You Must Like Cricket?

by Soumya Bhattacharya

  But who was going to do it for us?

  For much of the first day, I thought it was going to be Harbhajan. He picked up Mark Waugh, then became the first Indian to get a Test hat-trick. At 269 for 8, we were making a game of it. We may not quite have had a noose round the visitors’ necks, but for the moment it was enough that we were not being strangled ourselves.

  On the second morning, it was Steve Waugh’s turn to play hangman. With support from Jason Gillespie and Glenn McGrath, he completed his twenty-fifth Test hundred. India didn’t take the last Australian wicket until the afternoon session.

  When India batted, S. S. Das, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly all got decent starts, but none of them hung on long enough to convert them. At 97 for 7, the series seemed to be over. At least V.V.S. Laxman put up some resistance, stroking the ball beautifully for his fifty-nine. But it didn’t make much difference. Before lunch on the third day India had folded for 171, 274 runs behind. Australia enforced the follow-on. There was only one positive sign: Laxman was in such fluent form that when he returned to the pavilion, his captain and coach asked him to keep his pads on. In the second innings, he was promoted to number three, ahead of Dravid.

  When Laxman came to the wicket for the second time on Day Three, India’s score was only fifty-two. Not one of those present at the Eden Gardens or watching it live on TV had any idea that he was about to make history. I’d have certainly paid more attention myself if I’d known. (But you never know – if you did you’d have been paying attention.) At the end of the day he was 109 not out. India were twenty runs behind.

  The Australians couldn’t say they had not been warned. Just a few months before in Sydney, Laxman had scored 167. It had been one of the greatest innings an Indian had ever played in Australia. But India had lost that match. Did the stylist from Hyderabad only show us his best form when it was too late to matter?

  On the morning of Day Four, we had an appointment with the gynaecologist. I begged my wife to postpone it.

  ‘I really want to watch Laxman bat. Really.’

  ‘You will soon become a father. We have to see the doctor about that. And you want to watch a cricket match in which India will lose.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point then? What’s the use? Aren’t India going to lose anyway? That’s what you were saying, weren’t you, on the phone last night. The papers say so too.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but you see, the moment there is a glimmer of hope, one shouldn’t do anything to encourage it. In fact one should do one’s best to discourage it. I am superstitious about these things. I only told Ashis that we would lose so that we might have a chance of not losing.’

  ‘Oh, do grow up. You are so infantile, we may as well as not bother about children.’

  We cancelled the appointment.

  On the fourth morning Laxman came out with Dravid. He went back at lunch with him. Came out after tea with him. And they returned to the pavilion together at stumps, having put on 335 runs in ninety overs. It was something the likes of which I had never seen before.

  To find something comparable, at least in terms of figures (probably only in terms of figures), you had to go back nearly half a century: Pankaj Roy and Vinoo Mankad’s stand of 413 against New Zealand in Madras in 1955–6. Laxman’s and Dravid’s 376-run stand overhauled the highest fifth-wicket partnership for India (214, Azharuddin and Shastri against England in 1984–5) by some distance, as well as the highest for any wicket against Australia (an unbroken 298 between Vengsarkar and Shastri at Mumbai in 1986–7). Laxman’s 281 was also at the time far and away the highest individual score an Indian had ever made in the history of Test cricket. In the Wisden Indian Cricketer of the Century awards of 2002, Laxman’s innings was voted the best Indian Test innings of all time.

  The records are important; but they are not everything. What was really important was that Laxman’s 281 was against an Australian bowling attack which had been taking a wicket every nine overs. Laxman had changed the course of the match, the course of the series and the course of Steve Waugh’s career. The great Aussie’s team had stumbled at the final frontier.

  As I write – four years after it happened – I get goose pimples; at the time, there was merely awe and a sort of bewildered delight.

