Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians Page 3
I was hanging on to Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble. All five of them are of nearly the same age and my understanding of cricket had been shaped by them while I was growing up in urban Kolkata. Tendulkar, Ganguly and Dravid stood for the fact that not all was lost. Cricket could still be a religion of sorts with the players as its deities. Sachin’s 136 against Pakistan in Chennai, braving an excruciating back pain, was for real. Ganguly and Dravid’s partnership in Taunton in the 1999 World Cup played out before our eyes. These two performances were two of India’s best showings ever. Kumble picking up all ten wickets at the Feroz Shah Kotla Ground against Pakistan was proof that god doesn’t play dice and that the sport was still for real, not reel. Could they have done more to help the doubting fan? Perhaps, yes. But then, as Sachin keeps saying, he could only have spoken if he knew who was/were involved in those malpractices. He was in his own little cocoon, trying to win games for India, losing his mind for failing to win matches that should have been won while trying to unravel the mystery. He was a player and not an investigator and, as Ganguly says, ‘was determined to rescue the sport from the throes of this unprecedented crisis’.
I have known Ganguly since 1992. He could never fix matches. With him as the new captain of India and with people like Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble in the side, the crisis had to pass. The values they stood for was balm for a troubled nation. And for cricket at large.
And then there was county cricket. Or, put more aptly, local cricket in Oxford. There were no spectators. Rather, less than 100, sometimes even 50, with some of them busy sipping their apple cider on lovely sunny Oxford evenings as a match was being played. Most were oblivious to the cricket at the Oxford University Club grounds in front of them, a facility that would give most of India’s Test match venues a run for their money. Surrounded by trees and adorned with a beautiful little pavilion and clubhouse, it is the near-perfect English club ground. Importantly, both for the players and the ones present, there were no cameras, no dubious people lurking around and no big prize for winning the game.
Just as the clock struck 5 p.m., players started trickling in with their kit bags to the club, gradually making their way to the changing rooms to get into their gear. It was release at the end of a long, hard day in the laboratory or at the Bodleian Library. For the many sitting and relaxing in the lobby, watching television or even working, the players did not make any difference. It was cricket as it had evolved two-and-a-half centuries ago. To quote Edmund Blunden, ‘The game which made me write at all, is not terminated at the boundary, but is reflected beyond, is echoed and varied out there among the gardens and the barns, the dells and the thickets, and belongs to some wider field.’
For someone searching for reassurance, this was a rare departure. Watching cricket for the love of the game, knowing it was the unadulterated sport being played out in front of me.
It was a throwback to Neville Cardus, to R.C. Robertson-Glasgow and Hugh de Sélincourt. With the sun melting away and giving way to a lovely British early-summer evening, the game meandered on at its own pace. There was no frenzy, no urgency, no deadlines. It was a throwback to the past, as if I was studying a rare relic.
Come to think of it, these very hallowed grounds of Oxford and Cambridge had provided English cricket with some of its greatest stalwarts in the early twentieth century. Eton and Harrow, followed by Oxford or Cambridge, was the norm for the English upper-classes and cricket was a staple for these gentlemen, who travelled the world to try and evangelize and hold the empire together. They wouldn’t fix matches or even dream of doing so. Rather, they introduced the game to us in India in the mid-nineteenth century, something we very generously appropriated and indigenized over time. Oxford was not an aberration. In England, there were more than 100 games played every afternoon; games which had little significance in terms of results. These were a reminder that not always does one need to make millions from the game, or make a living out of it at all.
The dissertation, I realized, did make sense after all.
So, how do we reflect upon match-fixing in the long history of cricket? Was it really a case of a few bad apples falling prey to the lure of a quick buck, or did the rot run far deeper than will be ever revealed? And, how did cricket come out of it in the long term?
Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, pulled up for passing information to bookies, continue to be revered; one a selector and the other a commentator and Australian cricket’s best all-time brand. Azharuddin and Jadeja are both television experts, as is Nayan Mongia. All of them have been cleared of wrongdoing by the highest judiciary. Cronje is dead while Nicky Boje and Roger Telemachus have simply faded away. The game itself has moved on, as have the players and administrators. Only we fans have never fully been able to digest it. Every now and then, there is a throwback to fixing. To us, these instances remain as unresolved investigations and, as a result, are unsatisfactory. Our game was violated and justice wasn’t done. It has left us all paranoid. At the slightest hint of spot- or match-fixing, we get worried. Rumours start flying thick and fast. Social media is thrown into a tizzy. The game, unsure and under-prepared, wasn’t able to deal with the crisis in the past. It tried looking away when it should have faced it head on. Cleansing, and not a cover-up, should have been the aim, and because this virus wasn’t cleansed; it remained benign for a while, but with the potential to turn malignant. The tumour wasn’t operated upon and, in 2013, Indian cricket paid the price for it yet again. The stakes were bigger, since the game is now a billion-dollar industry. As a result, the malignancy was even more potent and destructive.
