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.

In Conversation with Soumya Bhattacharya

Earlier last week, I met up with journalist-writer Soumya Bhattacharya for a short chat about his book All That You Can't Leave Behind - a short collection of his essays on how life in India revolves around cricket. Soumya's debut novel, If I Could Tell You, about a father's letters to his daughter, was also published in the same week.


In the opening essay of your book, you wrote that cities remind you of cricket grounds. Why do you think so?


What I meant was that, for someone who is so obsessed by the game and who's so engrossed in it. what strikes you most when you take the name of a city is its cricket ground. You identify the city to its cricket ground first and then to other things. For instance, London would mean Lord's and Sydney would mean the SCG rather than the opera house. That's what I meant.


Do you think that T20 cricket will be the most defining sport of the next decade, despite the fact that it has competition from faster sports like football and Formula 1?


I don't know and I don't think anyone really knows. It's really early to tell; you can date it back to 2007 and India winning the T20 World Cup.  After which the Indian administration woke up and the BCCI, being the greedy pigs that they are,  woke up to the fact that 'oh! there's a helluva lot of money in this'. Immediately, the IPL was born; which did phenomenally well in the first season and not-so-well in the second one. Soon after, there was the IPL Champions League nonsense, which I think was fundamentally flawed in its conception - was a huge, huge flop. So, while at the moment it does seem that a three-hour-20-over-a-side-slam-bang extravaganza is quite popular, three years is nothing in the life of a sport/game. Hence, I think it's far too early for any of us to be able to tell.


The problem with T20 is that it attracts new converts (to cricket) who are looking for a nice, sexy way to spend three hours. Two or three years from now, the novelty having worn off, they might go to a Karan Johar movie or they might want to watch Dr. Zhivago at home which is longer and probably more fulfilling. That is when we will know whether T20 is the future. It looks like the future now because of it's phenomenal popularity. Test cricket has been around for 120 years and football for god knows how many years. So whether T20 will acquire the kind of following Test cricket and football have, is too early to say. 


In the book, you justify the numerous references to matches between India and Australia. Do you think this rivalry has replaced the sort hysteria and hype associated with the Ashes or an India-Pakistan game?


No longer, I think, because no longer is Australia the number one side But at the time it was number one and everyone was yapping at Australia's dreams, there was a huge gulf between Australia and the rest of the cricket-playing nations. I'd say from the beginning of that 2001 series going right up to (the time) when India beat Australia in 2008. It was the most potent rivalry in the contemporary game - the marquee show. And I say this despite the fact that England won the Ashes in 2005 after which there was a huge resurgence of cricket in England. Even then, that series was a one-off. There is nothing in the contemporary game like  an India-Australia match where, every time India played Australia, both teams raised the standard of the game so high, that they'd look each other in the eye to see who'd blink first. Hence, I say it was the marquee show. 


At one point in time, after the India-Pakistan peace process resumed, there was this be-nice-to-each-other feeling which crept into an India-Pakistan match/series because of which, a lot of the needle that people look for vanished..


But look, India and Pakistan have such complicated histories and we hardly have that history with Australia, although, things have happened on the field which can hardly be called sport (like the whole Symonds-Harbhajan fiasco). 


You write in your book that cricket is a symbol of popular Indian culture but isn't it also true that its popularity has overshadowed other sports as well?


Of course, I completely agree. Look at someone like Abhinav Bindra, Pankaj Advani and Vijender Singh and ask about the kind of following they have. It is to do with this whole hysteria about cricket. 


And most sports administrators blame the media for giving cricket undue attention. How much do you agree with that statement?


It's very to hard to tell for the media that 'okay we'll give our readers more of billiards and less of cricket and we'll try and change things. ' Readers start howling in two months. On occasions, we do panel feedback from readers and they say things like a Sri Lanka-Pakistan match should have been given more prominence. So do you try and keep your readers happy which is what you should do putting out a newspaper? But a lot of the times, readers are confused. However, one does get an inkling of what a reader wants. Eventually, you're caught in a trap of your own making; whether you should give shooting more importance than cricket.


In another of your essays, you write about cricketers coming from small-towns or lesser known places. Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni, for instance. So it would be fair to say that cricket has shed its elitist tag?


Of course and that's the point.  And there's a theory that young people in the big cities have too many distractions and therefore, they don't have the hunger that their counterparts in B-towns have which is what propels these guys to the top. I don't know how true this is but (just to give an example) look at Bombay. Once the crucible of Indian cricket, how many players does it have in the team today?


On Sachin Tendulkar, while it is true that he is one of the greatest players of the game, some uncomfortable questions have been asked about him. For instance, I read someone's facebook status recently where the person said 'why doesn't anyone ask him about the shot he played in Chennai against Pakistan and why he played it.' And 'why didn't he win the match against Australia after scoring 175. Are we being inhuman in our expectations or are we being too objective in our analysis?


