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Suraj Randiv, the latest reason for all of us to dive deep into the Old Testament of Cricket which contains incorrigible words and phrases such as “Fair play” , “Spirit of Cricket”, “Cricket is a gentleman’s game” et all. Before we proceed further, let me say what the world is saying… What Randiv and Dilshan did was criminal, especially denying a century for a beloved Indian cricketer. They should ideally have tried these guys at The Hague, than these hogwash fines and match bans.
As we keep fanatically persecuting the Sri Lankan cricketers for this dastardly act, I asked myself, “Is cricket really a gentleman’s game?”
You might see an answer to that question in this post. If you don’t, let me know your point of view.
1993, was the year when this famous word “recusal” was added to my vocabulary thanks to one Prof. Rajagopalan. This man was a cricketer of some repute during his youth, at 50+ he was a decent bat yet. He could famously win 3-point basketball challenges against the best of the basketball players from the college. He was the chief selector of our college cricket team. The man stood down because his son was in the fray, an aspirant for a place in the college cricket team. He made sure the others didn’t know who his son was, he wasn’t selected in the team that year although he came back into the B team next year flaunting his connection (or was that talent ?) to the Prof’s annoyance. That for me was an introduction to the “Spirit of cricket” and “a gentleman’s game”. But unfortunately that also was the last time I heard about those words or phrases.
1994, it was an intramural tournament and I was batting on 47 (I was sure). I glided the ball down the fine leg and ran 2 to hear & see my teammates standing up and applauding. They were sure that I had made my 50 and I played to the gallery, celebrated and promptly got out the next ball. As I was walking out, I could hear my captain telling the guys around “Come on we did well, this guy wouldn’t stop talking for eons had he made it to 50”. I didn’t quite understand it till I saw the scoresheet “R Baradwaj, Runout 49”
1996, many of the guys I knew were abusing a particular parent, the father of the guy who captained a cricket team. The accusation was that he interfered in selection, the toss, the field placement and the batting order. Why should he do it ? He always wanted his son on top of things.
1997, we were playing an intramural cricket match. It was the semifinals, a closely fought one. Our opponents need 33 with their last recognized batsman shepherding the tail. We needed to get “Srinivasan” out. He was having a ball in the middle, but still he was tense. After every ball he was rushing out like a mad man to speak to his partner who was playing snooker on the cricket field. The wicketkeeper (one Mr RajaB) took advantage of this attitude of Srini and ran him out, he knew Srini wasn’t trying to steal a single but still he put him out of the game. And his team won.
1999, I lived in a lodge (what they call a mansion in Triplicane, Madras) near the famed MAC stadium in Madras. Every morning as I went for a jog I could see kids, as young as 4-5 buried between the kitbag and the stepney of a slow moving scooter as his father ferried him to his cricket coaching camp. For want of space the kid invariably had his helmet on. One day, the curious I went in to see what happens in the nets. I could see parents standing behind the net and barking orders “put your leg forward”, “Drive that one straight”, “In the back foot”, “Fool, don’t commit yourself there” etc. I also saw fathers arguing with the coach about the time their kid got to bat vis-à-vis another
2000, I befriended a dad, who was an officer with SBI. His 9 year old son was too small even for that age. His kid had a problem, he was what we call the “Rabbit on headlight”. Every time he was put in a match situation, he had a problem running between wickets. He would freeze the moment he saw the fielder throwing the ball, endangering himself and his partner. The dad was livid as we spoke about this particular shortcoming of his son, “That idiot doesn’t change. Have told him many times… At least you don’t get out, I have tried to reason… but he doesn’t understand the value of his wicket… It is a minimum 30 runs”. I didn’t quite understand the 30 run logic till one of my friends confirmed that 30 is the minimum on board in your name you require to see your name on the next day’s papers.
There are many parents today who think cricket brings them easy money and hence goading and prodding their kids to take the game up. At one point they come to a stage where they do anything for their kids to get selected, to be in the playing 11 and to score and get seen. We have heard stories of parents gifting the selectors with televisions, mobile phones, mopeds and cars. There is also this nauseating story of a mother sleeping with a selector to ensure her sons selection (the fact that the selector found that the dad had tricked him by pressing the services of a prostitute to proxy for his wife is another story)
The expectations of the parents, the pressure they put on their kids, their greed for seeing their kids name on the scorecard and in the newspapers & television, the lure of IPL and the monies it offers, the endorsement contracts it would bring in and most importantly the urge for being on top at any cost have made this game a business.
No one cares anything about being a gentleman or about spirits, all they care about is the scorecard & winning, how they or their wards and their teams fared.
So, let us not recite the Old Testament and fool ourselves. Cricket is no more a gentleman’s game. The only spirit cricket and the cricketers have is Ethyl Alcohol !!
PS: Heard NC is upset with me not writing my two lines to commemorate the two years of BCC!, “Sorry NC, I’ve never wish myself on my birthday”
Why Cricket is no more a gentleman’s game…
10Ten – Nineteen Eighty Nine
Summer holidays came once a year, how disappointing (they still do I am told). The disappointment can’t be described in words, I always wanted a minimum of 2-3 summers an year. And obviously the summer holidays too. In fact those were days when I was upset with Jesus Christ, for he came back to life on a Sunday every year, on Easter. I wanted to ask him why he wouldn’t select a working day for that, for it would become a holiday for me.