The more immediate need, however, was taken care of. With a thrilling India–Australia series played out in March 2001, spearheaded by Sourav Ganguly, V.V.S. Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh, all of whom turned gladiators against the world’s best and most-feared cricket team, the game soon found its new redemption song. Good, we thought, had prevailed over evil. But history had another tale to tell.
REDEMPTION SONG: INSPIRE AND IGNITE
THE MIRACLE OF 2001
A few things are taken for granted when it comes to Indian cricket as we know it today. Irrespective of which part of the world the Indian team is playing in the team always has a huge crowd support backing them. In the World Cup match against South Africa in 2015, among the 87,000 spectators present at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), close to 85,000 were Indians. This wasn’t an aberration. In 2009, the then England captain, Paul Collingwood, famously alluded to this reality when fans booed his team as they made their way from the nursery ground to the main pitch at Lord’s to take on M.S. Dhoni’s India. The majority of the spectators, a disappointed Collingwood lamented, was supporting India.
The second thing we take for granted is the cash-rich nature of the sport in India. Indian cricket players are the highest-paid sports stars in the country and earn considerably more than cricketers from other nations. Some of them feature in the list of highest-paid sportspersons in the world. With the BCCI growing richer by the day, earnings of Indian players will only go up in the months and years to come.
Finally, we see an expression of India through the prism of cricket. Even at the cost of sounding dramatic, it must be said that the situation may be likened to a famous sequence in the Bollywood blockbuster Deewar. When Shashi Kapoor, a police officer with a meagre income, is asked by his more prosperous elder brother Amitabh Bachchan what he has to show for himself and all his efforts, a confident Kapoor says, ‘Mere pass maa hai.’ When we talk of India on the global sporting stage, it is this one sport where India rules. We have the best players, the best league, the richest board and the muscle to dominate world cricket, with England and Australia playing catch-up. Aggressive nationalism, a feature of contemporary India and one that defines the modern Indian youth, finds expression in cricket. This is what explains the humongous social media followings—most running into millions—of India’s leading cricketers, who are
considered symbols of a resurgent and aggressive modern India.
Each of these features, which define Indian cricket at the moment and have become integral to the game in India, are of fairly recent vintage. The BCCI was a loss-making institution till the early 1990s. The story of the financially robust board that we now take for granted is actually a two-and-a-half-decade-long phenomenon, more so of the last 15 years, starting with the Australia tour of India in 2001. With match-fixing having eaten into the edifice of the game, world cricket was faced with its biggest crisis in years. Advertisers who had invested huge amounts in the game were all of a sudden left with no option but to move away from cricket. While in other cricket-playing nations Olympic sports benefitted as a result, in India, the move away from cricket helped reality TV shows, for that’s where the advertising revenue went in the absence of any real competition from Olympic sports. Shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati, with the Hindi film industry’s megastar Amitabh Bachchan at the helm, was one of the prime beneficiaries of the match-fixing scandal.
Cricket, in 2001, needed new oxygen to continue as India’s foremost national passion. Faith of its fans had to be restored, and new fans needed to be brought in. The idea that India could continue to express itself through cricket needed to be reinforced. That’s exactly what happened with the India–Australia series, when cricket nationalism reached a crescendo at the back of some incredible on-field performances from the Indian team. Since then, cricket, it can be said, has never looked back as a sport, even in the face of the IPL spot-fixing scandal and subsequent judicial intervention.
The Australia team that was scheduled to tour India in 2001 had taken on and decimated the very best in the world. Having won 15 Test matches in a row, they were coming to India to conquer what captain Steve Waugh had labelled as the team’s final frontier. His was a team that can easily go down in cricket history as one of the best ever and the Indians, under newly appointed skipper Sourav Ganguly, were evidently the underdogs going into the contest. With Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble, India’s two best bowlers, out because of injury, the task ahead for Ganguly and his boys was monstrous. To get past the likes of Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist, India needed to make a very special effort. More so because there was no one on the horizon who could run through this famed Australian batting line-up. In the bowling department, Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz and Shane Warne were performing at their best. Considering the immensity of the challenge that lay ahead, batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and Ganguly himself needed to collectively punch above their weight to prove to be competition for the Australian team.
The first Test match in Mumbai was evidence of how good the Australians were. Riding on centuries from Hayden and Gilchrist, and terrific bowling spells from McGrath, Gillespie and Warne, Waugh’s team breezed past India inside just three days. ‘They were really good,’ says Ganguly, reminiscing about the opposition’s collective display of might. ‘We were left wondering how and what we needed to do to take them on. Seriously speaking, I was searching for answers. They had all their bases covered and we needed something out of the ordinary to happen to be able to beat them. And Kolkata [where the second game was played], in that sense, was a freakish Test match. If you seriously ask me how it happened and how we managed to get over the line in Kolkata after being 128/8 on day two, responding to Australia’s 445, I will have to tell you it was a miracle and it was [an] intervention from above. Such miracles rarely happen in cricket.’
