Reviewing It My Way

Finished THE book. Here are a few thoughts:

1) The man never stopped loving cricket

There was not a single instance in the book where Sachin felt he was disillusioned with the game over his 24-year international career. It's quite evident and also remarkable that the reason he lasted for much longer than his peers was down to desire as much as skill.

2) The man loves batting and scoring hundreds

At various times while reading the book, I felt that the 41-year old Sachin was still a kid who has just discovered the joy of batting and that's all he can think about. There is a lovely paragraph (while narrating his version of his 200th Test) where he talks about his love for his bats and the way he takes care of them. Also, the amount of time he has spent in the book talking about his centuries and the missed double century in Multan makes it evident that scoring 100's was quite high on his list of priorities. In fact, he even made Dhoni declare late once so that Gambhir and Yuvraj could get to their hundreds.

3) Lack of opinion on the larger issues in cricket

Sachin probably has spent so much time cocooned in his batting that I wonder if he has any opinions on the larger issues that concern the game. There is almost nothing on how the game has evolved, the way pitches have changed character, the evolution of the T20 generation etc. Most of what he talks about is mostly to do with his batting, the games he has been involved in, and the incidents surrounding them. I am not asking for controversial opinions, or any big secret reveals - but a perceptive opinion on the finer aspects of the game is definitely missing. It's quite possible that he does have an opinion, unfortunately it is sorely missing from the book.

4) The time he spent in Yorkshire

The one topic on which I have read the most in my lifetime would be that of Sachin. So, I was quite prepared to not experience any 'Aha!' moments while reading the book. The one section I loved the most was when he spoke about the time he spent while playing as Yorkshire's first overseas cricketer. This is one aspect of his cricketing career that has not seen much literature and it was quite fun reading about how he often drove down wrong roads, and creatively utilized salad bowls to get more quantities.

5) The Fab 4 are there but there is no Azhar

While Sachin has spent some amount of time talking about Sourav, Rahul, and VVS, unfortunately there is nothing on Azhar. Considering that till 2000, a lot of his career was spent playing under Azhar's captaincy, it is almost baffling that he doesn't talk about Azhar's influence as a cricketer or as a captain. I would also have loved it if he had compared the captaincy styles of Azhar, Ganguly, Dravid, and Dhoni. These are things only Sachin can talk about and no other Indian cricketer can due to the sheer longevity of his career.

6) Sachin loves Harbhajan

Of all the cricketers he has played with and against over the course of his career, the cricketer who finds maximum mentions in Sachin's autobiography is actually Harbhajan Singh. There are so many instances where Sachin talks up Harbhajan's performances in a match, it makes one believe that Bhajji was the cricketer who got closest to Sachin. BTW, Sachin also picked up Harbhajan for Mumbai Indians the moment he became available and handed him the captaincy as well when he was unable to play which lends further credence.

7) Sportstar-style rendering

It would have been nicer if Sachin had spent more time talking about how it was to play the game against some of the top bowlers of his time. Instead, all we get is a Sportstar-style rendering with just adjectives being thrown about to describe bowlers. There are instances where he says he stood outside leg, outside the crease, used an open stance etc. but I wish there was more about what went into the mind of one of the greatest batsmen of all time and not on who took how many wickets in a match.

8) Sachin loves eating

There is a hilarious narration of an incident from childhood where Sachin once went to a Chinese restaurant but sadly ended up sitting at the end of the table which meant that by the time the soup and the food reached him, it was almost empty leaving him disappointed. The fact that he chooses to recall this particular 35 year old incident over many others, gives us an insight into his love for food. Of course, his first popular business venture too was a restaurant in Bombay.

If you are looking to read the book, I would recommend waiting till someone lends it to you. But again, you might be as irrational as me and buy it on an impulse in which case all I can say is 'May God (may or may not be another Sachin reference) Help You !'

