The summer I unloved cricket
A person’s loyalty to a sport has more to do with what it can do for her and less to do with what she can do for it. Whichever discipline you are zoned in, this primal rule doesn’t change. Today, I am a yuge — sorry, ought to invoke Donald Trump where need be — football, tennis and chess fan. From religiously following what’s going on with the sport in general, I tend to dive into the lives of the sportspersons too. Which could be the reason why I know that one can draw a straight line on the map through the birthplaces of Messi, Neymar and Suarez; or that Federer’s wife is of Slovak origin and four years elder to him; or that Nepomniachtchi is gaining weight (and points) while Grischuk is losing weight (and points).
So, yes, I am obsessed with stuff I like being obsessed with.
Once upon a time, I used to be equally mad about cricket. Not just on the ground but in the library too. Apart from playing, watching, breathing cricket, I read a lot about it. By the age of 12–13, I was already aware of the significance of names like Jack Hobbs, Ranjitsinhji, Len Hutton, Douglas Jardine, Vinoo Mankad, Vijay Merchant, Zaheer Abbas, Richie Benaud, Gary Sobers, etc.; the difference between Dickie Bird and Derek Underwood; why India winning the WC in ’83 was almost the equivalent to Afghanistan lifting the ongoing ’19 WC; the elegance of Colin Bland as a superb fielder; people I’ve never seen in action but figured out from the words I read how they must have been like in gentleman’s game; hidden trivia from the world of Test cricket and the not-so-hidden nuggets from the colourful world of ODIs; you name it and I had already stabbed my nose in it.
That’s how involved I was in cricket.
This is not it: I even tried my luck with the U-15 selection trials in Bombay. Eknath Solkar was in the chair that afternoon and I fucked up 2 out of the 3 balls allowed on the pitch with only one stump on each end. Battle of nerves, war of thoughts. However, I firmly believe that India lost a fine fielder in me.
The following summer, in 1999, Cricket World Cup was going on and I was in Kemmanu (Udupi) at my cousin’s place. His house didn’t have a TV so we used to go to a neighbour’s to catch up on the cricketing action. They had two ferocious dogs; one was a German shepherd who barked all the time and another was a sharp-looking Doberman. The latter once climbed on me and rested his front paws on my shoulders. I froze but he just wanted to sniff my face. That house belonged to a Catholic lady called Abigail. And she lurved cricket. I remember her daughter Philomena saying that she hopes India wins the WC so that the old woman can witness it once before she dies. She passed away the following year.
The matches I couldn’t watch, we’d read in detail in the newspaper the following day. It was too important to know. By the end of it, Lance Klusener not only had the best tournament but also the greatest heartbreak in cricketing history. I remember everything from those days although a stinking sewage of 20 years has flown by since.
In the absence of matches, they’d run Kannada shows and my Doddamma (aunt) would watch them. One day, in the middle of a TV serial, she started crying. This was my first brush with depression as I couldn’t understand what was happening. It wasn’t so an emotional scene was on or something. And the worst part was the sheer indifference shown by the people, including her son, seated next to her. They have seen it so many times that they were immune to her episodes of unlatched grief.
Although I had an inkling about her nervous breakdown owing to my brother’s death in her house back in 1989, everything was new to me. Turns out she never recovered from that accident which didn’t even involve her; the child died in my mother’s arms but she couldn’t forgive herself for letting it happen in her house. They say forgiveness is difficult but imagine not being able to forgive yourself for over a decade?
Today, thanks to whatever I’ve learnt from life, I fully understand why Doddamma wept like that all of a sudden. The pain of her past never left her, and every now and then, whenever it knocked on the door of her consciousness, she had to open it with tears and hysteria.
It’s been a long while since then but I don’t think I’ll ever get over that summer. I came across several truths about others and myself. And since we are talking about cricket, the ugly news of match-fixing hit me hard when we returned home to Bombay. In fact, that’s how I remember my puberty: confronted by the harsh possibility of being cheated of realness. My dad was visibly disturbed by the constant allegations against the likes of Cronje, Malik, Azharuddin, etc. What was the point of following something which could be fixed? For scripted entertainment, we already had Steve Austin’s 3:16 finger salute and The Rock’s candy ass on WWF/WWE.
Long story short, by the beginning of the new millennium, I started losing interest in cricket. By 9th standard, I had stopped playing gully/maidan cricket completely. The following year, in the midst of my SSC board preparations, the bright green(er) grass of EPL and the red Carlsberg jerseys of Liverpool easily lured me. The resulting relationship had only grown stronger. I do respect cricket and the stage it enjoys in our country but I don’t see myself sitting through a match—be it Test, ODI or T20.
What’s funny about this blog post is how my dad was the one who introduced me to cricket only to influence me away from it. Highest order of purist, he turned out to be: okay with corruption in our society but wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense in the sport he so dearly loved. Fortunately, he was never interested in club football. The only time he shows any zeal is during the quadrennial World Cup when he blindly supports Brazil just because he knows who Pele was. And his favourite tennis player is Federal. Yup, that’s how his Tulu tongue calls him.
