Soumya Bhattacharya

Who is Soumya Bhattacharya?

Soumya Bhattacharya is an Indian journalist and author.

Born in Kolkata, Bhattacharya grew up and studied in Kolkata and London. As a journalist, he has worked on The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, India Today magazine, The Telegraph and the Hindustan Times. He is currently the Editor of Hindustan Times, Mumbai.

His essays and literary criticism have appeared in a number of publications across the world, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, New Statesman, "Granta" and Wisden in Britain; The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia; Sports Illustrated in South Africa; and The New York Times.

Bhattacharya's first book, a work of narrative non-fiction called You Must Like Cricket?, was published across the world to critical acclaim in 2006. Part reportage, part travelogue, part cultural politics, You Must Like Cricket? is a memoir that explores how India's identity got so closely tied to a game and the troubling hold that cricket has over him and a billion other of his countrymen.

Writing about the book in The Guardian, the cultural critic Mike Marqusee called it 'highly entertaining' and said it was an 'heir to a tradition harking back to cricket's first literary classic, John Nyren's The Cricketers of My Time, published in 1833.' You Must Like Cricket? was one of the notable books of the year for the award-winning Observer Sport Monthly magazine in the UK.