  Laxman had always been an elegant batsman; but he had also been one to fritter away a perfect beginning with a waft outside off stump. He drove you to despair with the same ease with which his artistry thrilled you. But on 14 March 2001, V. V. S. Laxman lived up to his new nickname: very very special. It was an innings of courage, commitment and stamina. But also of diabolical swishes and swats. And everything came off. Watching John McEnroe demolish his opponents, Arthur Ashe once said: ‘A nick here, a cut there, pretty soon you’ve got blood all over you.’ Laxman made things very bloody for Australia. But not once did he become violent.

  In that innings, Laxman gave us the perfect example of how an athlete can rise above himself; of how a very good player can, on one day or over a fleeting period of time, aspire to and attain greatness. It can happen in any competitive sport. But when it happens in a team game, it is especially exhilarating. Because one individual can carry eleven.

  During that fourth day, I felt, for the first time, a wave of remorse for having abandoned the Eden Gardens. I wanted to be there at the ground. What stopped me was that I could not bear to miss the action in the time that it would take me to get to the stadium.

  Later, when I read a Wisden Asia interview in which Laxman talked about how unbelievable the crowd had been, how it had kept both him and Dravid going, I felt as though my absence had let my side down. I felt as though I had let myself down too, that I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime. Because the opportunity to play a role, however peripheral, in that game may have been the closest shot I will ever have at greatness.

  On the final day of the Test, I was in the office. It was one of those days. I pretended I was working; actually I was watching the newsroom TV. (‘I’m chasing a story on the phone’ or ‘I’m writing something which will need a lot of research on the internet’ are handy lines when one needs to stay in the office to watch cricket on a work day.) Sourav declared at 657 for 7, the second-highest total a side batting second has ever made. Australia had to last seventy-five overs to force a draw. Or, given that this was Australia, they had seventy-five overs in which to score 384 and win their seventeenth consecutive Test.

  For a while Hayden and Slater went at a canter; it seemed as though Laxman and Dravid’s heroics had been in vain. Then Harbhajan came on. He picked up one wicket, then two. Suddenly it was 116 for 3. The afternoon shift on the newsdesk had begun to drift in. We’d all abandoned work for the day. No one could take their eyes off the TV. Hayden and Waugh put on fifty gritty runs but Tendulkar – as he’d done so many times before – came on to break the partnership. He took two more wickets; Harbhajan ripped through the rest.

  In sixty-eight overs and three balls, the Aussies had folded for 212. It was only the third time in the history of Test cricket that a team following on had gone on to win the game.

  At my newspaper’s evening news conference, we had a dilemma – and a huge argument. It looked as though the BJP’s coalition government was in trouble – one of the smaller parties was threatening to withdraw its support.

  ‘So where do we put the cricket?’ asked the News Editor.

  ‘On top of page one,’ I said.

  ‘I mean, it’s just a Test match, isn’t it? The government is in crisis,’ cut in the Senior Assistant Editor. ‘That’s got to be the top priority.’

  The City Editor was in favour of playing up the cricket. The News Editor wanted to stick to the politics.

  It was a bitterly fought argument – but it was strangely without rancour. Whether one thought it was ‘just a Test match’ or whether one believed that it was the most important story to have happened that day (that year, that decade, in one’s life), everyone in the room was exhilara
ted, childishly happy, almost light-headed.

  Sometimes, it seemed to me that we were arguing only because we felt we ought to. We were role-playing, being the combative editors we were supposed to be, each fighting our own corners. Deep down – perhaps not so deep down, I think now – we all wanted the cricket to win. Like my fixed matches in the courtyard, the heated debate was there only to give the final decision – the cricket, the cricket, the cricket – the seal of authority.

  I remember the pictures we ran the next day. Laxman doing a jig; Tendulkar radiant and raucous in celebration; Harbhajan, his face smeared with cream from the victory cake, getting up close to the camera, arms raised in exultation, the index and middle fingers of his right hand splayed in a victory sign. We felt blessed.

  My daughter was born five months later. We called her Oishi. In Bengali, that means ‘divine’. Is there another way to describe that victory?

  6

  ‘And they make millions from endorsements’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘They have no shame.’

  ‘No shame at all. No pride in playing for the country.’