I think no one is above scrutiny or judgment in the game and no one should be. But there are two things at play here. One, whatever Tendulkar does is never enough for us and that is true; we always want a bit more.  At the same time - and this is bound to happen to someone who has been playing for so long - Tendulkar has completely changed his approach to the game over the past five years.  Its happened for many reasons but it has happened. So I think people do tend to feel nostalgic or seem to want back the Tendulkar they saw 15 years ago.  So we want him to be the savage and brutal Tendulkar of 1998, demolishing the attack all the time which he is no longer for a variety of reasons. So a lot of the dissatisfaction stems from that.


Coming to your writing style, do you follow any particular cricket writer or do you write about cricket from a fan's perspective? 


No, I don't see myself as a cricket writer. I am not a cricket writer. Nor is this book, a book on cricket. I've written two books and numerous essays about cricket. This is a book about cricket or about India seen through cricket. I've not done match reports or interviews and I'm not a cricket writer in the remote sense of the term.  In terms of reading, yes, I do read a lot and Nick Hornby's writings have been a great influence, which again were about obsession, London and football.  HG Bissinger's Friday Night Lights would be another. 


Lastly, what has been your most memorable cricket moment from a fan's perspective?


Very hard to tell since there are so many of them. Perhaps, being in Australia when India won the Adelaide match. Even the Sydney Test where Tendulkar scored 241. So was the Multan test in Pakistan when Sehwag scored a triple hundred. Eden Gardens 2001 and World Cup '83 have to be there.


And your worst ones?


The first one came quite early when I was a small boy. It was when India were bowled out for 42 against England. Again, too many instances because we only started winning in this century. Before that, we either held out for valiant draws or we got walloped all the time!  

Goodbye Steve!

Just heard that Steve Bucknor is going to retire as umpire next March. Am instantly reminded of a college assignment I wrote at the height of the Sydney Test fiasco last year. Reproducing it here again.

(Warning: For those of you who hate anti-media rants, ignore this post)

The second cricket Test match played between India and Australia at Sydney will be remembered for the controversies it generated rather than the cricket which was played. Umpire Steve Bucknor, member of the International Cricket Council’s Elite Panel, made as many as 11 blunders against India. And to make things worse, the Australian cricket team alleged that Harbhajan Singh made racist remarks against Andrew Symonds.

Given the undue attention that is paid to cricket in our country, it was but natural that the media would devote reams of newsprint to this story. In its article that appeared on Jan 6, 2008 titled “India laid low by Benson-Bucknor duo”, the Indian Express called Bucknor “blind”. The Hindu which is normally measured in its reportage carried a front page story on January 7, 2008 confirming a three Test ban on Harbhajan Singh. News channels went on a “Breaking News” blitzkrieg and certain sections of the electronic media alleged that Steve Bucknor held a grudge against the Indians.

Being an avid cricket fan, I saw most parts of the match and shared similar sentiments on the quality of umpiring. But to say that India lost the Test only because of poor umpiring is hard to digest. On the last day, our team which boasts of such cricketers as Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Yuvraj Singh among others could not bat for 70 overs. It shows that besides poor decisions, it was a batting collapse that contributed to the loss at Sydney. Says Pradeep Magazine of the Hindustan Times “Despite all the wrongs done to them on the field, India could have still salvaged a draw and been in a much stronger position to take a high moral ground and tell the umpires and the Australians of what they thought of them”

Also, I think the media is wrong when it says that Bucknor holds a grudge against India. The argument presented by the press is that the umpire, on numerous occasions, has repeated his mistake. To substantiate this point, it has been repeatedly stated in several debates (such as The Big Fight on NDTV 24X7) that an ICC enquiry found Bucknor guilty of incompetence during the 2007 World Cup final. However, there has been no official enquiry which can prove that Buckor bears a grudge against India or any other team. Hence, to say that an umpire of this stature, who has officiated in over a 100 matches, bears ill will towards a team is false.
In addition, a leading Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, in one of its programmes committed a factual error. The anchor said that Steve Bucknor is a Be-Imaan (cheat). This is a very serious charge as it questions his integrity. And before making such a sweeping statement, one must take into cognisance the age factor: Bucknor is 61 years old. He may be past his prime but there is no evidence to suggest that he is a cheat. This is yet another example of the media getting its facts wrong.

In the aftermath of this controversy, the ICC replaced Bucknor, who was to officiate in the third test at Perth. The Times of India, in its January 9, 2008 edition, carried a front page story titled “India wins Sydney test” with reference to this development. In its editorial the newspaper writes “The ICC has hit the right buttons by initiating action against those who were on duty at Sydney. They bungled and an exciting Test match ended in a mess.” In a country where cricket has achieved cult status, the media ought to have acted in a mature manner. This decision by the ICC was not a victory for India. Instead, it was a sad day for the game of cricket. And inspite of being aware of Bucknor’s sloppy umpiring in the past, why didn’t the Indian cricket board appeal to the ICC to replace him before the start of this series? The board owes an explanation to not only its players, but to millions of cricket lovers in the country.

In conclusion, it was an episode that saw a high quality Test match being reduced to a mere controversy. What was even more appalling was the coverage by the Indian media which was mediocre, to say the least. Instead of being jingoistic about this issue, it could have shown a sense of maturity.