A Celebration

But for some celebration, what would life be?  Imagine a calendar without the Holis and Pongals and Ids and Xmases. Too monochromatic and damningly monotonous.

Much can be made of the mad genius. Much has to be made for he was such a GENIUS. The rare kind who was extremely watchable,  yet gave you no reason to believe he was beyond ordinary until he let it rip.

Not after he taught you co-ordinate geometry- in 3D. Not surely when he let it gallop to the target through cramped sectors and non-existent pin holes. Never, after he often snubbed the parallax error- getting diagonals and angles to merrily add up to create a highway on thin air. That was the crazy kind of magic he created and so frequently, it seemed to be the only thing he knew. Who but he could walk up as if he was inspecting a guard of honour and then in one mighty leap give it enough to be called the ‘ball of the century’? If that on its own could be brushed off as a one-time freak, think about the many more that he dished out.

To watch him, was an experience. He slowed time and calmed it to the point where it must have heard its own tick-tick. He inverted the notion that the human was but a mere speck in the grand scheme of things. As he ambled up to the leap each time, he was the centre of the Universe and the elements must have ‘shh’ed each other. Then came the hop followed by a twist and turn and a groan. The yarn of greatness had been let loose. You could weave what you wanted from it. Numbers for a statistician, angles for a mathematician, romance for a poet, frustration for the opponent and glee for his side. But the delivery was only portion of his act. And it was the theatre in its entirety that made him much loved, much hated and always respected.

Many have written about his greatness and his significance to the world. Many more have penned poignant eulogies upon his ascent to the higher league. But for the rest -like me- the average- cable TV fed enthusiast, nothing of that mattered, because he was an inexplicable experience. It was like listening to your favourite rock song. It didn’t matter what the chords were or the lyrics meant. It was the groove, the joy and feeling something gravity-defying.  With him you couldn’t say that his records didn’t matter but he was just too great to be a constrained definition by them. He was the closest to a perfectly homogenous mixture of the tangible and the intangible.

Most often, the underdog gets the crowd’s heart while the mind always knows to side with the favourite. In the underdog, we see ourselves, fighting the odds as we romanticise the struggle. But while he bamboozled men and their egos, the heart- however reluctant, was forced to acquiesce. Finally, it had to admire the favourite, while knowing all along that he and he alone would win the bout. That was the nature of the contest- mostly. No odds to beat, but quite many to strangle the opponent. It was about toying with the opponent’s mind and making him look inept and dazed.

As much as we hate to agree, ours is a lonely sport. As disappointing as it is, it presents an abundance of opportunities for its faithful to spread its gospel to the ignorant. There was never a doubt that he was one of the greatest, but yesterday when my Spanish roommate asked me to explain the game, naturally, as an evangelist, I took it upon myself to draw him to the fold. It was my duty to show him the beauty of the contest and the drama that came with it. While attempting to do so I found myself immediately typing ‘ball of the centu…..’ on Youtube, without a second thought. Almost sub-consciously.  As an afterthought, could there be a better advertisement of the game?

What more must be said?

Greatness is best celebrated when it is set free. It must linger, mingle with sundry thoughts, bring a smile or well-up the eyes. It must be available at your disposal to reminisce and rejoice. Yesterday, that happened to me. For a few calm seconds, it was just me and him as his magic flashed before my eyes and I celebrated him.  

But for some celebration, what would life be? That was him. Warne. A celebration.

The African safari- India’s travails

In the end, it is the difference between what it could have been and what it was. The difference between the ball beating the bat and finding its edge, between an almost wicket and an actual one, between a par score and a little above, between a good innings and a great one, between winning and losing- a match, a series and the skipper.

For the Indians, the recently concluded test series was a sequence of such differences, especially in the last two tests- only that the magnitude of the difference kept getting bigger to the point of affecting the final scoreline. It is of little doubt that the South Africans were the better team, showing remarkable resilience through defeat and the mettle to come from behind to take the series. Much must be spoken of their remarkable turnaround, given that it is a team that is still settling down after losing many accomplished players in the recent past.

Much must also be made of the way India lost steam after the first test. The batting was fully disrobed and put for public viewing by the Proteas attack, which itself wasn’t very consistent. That they managed to do it while blowing hot and cold makes India’s collapses meeker and its frailties hard-to-miss even for an unkeen eye. As has rarely been the case with Indian teams, it is the middle order that has become a liability, while the openers have, by and large done their job. It is almost as if some of the batters have forgotten the art of batting and the situational awareness that underpins innings of substance. While they did play an innings or two that seemed to have them primed for something significant, as is the case in the last couple of years, it wasn’t to be.

One can understand poor form or an odd instance of poor shot making- but the peculiarity about this failure has been how they have combined both, while playing some confident strokes in between. Two of them have caused most alarm. It is evident that Pujara and Rahane have not diagnosed what is causing them to stumble from how they have approached each innings. Each attempt at batting has been a forced change in mindset, preconceived and prepared- perhaps hoping that it would help them make a swift take-off. But batting at its best is a skillful response to the challenge posed by each delivery. It cannot be a recipe prepared indoors and served on the pitch. Perhaps it is time for the duo to dig into their memory, find themselves as batters and what it means to them, for at the moment, it seems an almighty struggle.

India also seemed to be callous in their shot selection and did not demonstrate the will to ‘stick around’. The lower order went back to their old and ungainly ways of wielding the willow, showing neither the will nor the wisdom to survive or score. Their energies were sapped by irrelevant ‘battles’ during their innings, which while adding drama to the coverage, did little else. Of what value is the fetish to attempt the hook shot ball after ball, while a more seasoned batter is at the other end, that too when all but one such attempts failed to add to the score? Here, in this quest of one-upmanship, the bigger picture was reduced to a by-product.

Perhaps these are the downsides of being a supreme team- bristling due its abilities and having achieved dizzying heights of success. But we must be quick to remind it, that this one team and not eleven individuals.

In the end, the difference matters.

Mind, thy, Master

At its best, it is nothing but focussed energy, driving thought and action purposefully. It is then that you see the ball and nothing else, as each fragment of time plays out elaborately. Here, that you achieve synchrony between mind and body and when the stage is set for the symphony between your bat and ball.

Often we wonder, how that shot must have felt and how it flowed so poetically off the willow. Did the batsman realise what had been done and how it looked like? Did he know that the result would be what it was? Where was the human in the art? Was there anything that could separate the human from the art? While these crescendos of mind and body remain a part of folklore, the work done to achieve this state of operation is never retained in memory. It doesn’t do enough to reach the onlooker, for practice and penance are never for display but always for discovery.

All it takes is one false shot or one brute of a delivery to tip one off that high road. An iota of doubt planted in a forlorn corner of one’s mind, a nagging wasp of a fielder at short leg explaining how one could get out, a wagging tongue of the keeper; in fact anything. So seemingly fragile is that state that it has to be shielded from everything that comes close to it. So while one is at the crease, one is also ferociously guarding one’s own nest of tranquillity.

To fail and not lose control is perhaps the greatest skill to possess. To admit a shortcoming and work on it is the next best thing to do. Those that have never failed, will usually be overwhelmed by the feeling of loss. For a batsman who built a career and reputation on the ability to defend resolutely, a ball crashing into the stumps after having waltzed through the gap between bat and pad is indeed a deafening knell. For that to happen more than once is a fatal blow to all confidence and yet for it to not repeat itself, mourning and self-loathing have to swiftly give way to precise corrective action- either technical or mental or both. At this very juncture, greatness begins to blossom in normal people. Those that manage to find a purpose to take guard again, be vulnerable to failure and build it all back up are the only ones that can ever accomplish something significant. These are those that have built magnificent facades, but for whom the possibility of erecting a scaffolding to re-build a fallen part is not a big deal.

There will be times when one drives on the up and poses for the cameras and those when one makes the game one’s own. But who knows? Right on the corner could be a pitfall waiting to suck one in, sooner than one can realise. To be awake to such possibilities and yet play the game the only way one knows, to see the ball alone and treat it as it deserves to be, to fail and forget the failure, to cuss oneself for a careless fling and promise that it will never be done again,  is the only way innings are built. As bad as the day might have been, at stumps, one always promises to mount a surreal fightback the next day.

And to think of tomorrow and how it must be better than today is the way to win. Forget a cricket match, even Kurukshetra was about this, wasn’t it?

Trapped in the undefined- KL Rahul takes guard

#KLRahul #TeamIndia

When the bat and ball meet as eager participants of a first date, time seems to slow down to enjoy itself a little more. The air smells sweet, the dreariness of life fades away a little. One cannot help but ‘ahh!’ one’s way to ecstasy. Not that it happens regularly, but when it does, it appears to be a match made in heaven. It surely is more than the Indian media’s and the fans’ benchmark of greatness. So, what does that make the chap who made the bat do that to the ball? Surely, at least ‘great’, if not something more pompous, except, that he still manages to evade this adulation, more than it does him.

In Kohli’s India, both bravado and cricketing abilities make a reasonable player. There is neither space for self-doubt or meekness nor for the lack of effort and intent. The skipper himself hurtles down this road, tournament after tournament, every season, so the players have no way to excuse themselves. This has made this squad a very different one from those of yesteryears. Each player has had to rise to the occasion and re-write what his best means, regularly. Here, in this pile of victories, accomplishments, improvements, we find a man, often saddled with an inexplicable weight, taking stance, fidgeting, talking to himself and pensive. The bat is not sure, the feet get heavy and the ball, too big to be handled decently. The same chap that just recently played an innings studded with sparkling strokes, would now be painting a glum image of himself, while attempting to do his job. One is left to wonder what the truth is, is it this stutter and stall or that fluency and panache?

It is in the undefined that we find K L Rahul. He leaves us with far too many contrasting shades for one to have any expectation as he takes guard and he has gone on this way for long. Too often, he has come out, woefully out of touch as if he were thrust onto the pitch after years of staying away from the game. The disappointment is only heightened by the potential he possesses and what he can be even if a small part of that could translate into consistency. In what is possibly Indian cricket’s most dominant team to date, the space for occasional brilliance is shrinking at a rapid pace. Individual brilliance is being overshadowed by collective capability and consistency and as a natural outcome, winning has become a habit for this team.

Why would such a setup wait and watch for a bolt of magic or an hour of cavalier batsmanship in an otherwise inconsistent run, when those that are making their debuts themselves are doing so on the back of years of consistent toil in the domestic circuit and replicating it on the international stage? Of course, there is always a special talent, for whom the system should be allowed to be more kind, as the player is getting settled and finding form, but it must be noted that the Indian cricket machine has transformed from one that arbitrarily found a diamond in the dirt to that which systematically churns out batches of cricketers, ready to play the big game and the highest level. This is the same model which the Australians of the 90s and the 2000s created, where even players as brilliant as Michael Hussey had to wait until their 30s to break into the national side. When surrounded by such order and predictability, Rahul’s frequent trysts with poor form appear too pale to ignore.

What could Rahul’s issues be? How does he manage to fall off so dramatically after finally having found form? Technically, he is as sound a batsman as there is in the team, but his demons seem to be seated in his mind. On a normal day, Rahul takes guard rather edgily, worried about too many things and trying to get many more of them correct. What could have been a case of reacting to the ball has bulged into a pre-flight checklist of sorts. This re-runs at each delivery. A very draining exercise, to put it mildly! Batting is no doubt built on technique and skill, but it is equally based on temperament and instinct. This is a fine balance between the mind and body and at its best is a cohesion and culmination. Veering too much onto one side is akin to falling over to a full and incoming delivery. What but an LBW can be the most possible outcome?

