I realise nostalgia afflicts you young. At 25, I reminisce. About my childhood, about my first experiences, about times gone by when all was good and the skies were blue. At bloody 25. One can only imagine how much worse this affliction shall become as time goes by.
One of these past days, during a conversation over dinner, I was trying to recall my early memories of watching cricket. I could vaguely remember being 5 or 6 watching Chetan Sharma bowl on our gold framed Sanyo. I can also remember my sister, who grudgingly I must admit knew more about cricket then than I did, saying something about a hat trick, so I deduce it must be the 1987 World Cup match against the Kiwis. Chetan Sharma in particular stuck out in my memories. My sister and I used to spend hours together in the sweltering heat during the annual summer holidays trying to mimic his bowling action. Subroto Bannerjee with a delivery stride that I can best describe only as a scissors splice in mid air was another favourite to try and mimic.
As I lay in bed that night trying to rack my head for other early memories, I remembered watching a game on Doordarshan on the same sturdy Sanyo when I was 9 or 10. Rahul Dravid was captain of India. It was an under-19 game and it still surprises me that they actually telecast under-19 games back then. Three batsmen in that game instantly became my favourites. We all know how long a 10 year old’s favourites remain favourites, yet these three batsmen remain etched in my memory. Rahul Dravid was one, the second was S Sharath who if my memory serves me right scored a century that game and oddly the third batsman I remember from that game was Manoj Joglekar who played that game at no. 3 and even a 10 year old knew that only the best play at no.3.
Following that game, Dravid was forgotten for the next couple of years until 1994/95, when he, scoring runs by the truckload, came into reckoning for national colours. I remember following Joglekar’s career at Bombay for a while but then in those days everything in Bombay cricket was about Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli and when those two weren’t hogging all the news, Sanjay Manjerekar stepped into the void. Sharath, however, remained a favourite, maybe because his progress was easy to follow. The Hindu adequately covered his exploits in the intercollegiate tournaments for Vivekananda and his pillaging of runs in the TNCA leagues which soon translated to success in the Ranji.
Sharath was talked about as the next Tamil Nadu player to don India colours: a calm steely batsman who would be a worthy albeit different successor to Kris Shrikanth (WV Raman never really counted). Years rolled by as Sharath cemented his place as the bedrock of the TN middle order along with Robin Singh but the call from the national selectors never came. Once he came close and was selected for the Board President’s game against Sri Lanka. Had he scored then, a middle order spot in the premier XI might have beckoned but alas that was not to be. Slowly he drifted out of reckoning and the collective memory of the average cricket watcher.
S Sharath could do no wrong in my mind. He was the bulwark of the TN’s batting and was wronged. While people like Atul Bedade and Noel David came and went Sharath didn’t even smell a chance. I learnt to blame the non-selection of Sharath on the dirty politics that ailed Indian cricket. I learnt about zonal selectors, quotas and BCCI elections. To make sure I mastered these concepts, Sharath continued piling on the runs. My lasting memory of Sharath will be that of a headline that was run in the Hindu year after year for more than a decade when Sharath remained a bulwark of the state team: “Sharath’s ton propels TN to take first innings lead”. He even scored a century in his 100th game and as he retired WV Raman, then coach of TN, compared him to Ajay Sharma, arguably the Graeme Hick of Indian cricket. As I write this, Sharath has made a comeback by signing up with Assam to play in the plate trophy.
As I continued viewing the Hindu’s sports page in my rose tinted mind’s eye, it finally struck me as to why the ICL and IPL were important. I am no fan of 20-20 cricket. The only time I ever got remotely excited through the entire non-World Cup 20-20 World Championship was when Misbah-Ul-Haq twice threatened to beat India single handedly and twice lost the plot. Yet it has excited millions and more importantly it has excited the corporates and the playboy millionaires.
The BCCI has done well marketing the Indian cricket team and ensuring that millions are made from our international matches. And whatever might be said against the BCCI, some of these millions are put to good use ensuring that the Indian domestic leagues are well financed in spite of board officials liberally creasing their own pockets and the pockets of our darling cricketers with spontaneous cash prizes. However, the next stage in cricket’s evolution in India is to move it towards a model that the European football leagues follow.
The European clubs rake in millions and are revered by legions of hardcore fans including folks who couldn’t point to the club’s city of origin on a map. This creates a large enough platform for the Ronaldos and the Michael Owens of the world to play alongside the Ryan Giggs and Nobby Solanos who make their mark entirely on the domestic scene. And everyone good enough to become professional makes good if not obscene amounts of money and is guaranteed to receive fierce support from at least his club’s fan base.
Some say that the IPL and ICL will never evolve into say an EPL or the Primera Liga because the Indian cricket fan will perceive no connections with the newly formed clubs. The European football clubs had geographical and historical fan bases. The new cricket clubs in India will have no such fan base. More importantly, the Indian cricket fan is spoilt rotten by the quality of cricket already on show. Why would an Indian cricket fan want to watch a couple of domestic clubs slugging it out rather than watch the “fearless youth” of India taking on the Australians?
Well I think that’s rubbish, for the average Indian cricket watcher is not spurred by the quality of cricket. Although I don’t discount, the thousands of connoisseurs of the game in India, rising consumerism (going with a loose Marxist definition) aided by the brilliant marketing of Indian cricket by the BCCI and the TV networks is the driving force of Indian cricket. Evidence that cricket’s growth is fuelled by viewers who are not necessarily avid watchers of the game can be seen from the trend that has televised cricket moving away from the sports networks in India towards the general entertainment channels. Gone are the days, when Dr Narottam Puti, with his boring baritone, used to take time off his thriving medical practice to double up as a Sports anchor on DD and AIR. While he let his excitement get the better of his professionalism on All India Radio when India finally won a test match on Australian soil, Mandira Bedi excites the average cricket watcher by bobbing up and down in her seat because some Indian batsman top edged a six to Cow Corner.
And the corporates and the playboy billionaires will take advantage of this. They will market, no hype, the domestic leagues like there is no tomorrow. If an India-Pakistan match can be hyped as a match to settle scores of the Kargil War, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka will play a cricket match to settle all disputes over the Kaveri.
Yet, the ICL or the IPL domestic leagues will not excite Indians initially to go watch their domestic teams play. The purists will deride it, the flippant will ignore it. However, the 20-20 Champions League will bring out the ‘patriots’ in full support of the Indian clubs that take on the best from Australia, England and South Africa. If the ICL and the IPL both survive and somehow evolve into the equivalent of the American League and the National League for baseball, a resulting World Series of 20-20 hopefully will excite Indians, a number of whom hold Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s batting above VVS Laxman’s.
At some point, peer pressure will take over as a driving force behind the IPL. The average 14 year old in school will watch the IPL and support a particular IPL because the cool guys in school do and how cool you are will be determined by whether you have a season ticket to watch every home game of your favourite IPL club. In short, Indians will watch the IPL for the same reason why scores of them stay up in the middle of the night to watch Manchester United take on Liverpool but can’t name the Indian Football league team in their own city. And of course, the IPL will be fun too, what with all the cheerleaders and the sixers and the carnival atmosphere at the stadia. When all this finally bears fruit, Mandira Bedi will continue to bob up and down, Charu Sharma will attempt to calm her down and Sivaramakrishnan will exclaim “Stand & Deliver” every time a left hander drives a ball to the boundary. Yet, I look forward to that day, for then a Manoj Joglekar might hold a 10 year old’s attention longer than Joglekar held mine. And cricket watchers other than me might remember a Shridharan Sharath slamming tons along side a Rahul Dravid.
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