And those were also the days when I used to think about cricket all the time, including my sleep. The days when “The Hindu” was read from the third back page on, when I played book cricket all the time when it wasn’t a break, played French cricket using a paper ball and the physics record notebook during those times the bell rang before 4.30p, then came the time I played cricket in my gully and then after the sun had set I talked about anything that is cricket. It could be international, Ranji, district level, schools, street level.
Those were the days when I insisted that my father bought me an SS Ton, a bat I had seen many international players carry (Symonds and Duncan Fearnley were the others seen frequently) to play the cork ball and rubber ball cricket versions. But whatever the versions, summer and 10Ten always have a special place in my heart.
That was when my younger cousin Deepak from Madras used to vacation with us. While as any other cricket crazy Madurai street my street was as mad about cricket, there still was a window when nobody played cricket in the whole town. At noon when the sun used to shine or rather blast out with vengeance, all the boys would disappear for their lunch at 12.30p before regrouping by 3p for the next game. These three and a half hours was when this spectacle called 10Ten used to happen.
Deepak used to stay at his maternal grandfather’s house which was opposite to my house. Outside the house was a narrow concrete ally which was approximately 5 feet in width and about 40 feet in length where there was a concrete fencing separating two houses. This became our cricket stadia during those three and a half hours.
We had a stone next to the gate of the house that would turn our stumps, and roughly 8-10 feet from it was a line on the floor which became the 2 line. For, any ball that crosses this line accounted for two runs. A further 4-5 feet away was another stone which marked the bowing crease, any ball that crossed it entitled three runs to the batting team and then came the fence that demarcated the boundary of the house. This became our boundary, the final frontier of the stadia. Any ball that went aerial route to hit the concrete wall was a six and one that rolls in a four and if it flew out (be it any direction outside the fence demarcating the alley) you are gone.
Now that we know some rules and the topography, let us see what a game of 10Ten actually is.
It is a one player versus another variation of cricket. As the name suggests one person bowls 10 overs to the other. Each chooses his favorite team and gets 10 wickets to bat. So the innings ended once those 10 wickets were out or if the 10 overs had been bowled. The other beauty of this form of cricket was that two teams played and not two people (as it would be), it could be international or local, one person would represent a team. Deepak invariably chose the Indians of 80s. So for him every time, Srikanth and Gavaskar opened his innings and Maninder Singh was his last man. Another amazing thing was that the batsmen used to change ends as it happens in cricket normally. For example if the ball crossed the 3 line the person batting had to spell out who would bat next. There used to be a fight most of the time Deepak crossed this line. For, most of the time Deepak tried to cheat me by getting a Lalchand Rajput out instead of a Kapil Dev, when Lalchand had just scored a three in the previous ball and it was Kapil who should have faced.
And this is an underarm variant of cricket.
Underarm was a misnomer those days (80s) in most parts of cricket playing India. For many, any ball that was thrown (overarm) was underarm. That was wrong, the pedigreed me reasoned with two clinching advantages to prove that the average cricket player of those days wrong. The first that I was an English professor’s son (so I exactly knew what underarm meant) and I also came from a Tambram family (to who statistics, cricket, Hindu paper, coffee and a centum in every mathematics test were mandatory to prove their parentage). So I (rather we, me and Deepak knew what underarm was, and then we also had Tevor and Greg Chappell to thank for letting the world see what underarm actually meant) knew very well that a ball is underarm only as long as the bowling hand doesn’t get up above the bowlers hip. And this form of bowling formed the base for the 10Ten games.
Those days I used to always think out of the box, for those were the days when I didn’t know there existed a box. I always preferred Andhra Pradesh as my team. The reality was that they were one of the weakest Ranji trophy teams those days, who always used to fight with Goa tooth and nail to determine who the worst team was in the south zone. But what caught my fancy was their captains name, it was V Chamundeshwaranath. I don’t know why, he used to be my favorite Indian cricketer and Andhra used to my favorite team and therefore they played against Deepak’s mighty Indians in every single 10Ten match we played.
2 out of 5 times Andhra won against the mighty Indians of Deepak. Of the other three, one match definitely ended when Deepak took the ball away and walked out of the match because I had got either his Azharuddin or a Vengsarkar out and he wouldn't accept that.
My Andhra line-up used to be something like this…
Vinod Kumar and Prasanna used to open, Rehman followed them. Then you had Kamaraju who preceded Chamundeshwaranath the captain. Then came Murthy and Ravi Kumar and Krishna Mohan, who used to be their wicket keeper in the previous season. This season, if I am not wrong (now!!) Prasanna was their wicket keeper. Their last man was Chakradar Rao who if my memory hasn’t failed me was a left handed spinner who was to be told before every time he ventured out to bat, how to hold a bat. I prided the moment when Chakradar scored some useful runs and won matches for me against the mighty Indians of Deepak. I would never forget a particular over which an over when a confident Deepak made Gavaskar bowl to Chakradar and Chakra like a true man responded with a four, a three and two in four balls to win the match for Andhra Pradesh.
Memories that would be for life time, those days. I wish I and Deepak could travel back in time or at least we travel back to Madurai, to that same place and had a rematch. With our kids and folks in full audience.
As Brian Adams used to sing when I was 17*, “Those were the best days of my life”.
* I have graduated henceforth to other (good) music