After a bout of incoherent attempts at beginning an innings, Rahul threw his shackles away and walked in to bat at the Oval, in the last test of that tour. The result was for everyone to see. While he did survive a few chances and went after everything that he faced, it was refreshing to see him play without the burden of being technically correct nor the fear of failure. He seemed like nothing mattered anymore, except seeing the ball and playing it joyfully. The match and the series were gone anyway, but he found the courage to bat his heart out, without fear or inhibition. He could have resurrected his career from there, but he went back to seek the fetters yet again.

Being on top of one’s game is momentary feeling. An edge, a breach of defence, a brute of a delivery can be enough to shatter it. That is why the best batsmen have always spoken of looking at just one ball each time. They have demonstrated how they shut off the noise as they take guard and dive into the moment, become one with it and eventually become the moment itself. Their careers have been a collection of such moments, ball after ball, innings after innings. It is this strength to breathe easy and not get bogged down by the expectation or the challenge that sets the greats apart from the rest.

In the hour of power and muscle, his strokeplay when unfurled soothes the eye and elevates the game to appeal to our finest senses. But the sooner he fixes the issue with  how he sees his role and what he should do when taking guard, the better will his chances be of truly delivering to his full ability. His batting is as beautiful and classy as the city of Bengaluru. It shouldn’t stutter and choke like its traffic.

For the love of cricket, let’s hope it doesn’t.

Amen.

-Himamshu, 17 Nov 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aye aye Captain, but you don’t play!

Scratching around the Sarfaraz conundrum- A captain’s loss of capability

#CWC2019

The best of salvages is buoyed by hope and never by letting go of it. Sarfaraz’s men, must once again draw from their reserves of optimism to take the challenge, or what remains of it head on. One can’t blame them for not trying, but one must also look at how incompetent they have been. They have found inexplicable ways of discovering defeat and while this trait is inherent to the Pakistani cricket team, this squad has added a great mound of ineptitude to their penchant for courting defeat.

As you run in to this team, be sure that once you see off its initial appetite for competition, you will get absolutely nothing that can come in your way to victory. It is nothing like the Pakistani outfits in the decades of Imran and Wasim. There is no hunger, no desperation and no madness at all. For those of us that grew up on a diet of super-human efforts by those teams, only the colour of this team’s clothing will seem Pakistani. Everything else, is bland, cold and sadly, rotten.

Much of it has to do with investing in ‘bits and pieces’ players and shoving them around while attempting to tweak the team. Barring a few, everybody else is woefully out of form or incompetent. At the top of the pile is the skipper himself. Sarfaraz, the captain has, over the years, demonstrated calmness and sensibility while leading the team, but there is nothing to be in awe of Sarfaraz the cricketer. He is at best a street-smart batsman, who bunts the ball through the field to gather some useful runs. On a good day, this is as graceful as clawing through a ditch and what it is on most other days, is something better left to imagination.

The state of affairs in the Pakistani camp demand far greater analysis than how good-looking their players are with their game. Cricket has rarely been unkind to doughty fighters who, despite not being fanciful players, have gone about purposefully. Sarfaraz, as he nudged around in the game against India, gave away that he wasn’t looking to win the game. As hopeless as the situation was, it certainly didn’t warrant the captain demonstrating his haplessness. Agreed, winning and losing is an inevitable reality in sport, but to go down fighting is the hallmark of a true sportsperson. There wouldn’t have been any shame in losing to a better team, but what must have shattered many hearts was the way the team folded. Beyond the Babar and Fakhar show, the chase was an absolute dud.

The ability to resist an onslaught comes with professional competence. Pakistan needed their batsmen to believe that they were capable and more so, their skipper to show them how it was to be done. The expectation from Sarfaraz is not to cream his way to scintillating hundreds a-la Mohammad Yousuf or Inzamam, but what is certainly not the expectation is for him to completely derail a chase. He seemed happy defending, perhaps because that appeared to be a big deal, but it did irreparable damage to Pakistan’s cause. Talking of competence, cricket teams need their captains to be one of their leading players. Captains need to be assured of their game first before getting into the art of marshalling their teams. Here, Sarfaraz stands out from all the captains in this world cup. Neither is he steady, nor spectacular as a player, so being a great team man cannot on its own be a factor that helps him lead his team, especially when the situation is dire.