Paati aka Amma

Who is a hero to you? Are heroes only those who exhort you to achieve greater things in life, push you to climb that extra step on the ladder? Can there exist a different kind of a hero? A person who through the show of emotions, in fact through a lack of it, implore you to become a better person? Well, I certainly do believe that kind of a hero exists. Where, you may ask? Right in my home, in the form of my Paati (grandmother), or Amma, as my sister and I fondly address her.

I have consistently seen people eloquently express the relationships they shared with their grandparents, but most of it is after they pass away like here and here.  It’s a perilous task to deify someone who is alive and someone whom you meet and greet every day of your life. This thought has always gnawed my mind though, why not write about a person close to you, a person whom you have grown to respect and admire considerably over a period of time, during their lifetime itself? If you are a cousin, a relative, a friend, even a stranger, who meets my Paati sometime, wouldn't it be nice if you can go and tell her that you read really nice things about her? It is with this strand that I piece my thoughts together about Paati.

When I was in school, I used to wait with anticipatory glee for the monthly edition of Gokulam. It was one of the little liberties my father afforded us as a way of entertainment. The stories in Gokulam that I relished in particular were the ones where children used to visit their grandparents during summer holidays and were treated by them with utmost care, affection, dotage, and of course, an enormous amount of sweets (Paati still insists on making sweets for us including her patented '7 Cake' during festive occasions, much to our dismay). And I am glad that whenever I visited Paati (she didn’t live with us back then), all of these and more turned out to be exactly the way in which I read about grandmothers in those imagined stories. 

Paati, like any stereotypical TamBrahm, was born in Mylapore, in 1929. She received reasonable education including learning music at the Music Academy. By 1949, life had taken her to New Delhi. Uprooted from familiar surroundings, faced with a new and fairly paternalistic environment, she was someone who never sullied or moaned about the responsibilities she had to face. This may not be the most unusual thing in the world, but then considering that to this day in 2014, I have never found her grumpy when asked to do something, even at the age of 85, it does acquire superhuman abilities. It is a trait I forever wish to imbibe, the art of gently accepting responsibilities and going about it in the most unobtrusive manner possible.

I don’t know if the term glass ceiling existed back then. But, Paati despite having to take care of family, including her mother-in-law, found time to teach Carnatic music and tailor clothes, and also became the first treasurer of the Delhi Tamil Sangam (co-founded by my Thaatha, looks at self and wonders where the genes took a wrong turn). I have repeatedly asked her about how she managed all of this and the only response I have gotten is a shrug of a shoulder. I don’t even think she is being modest, I think she is just being who she is, a person who is performing her duties with utmost sincerity. Unknowingly, she might just be following the Bhagavad Gita's dictum of Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana.

I ask if going places fascinates her, seeing the country, the world. Has she ever had a bucket list that needed ticking off? And she says no. Those thoughts apparently don’t even occur to her.  All she says is she wants us to be happy, the people around her to be happy. And there lies the limit of her ambitions. Isn’t that sufficient sometimes, I wonder. The generation that we are part of maybe doesn’t allow us to encourage such thoughts. But it still lurks somewhere. The things we can learn from those who have seen life a lot more than us.

Here’s to my beautiful, lovely and super awesome Paati. Deliberate denture-less picture to enhance cuteness quotient J

Why We Watch the EPL?

@knittins raised the question of why the English Premier League holds sway over Indian audiences. As someone who was in the periphery of EPL watching 7-8 years back to someone who follows it with as much interest as cricket now, this is my reasoning:

1) Timing - The English Premier League matches happen at an extremely convenient time for Indian audiences - Saturday and Sunday  evenings - when they can relax and watch sports on the television. Also, the fact that there is a continuous narrative going on,  considering that the league starts in August and ends in May, makes you tune in every weekend.