  ‘They have sold the country, you see. They have cheated on us. Must have been bribed for them to have played so badly.’

  ‘And they make millions from their fucking endorsements.’

  ‘Then this is what they give us.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  17 February 2003. My car has broken down on the way to work and I am at a garage, sitting on an upturned carton and sipping a bottle of water. In front of me, there are a couple of mechanics. One has opened the bonnet and is peering inside; the other is on the ground, beneath the car, fiddling with something I can’t see.

  Two days ago, India lost to Australia in their first serious fixture of the World Cup. (And just a few days before that, they’d been woeful against the Netherlands. They couldn’t even bat through their full quota of overs. The Dutchmen – given that they’re famed more for their dribbles than their drives – found India’s 204 too intimidating and were all out for 136.)

  ‘Battery’s gone, I reckon,’ the mechanic with his head inside the bonnet says.

  ‘Could it be that it has just run out of charge? It’s not very old. I don’t need to buy a new one, do I?’

  ‘I think we should replace it.’

  I keep quiet. The other mechanic emerges from underneath the car.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, replace it. Replace the whole bloody team. Get a new captain. Drop the bowlers. Get rid of the batsmen. Bloody scoundrels.’

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ I say.

  Neither man is listening.

  The Australia game was a bit of a mess. That’s the polite verdict. Going in first, India was unable to bat out fifty overs for the second time in two matches. Worse, they picked up from where they had left off during a disastrous winter tour of New Zealand. (They lost pretty much every game they played – they lost to district sides; they lost games where the weather had made a result almost impossible; they were regularly bowled out in less than fifty overs.) This is the World Cup. We thought the tide was bound to turn. We were wrong.

  In the end, we managed 125. It was the lowest total we had ever made in the championship’s twenty-eight-year history. Tendulkar fought for his thirty-six but the other batsmen (Sourav, Dravid, Kaif, Yuvraj and Sehwag) did not even reach double figures. Australia overhauled the target in a little over twenty-two overs. They lost Gilchrist while doing so: the wicket seemed like an aberration rather than anything else.

  A week into the World Cup. We had played against the Netherlands as though they were Australia. We had played against Australia as though we were Bangladesh. And all this less than a year on from the glorious English summer in which we had chased more than 300 to win the NatWest Trophy; less than six months after we had beaten South Africa and Australia to become joint winners of the ICC Trophy; less than three months after cricket followers across the country had been extolling our brilliant captain and our awesome batting line-up (the best in the world), our team spirit and our fearless youngsters, our spin wizards and killer fielding (the fittest India side ever), dreaming of redemption and glory, of laying the ghosts of the past to rest.

  How so much can change in so little time.

  ‘Er, the battery, do you think, then, that charging it will not work?’ I ask as if I’m looking for a favour. (It’s true, I am. This morning, neither looks eager to work. Both appear to be severely hungover. I suspect most of last week’s pay went on the booze over the weekend.)

  ‘No, we’ll have to change it. Only way. Cost you a lot more but save you trouble. Or you can take it somewhere else.’ One of the mechanics pulls a face.

  ‘Yes, I suppose, that’s the only way. A new battery is pretty expensive, you know.’ I shrug and go to look for another garage.

  ‘When’s the next game?’ I can hear one of the guys asking his friend.

  ‘Harare. On Wednesday. Against Zimbabwe.’

  I turn around. ‘Swear at them as much as you like,’ I say on a sudden impulse. ‘You won’t be talking like that next week.’

  I walk out with what I imagine to be a Dirty Harry swagger. I go to the next garage. The battery works fine after it’s charged. I save myself money – and trouble.

  Over the past four days, the whole of the country has been playing a fiercely competitive game. It’s called ‘Who Can Think Of The Worst Insult To The Cricketers’. All entries close by 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday. Which is when the India-Zimbabwe game gets underway.