Even when all his peers were striking the ball beautifully against England, he barely got going despite scoring a half century. The knock was without any fluency and thereby failed to cause the impact which such a contribution ought to. Surely, he is out of form and it would have been a lesser problem if that was with the willow alone. But his bad form seems to have crept to his mind too. Pakistan, as a cricket-loving nation deserves better.

The malaise is deep-rooted and will not go away with chopping and changing. Pakistan needs to find capable cricketers and groom them into leaders. To attempt to do it the other way around is too much of an experiment that a professional sports team can take on. For too long, Pakistan has persisted with the ‘jack of all trades’ breed of cricketers. A careful look at the returns they have given should force any reasonable think tank to shun this practice. The PSL is a great attempt to take cricket back to Pakistan, but in an attempt to go one up against the IPL, the Pakistanis have forgotten the old way of nurturing and nourishing cricketers. They must recollect that the Miandads and Akrams of cricket were not whipped out of a T20 tourney, but by stints in the counties and domestic circuits. What the Pakistan team needs is specialists who know their roles. Skills are invaluable in this game and every other virtue is an add-on. Surely Sarfaraz is a great team man, but at the moment, he is Pakistan cricket’s biggest liability.

Jimmy’s gig- Paeans and more for the ruthless Anderson

The applause through which you walked out, the attention to detail as you picked up tiny, loose fragments off the pitch, tapped it- like a drummer would do his drums all seem to lead up to your best. The guard, the steady head, the silence and the stance included- toe the line you drew. Your aspirations cause you to be nervy, but your reputation loads your legs and somewhat anchors them. Come on! You have done this countless times- get in line and watch the ball thud into your bat. Woah, but as you are caught in this box of thought, the ball flaps out a trick, it grins mischievously and begins to swerve away- luring you to push your limits of modesty, to indulge in a bit of a youthful flirt. And before you realise your folly, it flies off the edge of your bat and falls into the cupped hands of the slips- as beautifully as a basketball does a 3 pointer.

The modus operandi seems to work with unwavering precision, nicking out batsmen, nipping their reputation and flinging it into the junkyard. How well has it been rehearsed! How nonchalantly executed! Look up and you will find a wry smile from a face that doesn’t indulge in much of it otherwise. The wind shall seem to blow to his orders and ball swerving to his whims. It’s the seam and the swing that have foxed you. The oldest villains in the game!

In a placid world, James Anderson would have been stuck in a profession that wouldn’t allow for much creativity and flamboyance. But in the real, imperfect world, he creates his own wobbly masterpieces, scouring through hordes of batsmen, as if in a quest to find the best among them- one that could stand his tests, trials and tribulations. In his eyes one sees, a cold rancour against those that earn their livelihood by brandishing their willows and what comes out of his wrists, gives one the opportunity to marvel at the ability of the human form.  For those that don’t believe in magic, a session spent watching him bowl should do enough to begin a revision of that very belief.

If Anderson ran in and went through his delivery ritual, without actually delivering the ball, it would be hardly inspiring, to even the most imaginative minds. The run up itself is nothing elaborate, the leap is a ritual, the landing is a swift thud and the roll of his shoulder leads to his head falling off without actually being in a position to see the ball through. But, when the same is repeated with an actual delivery, the outcome is almost always sharp and scathing. He is a peculiar bowler despite being very conventional and conservative, for his inherent tendencies -some of which in most ways defy the postulates from a coaching manual on fast bowling- show up quite frequently.  Yet he goes on, uncluttered by theory and dogma, in his inimitable way, churning out unplayable spell after spell of the most silken league of swing bowling.