2) Quality of broadcast - Spain, Germany, and Italy too have fairly competitive and high-quality leagues, but they do not  attract as much attention. There can be two reasons for this - timing and quality of broadcast. Timing because the matches in  these leagues start only at midnight for Indian audiences which make them inconvenient. And significantly, the quality of broadcast is way better in the English Premier League. Somehow the cameras seem distant when you are watching La Liga or Bundesliga games, but in most of the EPL games you feel you are much closer to the action. Also, the fact that crowds sound more vociferous and full in EPL grounds and commentators are more dramatic (not in the Saudi commentator GOOOL way :)).

3) Lack of quality choices - For an average Indian sports viewer, there aren't too many places to go to if he wants to view high  quality Indian sport. Of course, there is cricket. But beyond that, there isn't anywhere that you can go to ( the ISL, HIL, Kabbadi and Badminton leagues are very nascent). When you think of the boom that happened in Indian satellite television viewing  after the '96 Cricket World Cup, the EPL was extremely well poised to capture our attention. It was an established league with a  good set of superstars primarily led by David Beckham. I know of so many friends who started following Manchester United primarily due to the Beckham phenomenon. Also, football is a very easy sport to follow. There aren't too many intricacies you need to know to  start following the game.

4) Coolness factor - Just the way watching Hollywood movies is cooler than watching Indian movies, it is quite possible that young kids gravitate more towards Manchester United and not Mahindra United. This is relatively new though, when I was growing up, I didn't notice it among my friends. But, among the current young generation, it does seem to be so.

5) Purity of sport - Cricket has a fundamental flaw, in that its most challenging format, Test cricket, is long and tedious to hold the attention of audiences who cannot afford to spend that much time watching sport. So, the T20 format was created. And T20, for all its thrills and spills, is not something special that you will recall a match from 5 years ago and relive it in your memory. Whereas football doesn't have this issue. It's a game which needs very little tinkering from a rules perspective and it has been the same way since it was created. 90 minutes of high quality sport which is easy to understand and still requires a very high skill level. Should work right? 

6) Franchises are here to stay - Now let's say you support CSK. How many players from CSK are actually from Chennai? There is only one Ashwin who plays regularly. This in no way impedes someone from Chennai when he declares his allegiance towards CSK. Ideally a Kannadiga should support KKR because there are more Karnataka players there than in RCB. I started supporting Arsenal, because at that time they played a brand of football which excited me and I identified with them. You don't have to compulsorily have a direct association with the club you support in the current scheme of things. If you needed that, then Federer would have a very small group of Swiss fans.

So, once you start identifying with a club and start supporting it religiously, your interest deepens. There will be another guy who does the same for another club. And then Manchester United face Chelsea, and thus start Twitter wars.

The Tendulkar Tale

When I was in school, and our regular teacher was absent, there was a substitute teacher in place whose only directive was to keep the class engaged somehow. And their standard method was to ask kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. Everyone, as usual, went doctor, engineer, teacher, armyman (LOL, no one I know ever became one) etc. I frankly had no idea. I am not sure if I have an idea today also, but anyway that's a different story. So, I used to mumble something on the lines of being a journalist(LOL again) or something. But at the bottom of my heart, there was only one thing I wanted to do, however frivolous and far fetched it would have been, and that was to be slotted at No.5 below S.Tendulkar in the Indian batting line up. Sometimes, these fantasies just drive one's childhood, amid all those boring Science and Civics classes, the thrill of going back home and watching Tendulkar slaughter bowling attacks was all one needed.

You may think I am exaggerating, but honestly, it was a very sincere love I had for Tendulkar. The kind of love that can make a kid happy or sad based on how well he batted. My utter fascination for Tendulkar began I think somewhere in early '92 when India toured Australia for a Test/ODI series and the subsequent World Cup. I was seven. No one taught me in detail on how to watch cricket, my father taught me the basics, but beyond that it was all instinctive. The clearest memory I have is of him scoring 70 odd against West Indies. Why was I so bewitched? Now that I am older and wiser(?), I think there was only one reason. It was in the way he batted. Everyone around him was plodding and poking and making ugly swipes. With Sachin, it was - bold, brash and thrilling. I know his game has completely changed now, but if you watch the early Tendulkar it wasn't too different from the way Sehwag bats even today. He had an abandon to his batting approach, and at the same time he was so balanced and poised, it was simply unparalleled. I also remember my first bat being a 'Power' for only one reason. It was Sachin's bat. Sadly being a left-hander, I never imagined myself to be Tendulkar, and hence it was always batting with him instead of batting like him.

