricketer-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar’s Imperfect is not one of these. It has two essential qualities—honesty and self-criticism. The book’s tonal integrity—especially about sportsmen on their own lives, careers, and their equations with their peers and managers—is rare in Indian sports writing. In a book peppered with anecdotes and some knockout moments from the Indian cricket ring of the 1980s and 1990s, Manjrekar pulls only a few punches.
He begins with a frank account of the fear and distance that marked his relationship with his father, the former Indian Test cricketer Vijay Manjrekar. He describes in detail his father’s frustrations at being unable to adjust to retired life after a full cricketing career.
Manjrekar Senior’s difficult attitude impacts his son, although there are tender moments too. The idea that Manjrekar Junior was destined for a cricketing career is seeded early. However, this was a borrowed ambition; it was the only way he knew to becoming famous. By the end of his career, he wasn’t unhappy with his middling record, for he played mostly in trying conditions, away from the Indian subcontinent, and against fearsome bowling attacks.