Chick-lit meets crick-lit

The Zoya Factor
by Anuja Chauhan
HarperCollins India, Rs 295

"My crores are your crores." That's got to be the most original wedding proposal of the year. It is among the reasons you keep reading this frothy chick-lit-meets-crick-lit concoction even though the happy ending is a foregone conclusion from the minute Zoya meets Khoda.

Debutant novelist Anuja Chauhan, creator of such memorable made-in-India cola-and-cricket ad gems as "Oye Bubbly" and "Yeh Dil Maange More", is never hard up for a clever comeback or a witty one-liner. That helps, because with the outcome never in any doubt, those make the ride so much more fun. As far as the book's sporting component is concerned, here's how the protagonist would put it in time-honoured Bridget Jones fashion: 98% courtship, 2% cricket.

The storyline is apparently simple: Zoya, born at the moment of India's 1983 World Cup victory, is a living-breathing lucky charm. If she has a meal with a playing side, they can't lose. Nikhil Khoda is the captain of the Indian team, who pins his faith on single-minded determination and the will to win and, of course, has no time for something as flaky as "luck".

The stage is thus set for conflict, conflagration, and ultimately conciliation, all of it not veering very far away from the Mills & Boon formula. Zoya's a spitfire, Khoda's tall, dark and handsome; she puts up just the right amount of fight; he's noble, always right and, what do you know, likeable. Over text messages Lynne Truss would approve of - they contain quote marks! - trysts by the swimming pool (which no one else seems to frequent) and the team breakfast table, and watched over by a large support cast of colleagues, family members and team-mates, their romance goes the rollercoaster way.

Chauhan scores, though, in integrating the rom-com with a bigger plot involving the Indian cricket board: this is where she draws upon recent scandals to dog India, from leaked-letter-from-coach to board-chief-who-plays-favourites. For good measure she throws in a devious godman, an obsequious agent, an insidious politician, and an injured brother, whose epiphany at a crucial moment involving all of the above saves Zoya from being taken for a ride, Nikhil from a lifetime of galli cricket, and the novel from an over-the-top climax.

For the most part Chauhan maintains her line, even if she goes overboard with the length. The narrative, crafted with pace and laugh-aloud humour, demonstrates an excellent ear for language and accents, and best of all, creates such a wish-fulfillment concept in the form of the human lucky charm that I found myself hoping for a real-life Zoya during India's disastrous showing at the recent Asia Cup final. Like the ads Chauhan has authored, The Zoya Factor hits the sweet spot on the position cricket occupies in national life.

The only false note comes, perhaps, in the timeline of the book: It is set during a 2010 World Cup, but many of the references are so contemporary - the ad lines throughout, the status of Bollywood stars, the products mentioned - that one wonders if there isn't a bit of wishful thinking at work. A couple of years, after all, gives the Indian team time to acquire its own infallible mascot.