Those who started watching cricket post 2000 might find it hard to understand this, but it's the period between 1994-98 that made my generation worship him so much. He was the only Indian batsman who was able to score abroad consistently, the only batsman who was capable of taking it to the opposition regularly despite challenging match situations, the only batsman who could influence the electricity consumption of a whole country. Look at the most of the ads made on him during that time frame. His initial ads, like Bajaj Sunny and Pepsi were impish, playing on the new kid on the block persona. But during the phase between '94-'98, it was sheer gratitude that he was carrying India on his growing shoulders. Pepsi made kids go Sachiiin, Adidas had grandmothers with beads praying  for him. The volume of pressure Sachin carried during that phase, as a torchbearer for Indian cricket, was immense.

    

               

    

I find it hard to categorize his batting into eras. But somehow, the feeling was roughly post 2000, he became a lot more calculated in his approach. Of course, he took risks, but they were more measured. He was making runs at a very healthy rate, but the thrill was sporadic. He did make memorable assaults in Nairobi (the one time he volubly took on Glenn McGrath), in Durban (when he hit Caddick to the trees), and unforgettably in Centurion. Also, Tendulkar now had well established fellow batsmen in Ganguly, Dravid, Sehwag and Laxman in his team. The dependency on him reduced severely, and India stopped being a one-man team. Simultaneously, the child in me had grown up and the reliance on Tendulkar was also waning. I don't by any means suggest that he was not important, it is just that even if Tendulkar did not play a game, we would do fine on the cricket field. This was very comforting.

It is here that we must remain eternally grateful to both Dhoni and Ganguly. They both were able to provide him with what he craved for most, an Indian victory (I am sure an international 100 ranked a close second, though he never quite admitted it). For someone who was fighting it all alone previously, in contentious environments, success with the national team must have been most gratifying. There were individual milestones in the nineties, but the look of joy on his face when we won Test Matches abroad, achieved the No.1 ranking in Tests, and crucially, the 2011 World Cup was something that relieved the fan in me more than anything. Reams of words have been written mentioning that Sachin should have stopped playing then, and I mostly tend to agree with that point of view. But again, for just this tiny giant, we had to make liberties. Sachin's struggle toward his 100th 100 was reminiscent of Kapil's struggle toward his 434. And sadly, it came against Bangladesh in Dhaka in a meaningless Asia Cup game. It was what we had come to. We still caught glimpses, like the 80-odd against Australia in Chennai which I was fortunate to witness, but it was evident that finally, father time was catching up. The news of his retirement, clearly invoked a sense of relief first and then came the outpouring of nostalgia.

Come November 18, there will be a tear in my eye. That tear will encapsulate 21 years of joy, sadness, agony, ecstasy, pride, regret, relief, love, wide-eyed wonder and finally gratitude. It has been a great ride, and we have done it. Millions of fellow Indians and I, have made this memorable journey with you and we are finally doing our last lap. Thank you Sachin Tendulkar.

Maybe I will still bat under you at No.5 in some veterans' corporate T10 tournament. The hope still resides.

Thoughts on Couch Talk with Harsha Bhogle

These are a series of scattered thoughts I have tried to cobble up after listening to the latest Couch Talk with Harsha Bhogle.

1. I would first like to appreciate Harsha for manning up and trying to repeatedly answer the questions posed by serious (if I may be allowed to use this definition) followers consistently.

