Of Sadhus and Spinners: Australian Encounters with India has been assembled by several of the stalwarts of this particular cultural exchange, all based in Australian or Indian universities. Bruce Bennett and Santosh Sareen have played leading roles over the last two or three decades in establishing Australian Studies in India, most notably through the Indian Association for the Study of Australian Literature.

The punchy title suggests the ends of a rather masculine spectrum that captures something of the way many (most?) Australians think of India, with holy men at one end and cricketers at the other, the sacred and the profane, reinforcing the endlessly invoked line ‘India is a land of contrasts’ from just about every postcard or text message from travellers and tourists in India.