Matthew Hoggard had grabbed the cricketing world’s attention through his bowling and the extravagant swing it generated. He also stood for what excess swing could do to a bowler. It was just too much to cause a doubt in the batsman’s mind and in fact always outside his extended reach. So it wasn’t until he had perfected the art of producing a ball that would stay on its line, that he began tasting success. Perhaps Anderson too had learnt of this requirement then. As a youngster who was nurturing dreams of playing for England when Hoggard was already doing so, it must have been fascinating  for Anderson to watch the ball do as much as it did when he was bowling, but must also have told him bluntly what monotony could do and what it couldn’t. In his first days as an international cricketer, his peers looked more menacing and more likely of being saddled with the responsibility of leading the English bowling attack. Anderson for his part, seemed to not know what his roles were. But, self-discovery is never a two second thrill, rather, a long and arduous journey. As he travelled and emerged- better, fitter and meaner- season after season, he outran and outperformed each of them. To look back, it just feels that he was competing against his own self and in doing so, he gradually transformed into the complete bowler he is today.

Batsmen are the masters of their finicky world and they can never imagine themselves being made to look inept. Nothing makes them look more than when they get squared up while trying to calm a sprightly, fizzing delivery. Nothing, more fragile than when the ball clatters into their off stump. Anderson has made a habit of this. He casually bowls the unplayable outswinger and slyly slips in a dart that comes searching for the stumps. Maybe he likes to see them struggle and totter for a little while, while trying to play him before he finally turns them around for good. This is his set piece- arranged in great detail- that he unravels in every big spell. It is so obvious, that it seems even the batsmen know when and how they will be fished out. What can be a better attestation of a bowler’s prowess, his skills and his strategies than the sheer number of times he has breached the defences of some of world’s greatest batsmen?

Anderson belongs to the old school of fast bowling. In the deception, the angles and the ploys, he demonstrates a great deal of confidence in his own abilities and while he is on the prowl, there can never be an overtly merry time for batsmen. He will bowl the most unplayable ball ever and back it up with an absolute beast and go on relentlessly. Only those that are willing to shed their inhibitions about appearing vulnerable and play the ugly but effective game give themselves a chance to succeed against him.

Cricket has been blessed with a great and an unbroken lineage of fast bowlers. James Anderson carries the baton in this generation- one where the game has transformed most dramatically. England has done well to keep him restricted to test cricket where he can go on unabated without wondering about field restrictions and powerplays. He continues to lead their bowling efforts there and effortlessly picks a handful of scalps in every game that he plays. That is the obviousness he brings to fast bowling- the seam up, brisk variety- one that has thankfully not yet fallen to the survival technique called the slower bouncer. Test cricket lovers are truly fortunate to watch him go about his job and to cheer him on in his celebration. Truly, greatness couldn’t be given a more feisty, grumpy and blunt form. Old school!

It is also the same imperfect world, which has not given him the popularity and the adulation that goes with it, for where else would you see a great fast bowler- the greatest actively playing- running into bowl and still not being addressed in a nickname coined in awe of his abilities and saluting his accomplishments? Alas! He is still just James Anderson!

And while we wonder about how much more he will achieve, he would have picked his next fifer

Gymkhana’s silence

In a country besotted with Cricket, this ground wouldn’t stand out. It was not a stadium after all. Just a field, lush green with a pitch or two at its center and the sightscreens being the only structures attempting to stand tall . Even they, seemed to be shy and forever unwilling to be the giants that their brethren around the world generally are. The trees of the cantonment, perhaps emboldened by their ‘military’ upbringing had to dwarf those sightscreens anyway.

The cricket ground at the Gymkhana, one of Hyderabad’s last big ‘open spaces’ and the pride of Secunderabad is now quiet and lonely. After Hyderabad cricket moved to the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium, this looks deserted and deprived- an abandoned queen of an erstwhile kingdom who could at best admire her glorious past- it boasted of one of India’s very few lively cricket pitches, giving seamers a good chance to have a say in the way games shaped up. Now, whenever I drive along the road that winds itself around this ground’s periphery, I am overcome by the silence and emptiness.  This was the same ground that I would read about in the papers- the home of my city’s Ranji team. A nursery that nurtured some of India’s finest cricketers. A breed that created and brought to prominence a very fine genre of the sport.