2. Now, I'll try and make sense of the various points Harsha has made through the conversation. I do understand his point of view. I have colleagues who are casual watchers of cricket and they seem to enjoy Navjot Sidhu. One guy told me, "Jab bhi Sidhu aa jata hai to bahut mazaa aa jata hai (Whenver Sidhu comes, there is so much enjoyment(#njymnt))". And here I sit fulminating over the tripe he has been dishing about without even an iota of nuance. It is frustrating, but from a personal straw poll I did realize I was in the minority who wanted a commentator to provide a more subtler, analytical view of things.

3. Looking at the macro-environment of Indian television, where do you see educational programs on TV these days made for Indian audiences? Yes, History channel does the odd program. But, why don't Mastermind India, University Challenge and the like find a permanent space on our telly? National Geographic did a somewhat serious quiz program, and I hope they continue it. Otherwise, the only quiz show that has had repeat seasons (somewhat staggered, but still) is Kaun Banega Crorepati. The thing with KBC though is it's a show which apart from asking questions, also tries to tug at the heartstrings of a viewer by making emotional pitches about the contestant and so on. I have seen at home, how my mother and grandmother react when they see a contestant's emotional story being told. They suddenly feel more empathy for the participant. Cricket telecasts too probably have taken the same route, wherein they prefer a more emotional, high-pitched approach to a nuanced one.

4. We are now in the age of data, where decisions are taken mostly based on what research suggests. This is good, and bad. Good, because it is predictable. Bad, because it discourages experimentation. Maybe someone should experiment with a nerd version of the commentary and see if it works. How do you know whether something would work or not without even trying it? But, if to the MBA, the numbers haven't added up, he just wouldn't be willing to risk it. Maybe even I might not if I had held that job. It's a question that we will continue to grapple with..

5. With respect to commentary and Shane Warne, I wonder if comfort level with the English language is a huge factor when it comes to commentary. As Shyam Sundararaman has written, Matthew Hayden also did brilliantly in his stint during the Australia tour of India. Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton too are very good. All of them have the advantage of using their native language for commentary and most of the time it's natural to them. Whereas when it comes to a VVS Laxman or an Akram these barriers might be significant. I must listen to Akram's Hindi commentary and see if he does a relatively better job there.

On a lighter note, one would imagine Rameez Raja would have cleaned up his cless ekt after so many years of English commentary, but he still hasn't.

6. But still, I think Star has been making an effort somewhere down the line. Their masterstroke by getting KP to talk during match shows during the World T20 was extremely well-received. If a statistical comparison is made between the viewing numbers of IPL and the World T20, some truths may emerge. But again, during the World T20, the numbers for an India match would tend to be higher and the rest lower and during the IPL the equation would be somewhat different.


To be honest I haven't tried to find any path breaking solutions here, this is just a mere attempt to understand the ecosystem in which I watch and consume cricket.

Jai Pur

Last week offered me an opportunity to work out of my office's Noida branch. On a whim, I decided to go to Jaipur to spend the weekend as it afforded me an opportunity to visit a place previously only seen in movies such as Dor and The Last Exotic Marigold Hotel.

A friend generously offered a place to stay and lo, I went. Travelling alone is a very interesting process. There are good things like not having to rely on someone else's getting ready, their not being able to perform certain activities and hence you are left with having to make adjustments. When you are alone, generally you are in control of what you want to do, how you want to do it and where you want to go. The fact that you have no one to share your thoughts was something I felt stifling though, especially when being dumbstruck by the awesomeness of Amber Fort and Jaipur City Palace.

There was another plus, I have a more than decent grasp of Hindi and hence it was easy to navigate across places easily and bargain quite well. Generally, I avoid taking the A/C cabs or pre-booked tourist thingamajigs because they provide a very sanitised experience. Travelling in local transport - autos, share autos, rickety buses - really provide a flavor to a new place which you wouldn't get if you visit only the touristy destinations where all you might have are touts and fellow travelers. For someone who likes making observations, public transport is a haven to get that local feel and as long as my mind and body can afford it I hope to continue doing it, especially when alone. 

