No boundaries

Cricket, played with finesse and power at the most rarefied level, might be considered pure poetry. The game has inspired torrents of real verse (some of it dreadful). But a prize-winning poet moonlighting as a blogger writing about one of the world's most thrilling cricket championships? You could be sent to silly mid-off for suggesting it.

Oddly - so it seems - this is Tishani Doshi's current beat: posting opinion pieces inspired by her watching the star-spangled, franchise-based Indian Premier League, now in its second season, on television in Madras (which she avoids calling Chennai). And because cricket is perhaps the single pursuit followed most feverishly down any avenue of Indian life, it can hardly be ruled remiss of Doshi to enjoy a boundless brief encompassing actress Shilpa Shetty, team chakras and controversial cheerleaders, as well as the results of the Rajasthan Royals, the Delhi Daredevils and the rest.

Cricinfo.com obviously helps to pay the rent; so much, therefore, for the patronising image of the rag-chic poet begging for a break.

'Cricket has always been a passion so the blog was a case of pure arm twisting. It's all good though,' says Doshi when we meet in Ubud, Bali. And it transpires that she has a pedigree when it comes to cricket-related writing, having contributed to a forthcoming biography of Sri Lankan off-spinner and world-record wicket-taker Muttiah Muralitharan. 'Murali is a great guy and I love Sri Lanka, so it was a fun project,' she says.

But cricket, however agreeable, is merely a diversion from the day job. 'I'm working on some new poems,' reveals Doshi, 33, winner of the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection for her volume Countries of the Body. Then she confirms that her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, will be published in May next year.

'Writing it was mostly a pleasurable experience - but there are periods of despair you have as a novelist you don't have as a poet,' she says. 'If you hate a poem after six months, you just throw it away. With a novel, that can be a large chunk of text. It requires a kind of stamina you don't need as a poet; and with poetry you're compressing, as a novelist, expanding.'