The summer of ’99 was for me an equivalent of Bryan Adams’ ‘69. “Those were the best days of my life” seemed apt to describe my life then. It was the first world cup where I was old enough to talk about cricket, have opinions, points of view and most importantly the ability to call an LBW as it played out on TV. I considered myself capable enough to engage in debates with older cousins about everything cricket and on one such occasion, I was asked to name my favourite cricketer. I obliged. They laughed at my innocence. I broke down.

That was what Azhar did to me.

Languid and laid back, nobody could be more Hyderabadi on the cricket field than him. He was the ‘Miyaan’ of batting, mixing indulgence with nonchalance and creating masterpieces out of scratchy beginnings. He could drop the ball and scamper for a single, or play and miss it- looking most elegant in both cases. A cover drive, a flick, a square cut later, cricket looked beautiful and lively. For those who cared to follow, some of his innings, especially when the team was facing the odds unfolded like an unbelievable assault. Between the rigmarole of technique and textbook, Azhar created enough space for thrills. He made a mockery of bowling, yet remained unassuming and seemingly unwilling to care for any personal milestone he reached.  It was always a ‘matter of fact’, as if he was born to hit the cricket ball in beautiful ways to the boundary and then, sometimes, though rarely, when he looked like he believed he was omnipotent, he seemed to reinforce the matter and that it was a fact. By doing so, he became the doyen of the school of batsmanship of his hometown, to which, nobody could set fields, but admire and applaud.

Well, who can ever restrain imagination and artistry?

That innings of 167 started a rollicking love affair between bat and ball. Laxman had finally arrived. He would go on to score many of India’s most important runs on a cricket field. This was another example of Hyderabadi strokeplay. Whips, flicks, drives- all precisely placed, piercing the gaps in the field with perfection, all began being glorified as he demonstrated them. Yet, amidst all the magnificent and dazzling shot making, his temperament and steely will stood out. Much like the hero of Telugu cinema who overcomes improbable odds with mathematical certainty, Laxman thrived in adversity and found it to be his greatest catalyst to success. But unlike the hero, he was always calm, collected and reasonable. A lot has been written about his 281, and rightly so, because it was one of test cricket’s greatest knocks, but his  greatness also lies in his 70s and 80s that he scored while batting with tailenders. He taught a careless bunch of lesser batsmen to bat like they cared about their wickets.

How can anybody forget the heist he pulled off against the Aussies in Mohali?

The bat moved like a wand, the ball like it was under a spell. Nothing seemed more beautiful when he was settled at the crease. Nowhere else could grace and grit converge and combine better, than in Laxman’s batting.

There was once a time when Hyderabad cricket was very approachable- Everybody could watch the game at the Gymkhana, even from the road, and seeing the home team train and compete was reason enough to follow its performances season after season. This and the abilities of those teams evoked much interest in the city’s cricket following fraternity.  While the setup at the new stadium might be better, it has taken cricket away from the average Hyderabadi. That no Cricketer from the city plays test cricket is an indicator of where the game is going in the city.

Hyderabad cricket’s legacy is full of legends-  larger than life, but still incomplete. There has always been more to Hyderabadi cricketers than they have shown, even in the case of Azhar and Laxman- two of its finest.  Their achievements are huge, but given their cricketing abilities, they deserved to play much more. But, it is always about choices anyway, sometimes those of the selectors’ and at others those made by the players themselves.

One cannot but feel dejected at how many talented cricketers from the city have never managed to play at the highest level. That is the thing about a fan. The love and the hope never commit themselves to reason.

Just like the Gymkhana, I feel empty and the need to be silent.

Until another Hyderabadi earns the India test cap.