In my travels, I also got a chance to visit a place called Chowkhi Dhaani, a concept village built about 25 kms from Jaipur city. It's a kind of a mini-Rajasthan (at least that's what I was told) where various folk aspects of the state were demonstrated. Kathputli, magic shows, folk dances and songs, eating in huts etc. are some of the activities one can see and experience. The cost is Rs. 500 including unlimited buffet food. It was a reasonably good experience and I wouldn't mind seeing such villages sprout up all over India. But I guess Rajasthan being a tourist state has a greater incentive.

Next up on the agenda are Indore and Bhopal in the middle of the Indian summer , hope they provide enough interesting experiences and insights to this solo traveler.

There was something about Tony

I have a confession to make. For a major part of my life, till 2001, there was no cable television at home. My father had decided that it was an unnecessary distraction from my studies and here I was, stuck with a mad desire for cricket and denied my fix. Indians always figure a way out though and mine consisted of clambering up terraces and twisting our antenna wire with the coaxial cable television wires of our neighbours in the hope of catching some grainy signals. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I got HD quality (okay, that's hype), sometimes all I could hear was the commentary. It was bizarre, but it was wonderful. I held on to whatever morsel I could get. Sometimes, in life, when you are denied something, that's when you desire it more. I remember so much cricket from that era and so little now when I can watch each match ball-by-ball it's probably nature taking it's course.  And it was somewhere here that I began my affair with a man who possessed the most magnetic voice of them all -Tony Greig.

I have always been enchanted by the early morning Channel 9 broadcasts from Australia. That was also a time when my parents and neighbours would be asleep and no one could detect my signal stealing. Bill Lawry, Richie Benaud, Ian Chappell and Tony Greig were my best friends. If mom and dad wanted to wake up to MS Subbulakshmi, I wanted to wake up to the Channel 9 commentary team. I could see bleary-eyed Tony Greig holding his Toyota keychain, inserting it to the pitch and telling us how hard or soft the pitch was, how much moisture it held and in general conveying an air of confidence that was captivating. I could hear Tony Greig boom out of the microphone "It's high in the air, Steven Waughr ( that 'r' is intentional) is getting under it and catches it safely". Bill Lawry and Tony Greig were masters at setting up scenarios with their breathtaking commentary. Ian Chappell preferred analysis and Richie Benaud subtle opinions but Bill and Tony took us on excellent adventures. Also, why Greig lingered longer was because he did a lot more commentary stints compared to Lawry and Benaud especially in the subcontinent and Sharjah.

When one is growing up, one gets excited more by drama than analysis. Greig personified drama, he owned it. When he announced "whadaaaplaaayaaah" to excited audiences in India we felt proud. We felt proud that an Indian has lit up the world cricketing stage. When Greig told us that Sehwag was the most exciting batsman he has seen at the start of the ICC Champions Trophy 2002, we too felt excited. There was a shared sense of entitlement, that here stands an Indian who has impressed the most dramatic commentator in the game.

As I grew older, I listened more to Chappell than Greig. As I was able to understand the game better, I felt Chappell had a lot more to tell - his stories were better, his understanding was greater and he was always willing to look at multiple points of view. With Greig, I felt that was missing. It might purely be my point of view, but I also felt it jarring when Greig was unable to remember player names. Greig mostly went with a 'he' instead of a player's name probably because he was unaware of the name and took the safer option. But, honestly, these are grouses that are rendered irrelevant now to me after reading the news of his death. A commentator leaving the stage is as important as a player retiring, their voices and acts are intertwined in our memories. The spate of retirements we are witnessing and the passing away of a unique commentator are plucking away the pages of my childhood and teenage years one by one and I cling to whatever I can.

Farewell Tony Greig (1946-2012).