#Opinion | "Last month saw the 154th birth anniversary of Ranjitsinhji, the first Indian to play Test cricket for England. Later this month, the 92nd edition of the tournament named after him — the Ranji Trophy — begins. A great deal has been written about Ranjitsinhji (or “Run-Get-Sinhji”, as the British press nicknamed him), some of it unkind, much of it fantastical" "In Cambridge, where his cricketing career began, rumour had it that his adoptive father, the Jam Sahib (the title of the ruler of Nawanagar), would have three slaves executed every time his son scored a century. If this were true, wags quipped, the populace of Nawanagar must be “growing beautifully less”" To read the full story 🔗 hindustantimes.com/opinion/t… (✍️@rahulsagar)

#Opinion | "In 1972, S Rajaratnam, Singapore’s first minister of foreign affairs, delivered a prescient speech entitled “Singapore: Global City”. Drawing on Arnold Toynbee’s Cities on the Move (1970), Rajaratnam underlined that a “new form of human organization and settlement” was emerging — the global city" "For millennia, cities had been “the creators and sustainers of civilization, culture, technology, and wealth”, he observed. But while cities like ancient Rome or Renaissance-era Florence had been “centers of local civilization”, changes in technology, which were “annihilating time and distance”, were now permitting cities like New York, London, and Tokyo to become the epicentres of enterprise and capital on a scale never seen before" To read the full story 🔗 hindustantimes.com/opinion/t… (✍️@rahulsagar)