  All over Kolkata – in fact, everywhere, if the national papers’ photographs are any indication – young men dressed as mourners are staging funeral processions. They walk shoulder to shoulder. Across their shoulders they carry poles on which are strung posters or photographs of each player. As they walk, they chant. ‘Bolo Hari, Hari Bol’: the slow rhythmic chant that accompanies Hindus on the way to the crematorium. Once they reach the appointed place (often it’s where they have arranged to meet the newspaper photographer), they gingerly lower their poles. Then they set fire to the pictures. (Interesting point: there are no pictures of burials, though presumably Muslim fans are just as upset with the team as Hindus. Is that because the act of burning the photos, of watching the paper curl up at the edges and the faces turn to ash, is a more potent symbol of anger, a more substantial way to vent that anger? Or is it just that they make better photo-ops?)

  In our neighbourhood, we have what is called a ‘local club’. Red Rose Club is not so much a proper club as a dingy room in which underprivileged youths from the neighbourhood gather every evening to watch TV, play board games, drink enormous amounts of dark rum and leer at young women passing by on the road.

  To celebrate the World Cup – and India’s chances of winning it – the wall outside the club has been covered with a collage of colour photographs of the Indian team. Someone has even got smart with Adobe Photoshop, producing a morphed image in which a triumphant Sourav holds aloft the World Cup. Garlands made of plastic flowers hang around the players’ necks. There is a whole gallery for Sachin. Various moods, bat as bludgeon, grinning impishly, tossing a ball, in jeans and T-shirt, cricket whites and coloured gear: the gallery is the centrepiece of the collage. Never has the ugly red brick looked prettier.

  On my way home on Monday, I noticed with a start that the wall is looking ghastly again. In fact, ghastlier than in the days of naked brick. All the photographs have been ripped up, evidently in a hurry and with as much viciousness as the vandals could summon. It has not been a clean job (whoever put them up in the first place had not gone easy with the adhesive) and jagged streaks of white indicate the spots from which the pictures have been hacked. The brickwork stares out, like flesh after the skin has been torn away. At the foot of the wall lies a mound of paper – it is what remains of the photos. It has turned squelchy in the evening shower. It is a filthy mass, muddied by hundreds of hurrying feet. In the sickly glow of the street lights, I make out, with a bit of effort, what I th
ink is a bit of stubbly chin. Could be Sachin. Could be anybody. It looks as though someone has defaced the pictures before ripping them off. It’s like identifying a body after an accident.

  I read in the papers that this is not an isolated incident. Elsewhere in the city, walls which were once covered with cricketers’ posters are becoming vacant again. Everyone, it seems, is keen to rid themselves of associations with the national cricket team.

  On another wall in another part of the city, someone has spray-painted the sign ‘death penalty to those who have raped indian cricket’. In some neighbourhoods, cricketers’ photos have been left intact; but the garlands of plastic flowers have been replaced with garlands of worn shoes – a traditional Indian gesture of insult – on the posters.

  On the news I hear that someone has painted the wall of Mohammad Kaif’s home in Allahabad black. Someone else has pelted Dravid’s Bangalore home with stones. His family has received threats. On the southern fringes of Kolkata, at Ganguly’s home in Behala, the local authorities are anticipating trouble. On Sunday they posted a posse of policeman to guard the house. By Tuesday morning, the number of policemen has doubled. Scenting a story, journalists have staked out Sourav’s place. It is a classic postmodern assignment. They watch the policemen watching other people watching the captain’s home. Then they write about it.

  The cops, I read, are watching the high walls that run around the imposing building. They are smoking, chatting, playing cards. Photographers take their pictures. The photos are not particularly interesting – pot-bellied policemen hanging around a house – but do show you what it is like to be an Indian cricket player when things are not going too well.

  On Monday, the Indian team does a strange thing. Dravid gives the media an audience. Dravid is supposed to be the most articulate member of the side. Besides, his home has been attacked; his family has been living in fear. Dravid says the team is trying. He asks if anyone can tell them what is wrong. He appeals to the fans for patience. Reading the reports, it occurs to me that the story is being treated as though it were election-time politics, a diplomatic incident, even a prelude to war. It does not seem like sport at all. (But then, when has sport ever been only about sport?)