Despite having to wear thick glasses to compensate for his myopia,[3] Mukherjee had a long career as a batsman in university, club and first-class cricket. He played five first-class matches as a middle-order batsman for Bihar between 1951 and 1960. He made his highest score, 33, in his first innings in 1951–52.[4]
Returning to the side for Bihar's last Ranji Trophy game in 1958–59, he made the equal top score for the match, 17 not out, in the second innings in a match in Patna in which only 188 runs were scored for the loss of 32 wickets. After being dismissed for 49 in their first innings, Bihar needed 45 to beat Orissa and were 19 for 2 when Mukherjee came to the wicket and shared an unbroken partnership of 27 with Satyendra Kuckreja, the highest partnership of the match, to take Bihar to victory.[5]
He became a noted cricket writer, "a wry observer of both the game and academic pretentiousness" who produced "five elegant cricket books".[6]Ramachandra Guha described them as "the finest books ever written on cricket by an Indian".[7] Mukherjee also did radio commentary for Test cricket between 1975 and 1978.[8]
Personal life
Mukherjee married in January 1959.[9] His wife, Meenakshi Mukherjee, who had been one of his early students, was also a literary scholar. They had two daughters.[10] They lived the final years of their lives in Hyderabad.
Sujit Mukherjee Memorial Lecture
The Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Hyderabad inaugurated the annual Sujit Mukherjee Memorial Lecture in 2014. Lecturers and the titles of their lectures have been:
