Musings on Soumya Bhattacharya's 'You Must Like Cricket'

One of my many grouses about the mainstream media (and, to a lesser extent, Indian literature) is that it is devoid of quality memoir writing; particularly essays on personal experiences about cricket. Thanks to the advent and spread of TV and the internet, my guess is that cricket buffs would watch a riveting game of cricket rather than read stimulating and enjoyable memoirs about the game. Not only has that lead to the near-death of cricket writing, but, I reckon, made the experience of being a cricket buff distant and sterile. I am no exception; the first and last time I saw a game of cricket was in 1998 when India played Pakistan in Delhi and Kumble took 10 wickets in an innings. 

So on a balmy Saturday morning, I was delighted to find in the mail, Soumya Bhattacharya’s excellent cricket book You Must Like Cricket? Memoirs of an Indian Cricket Fan. It’s a book I’ve been keen on reading since I’ve read it’s (sort-of) sequel All That You Must Leave Behind and interviewed Soumya about it.

Essentially, You Must Like Cricket is about Soumya’s 30-year obsession with the gentleman’s game; nearly everything he does, experiences, thinks or observes has to do with the game of cricket. And, sometimes, this obsession makes him do slightly strange things. For instance, the book informs us, that after a getting sloshed during a junkette in Mauritius, Soumya went up to Kapil Dev and asked whether he could “touch the hand that had bowled the best outswinger in the history of Indian cricket”. On another occasion, he bought an air ticket from London to Calcutta just so that he could watch the final match of a tournament at the Eden Gardens. And, when asked by friends about the year of his daughter’s birth, Soumya nonchalantly replied ‘the same in which Laxman scored a historic double ton against the Aussies in Calcutta’.

These humorous vignettes aside, You Must Like Cricket is a quirky, irreverent and poignant account of the evolution of cricket as seen through the eyes of an enthusiastic cricket fan. Most importantly it gives words to those thoughts and emotions which get drowned under victorious cries of “Indi-yaaaaaahhhhh” and cuss-filled rants which evoke the misery of defeat. You Must Like Cricket, therefore, is a book which wants you to enjoy a fan’s experiences of the game as much as you enjoy the game itself.

Hence, what you’ll come across in this vivid, conversational memoir are not gushing accounts of historic victories but about how strong the memory of that victory is. Nor are there long winding essays on the shabbiness of some of our cricket grounds; instead, there’s poignant account about food and the importance of sharing it with fellow members of the audience. Most importantly, even though this a book of memories, cricket never seems to be on the periphery in this book, nor, I suspect, in Soumya’s life (possible, to the chagrin of his wife). Such is the writer’s craft that he places the sport as the skeleton and his memories of it as the flesh and blood of this book.

Since this is a collection of essays, I’m sure some of you are bound to ask about a favorite (or two). But, to be honest, I have none. After all, how can you say that one memory is better than another? That you enjoyed watching Sachin score a match-winning blistering century in Sharjah than a century at, say, Wankhede. Just like the sport which it reminisces about, You Must Like Cricket is best enjoyed as a whole and not in parts.

To be frank, You Must Like Cricket, has left me, well, stumped. For, as I wrote earlier, Soumya Bhattacharya has managed to give drowned emotions and thoughts words, sentences and paragraphs. He has written about India’s (and his) beloved sport with sparse prose and without being voluble or verbose (can any of you describe an innings or a memorable cricket win without using an adverb or an adjective? I bet not). Most importantly, he’s made the experience of cricket loving writable in an era which has seen the decline of cricket writing. That alone is reason enough to read this book.

Hence, I’m going back to re-read it and I suggest you do the same. At least once.