Coming into Kolkata, not even the most ardent Indian fan had given the hosts a chance. Australia, it seemed, was fast imposing itself, and it was no contest. Yes, Harbhajan Singh had bowled beautifully in Mumbai, but, for a youngster, it was hard to believe how time and again he could strangle an Australian batting line-up considered the best side of all time.
Even at the Eden Gardens, all was going to plan for the Australians. At 252/4 on day one, Australia was poised to post a big total, much before Harbhajan accomplished the first miracle of the series: A hat-trick—the first Indian to do so. It was as if the massive Kolkata crowd had suddenly awakened from their slumber. A quiet stadium started to make real noise, and all of a sudden, it was a contest. India had staged a comeback and, if they could polish off the tail quickly, things could still happen for Sourav’s men. Unfortunately, for India, though, the tail wagged and Waugh farmed the strike quite adroitly to take Australia to 445, scoring a brilliant century in the process. For India, pitted against a buoyant Australian bowling attack, it was a tall ask. And when the top order collapsed for the third time in a row, it seemed that Australia would easily get to their 17th consecutive Test win—the first such feat by any team in world cricket.
India displayed some pluck on the third morning, thanks to Laxman, who scored a gritty 59 and was the last man to get out. Australia, leading by 274 runs, enforced the follow-on. ‘We had the measure of the Indians so far in the series and the bowlers were confident of doing it one more time. I had no hesitation in asking the Indians to bat again,’ says Steve Waugh, recounting the horror that was to follow.
In an inspired move, India decided to push Laxman to number three—a decision that transformed Indian cricket forever. ‘It was decided that the way V.V.S. batted [in the first innings], we were better off sending him at three. Rahul could bat at six, and it was something that could unsettle the Australians,’ Ganguly narrates with a smile. ‘But no one could anticipate what followed. Even when I got out and we ended day three at 254/4, it was Australia’s game. I have to say what followed was the best-ever partnership in the history of Indian cricket. We did not lose a wicket through the fourth day and scored 335 runs in the process. Rahul and Laxman were both on drips in the dressing room; by the end of it all, they had lost so much fluid. However, despite the exhaustion and the cramps, they kept backing themselves. Australia literally could not believe what was going on,’ recounts Ganguly.
Laxman’s 452-ball 281—his Sydney 167 in 2000 notwithstanding— marked his maturing as a cricketer. ‘I was batting well throughout the Test match and when asked to bat at three in the second innings, I must say I felt good about it. Here was an opportunity to make the most of the good form. As the partnership with Rahul progressed and we had scored a 100 together, we started to believe we could just carry on and on. We knew we had to play out the new ball and some key spells and that would put the pressure back on the Australians. The plan worked and though it was tiring, we kept pushing each other on because something really special was about to happen,’ mentions Laxman, sitting outside the very same dressing room at the Eden Gardens and reminiscing about the innings.
During the course of the innings, Warne was treated with disdain, and each time Laxman danced down the pitch to play against the turn through the off-side, the crowd erupted for him. The gladiator had his audience; a mass of humanity, who had started to believe in miracles, were on their toes. Australian shoulders had dropped by the end of day four, and it was clear that India would no longer lose the Test match. Winning the game would assume significance for the home side at so many levels. One, not only would it mean a victory against the mighty Australians, but also correspond to ending the opponent’s undefeated streak. Did anyone, however, really believe that the three-match series would go into the decider in Chennai, tied at 1–1? Perhaps not. Riding on Laxman’s 281 and Dravid’s 180—an answer to all his critics who had doubted his ability—Ganguly declared in the morning session of day five, setting Australia a target that most teams wouldn’t want to go for on a turning surface. This Australian team, however, was different. They were the best in the world and would never shy away from a challenge. Harbhajan was bowling the best he has ever bowled in his career and it was a contest every cricket fan who was there at the Eden Gardens would forever cherish.
The press box—it was my first time at the Eden Gardens media centre—was full of emotion. Australian journalists could not believe what they had wi
tnessed and still felt Waugh and his team could hold on. The Indian journalists, on the other hand, had finally found their voice. Quiet and sneered at for two days, they started to cheer every Australian wicket that fell.
When the Indians dropped Waugh just at the stroke of tea, it seemed a draw was the most likely result. The Australian captain went back unbeaten and, with seven wickets still remaining to be taken, it seemed a task too steep to accomplish even for Harbhajan, who was bowling like a man possessed. ‘The gods thought differently,’ says Ganguly, sporting a smile. ‘Moments after tea, Steve Waugh gave us another chance and this time, we did not mess up. With Steve out, we had started to believe it could be done. And when things weren’t happening for a while, I decided to go to Sachin just to try him out for an over or two. The plan was to keep things tight from one end and bowl Harbhajan right through from the other because he was my key weapon to pick wickets. Sachin, who always had the ability with the ball, bowled a magical five-over spell and picked three wickets, making it game, set and match for us. The googly with which he got Shane Warne out could have got any batsman in the world.’