 

 

article by Himamshu

 

 

 

 

The game played less- Bowling! Now go bowl!

Bats! Those are everywhere! Chunky stumps off willow shoots, cane handles slotted at their heads, a lot of rubber constricting them and a lot more fancy labelling. The bats! Those are everywhere and so are those that aspire to wield them perennially and perpetually.

Strapped from head to toe like gladiators facing imminent glory, they masquerade the world of the game, cornering everything else, their gluttony overtly evident- hogging all the limelight, all the time. The tarnished are mostly those that clutch the varnished sphere in their tired palms, running in from afar, thudding onto unforgiving ground to deliver a wildly swaying, fizzing projectile through those almost infinitesimal spaces between the spirit of the game and its laws.

A graze against this and a tumble against that-against those tall walls emboldened by the tomes christened “Rulebooks”. Not quite an uncommon phenomenon on the wobbling trapeze of bowling, made more wobbly to apparently entertain the masses but to actually smother any semblance of challenge that the ball could pose to the bat. And penalties are pinched off at any and every such instance-very rightly so at times but one would think that the rest of them need not beckon such disdain and blunt judgement. Nobody knows more  how unforgiving an inch could be.

An uneven game entertains an uneven world and vice versa.

Art is crazy; it consumes its creator, immolates its practitioner and engulfs its admirer. Artisans are a strange lot, they love their creations, but hate them until those emerge lovable. So is bowling and so are bowlers. The perfect off break or the most unplayable swinger, both the delivery and the deliverer are as much a sculpture chiseled to life assiduously, as a streak of brilliance arriving out of the blue.

To be a bowler is to accept that the odds will rarely, if ever, be favourable. It’s to agree to put up with harrowing rules and lopsided mindsets. It demands that one believe that it’s worth putting one’s body on the line for the rare thrills of defeating the batsman. To bowl to live is to live a life entrenched in reality, where success comes rarely and always vanishes a moment too early while failure ogles persistently.

But, restriction breeds creativity. It strokes the mind to innovate. Art that overcomes hurdles glorifies itself and steps closer to becoming immortal. It bursts out of tight corners, overwhelming all its constraints. It becomes the most celebrated and very soon- an unstoppable revolution. Cricket’s evolution has done the same to the ball. When swing became sundry, reverse swing walked in and when the off break’s jaw was broken, the doosra came in calling.

Great artists (read bowlers) never give up on innovation. They do the same things differently until they create something else.  Their greatness stems from their inability to give up. To them, art (read bowling) is not necessarily the means to an end. It is the end itself. Everything else comes along as ancillary.

But what madness would it take to choose the tough side of the deal? What more does it take to plough on? Batting is wizardry, poetry, songwriting and everything else. But rarely is it sculpture. It does not demolish its proponent physically on its own and neither does it pit the human form constantly against fatigue and pain.

Its bio-mechanical component stands remarkably dwarfed vis-à-vis bowling’s and that’s why bowlers don’t last all that long. Some glow momentarily and vanish like shooting stars while the most determined cling on- their careers still shorter than those of most accomplished batsmen. They may take truckloads of wickets and taste rich wine-like success, but constantly live in the fear of career-ending injuries. To choose a facet of the game that promises a continuous fling with pain and injury and very rarely allows longevity is remarkable.

The athletic ability of the human species fuses with the aesthetic brilliance of its form arguably nowhere better than in the ac(r)t of bowling. To painstakingly generate momentum and impart it to the ball, see it mingle with air, land on the pitch and take a lovely detour to beat the bat is orgasmic. A perfect culmination of physics, psychology and endocrinology, it is art’s tryst with science.

Bats! They are everywhere. Be a bowler, don’t sulk because you didn’t get to bat. Pick the ball up from the far end, mark your stride and gallop in. Whatever the situation of a game is and however unforgiving life might be, there are a couple of things that nobody and nothing can take away from you- your date with destiny and of course, your run up!

 

Author- Himamshu   email: bthimamshu@gmail.com