For a while now, I have thought of putting down my thoughts on the generation of cricketers who I grew up watching and who are now hanging up their boots. My excuse for not doing so is that I live a wanderer's life in which Internet access is an occasional luxury with which I indulge myself. But there is more to it: this note means letting go a cherished part of me. I have tried often to be prosaic about the changing times ("the old order changeth, yielding place to new" in Tennyson's words), but the soul does not accede to what the mind demands so insistently. Last month, I watched Tendulkar and Warne pit mind and body against each other for a few fleeting moments, and a million memories flashed before me. I knew then that I simply had to arrest these fleeting memories in the fixity of words.
My predicament is hardly new. That doyen of cricket scribes Neville Cardus assured us in the 1930s that every generation experiences it when their boyhood heroes pass into oblivion. It is almost as if the joy of cricket may itself pass into oblivion, says Cardus. Think of the magic of Lara's blade, rising high above his head and swishing past his body, depositing the restless ball to the cover boundary. Or the genius of Wasim Akram bowling six different balls in an over to many a confused batsman. Think of the brothers Waugh, grace and grit being the hallmark of their contrasting styles. Or Ambrose and Walsh, brothers in arms, frightening batsmen and mesmerizing spectators in equal measure with their deadly cocktail of brain and brawn. We shall never see them again. Nor shall we ever experience again that pure unalloyed joy of youth that these men gifted us. Read on only if you know what I mean. For only you can seek pursue that timeless question posed by the great Caribbean writer C.L.R. James, "What do they know of cricket who only know?"
I am biased sans any pretence of objectivity. Let me admit so at the outset. Writing about the cricketers of my generation is impossible without penning a paean to my hero Shane Warne. I never watched Bradman or Sobers play, but whenever I saw Warne practice his craft, I experienced a thrill that only genius can induce. I can shut my eyes now and imagine those wrists imparting a million revolutions on the ball, watched expectantly by the ill-fated batsman, who believes innocently that he's grasped the trick. Lulled into the illusion of confidence, he decides to play forward based on some coach's silly theory, but he finds to his dismay that the ball that's drifting into him falls just short of his naive bat. He hurriedly shifts to the backfoot, hoping fervently to correct his earlier mistake, but in his anxiety, he fails to spot the wicked spin that causes the ball to deviate from leg to off stump. Defending leg and middle, the batsman feels no obligation to defend off stump, and that folly of his ultimately leads to lead Warne's legbreak to crash into offstump. The bewildered batsman stares briefly in disbelief before trudging off the turf as the jubilant master of spin beams a smile from ear to ear. So often have I watched this sequence of events over the past fifteen years that it has come to be etched in my mind's eye. But the mind never tires of greatness, as Warne continues to demonstrate in the current IPL, and our hearts gladden just once more. Critics, those sour grapes, may wish to talk of Tendulkar & Co. unpacking the master's bag of tricks in '98, but they should be told that great men, like Roman generals, need someone to whisper into their ears that they are mortal after all. I know that some prefer that quiet plodder Kumble or the crooked flight of Murali, both great spinners without a doubt, but for me, the errant genius of my hero surpasses all. Three generations of cricketers from Mike Gatting through Daryl Cullinan to M.S. Dhoni will surely testify in my favor. Remember the World Cups in '96 and '99? Or the series against South Africa in '97 and the Ashes in '05? Could we ever forget? I think not.
It is nearly the same with the others who held sway in the Age of Heroes. They did not simply seek to entertain, as cheap bar dancers and Twenty20 players do. They ruled our hearts and minds. To appreciate their art was as much a cerebral task as it was a physical and emotional experience. Nowhere perhaps can this principle of artistic appreciation illustrated better than in the high-stakes contests between India and Pakistan. In the Age of Heroes, Pakistan almost always won. Let us recall the three men who hurt Indians the most after the imperialists departed the subcontinent. There was Saeed Anwar, my secret hero, who never missed an opportunity to upset the Indian applecart with his splendid mix of bloodymindedness and wristy strokeplay. For years, I secretly admired Anwar, supposedly the enemy, for his delightful flicks to square-leg and his rasping cover drives, all undertaken with no more than a subtle flicker of his wrists. Never have I witnessed such brutality been inflicted on a nation by so gentle an individual whose actions looked gentler still. That is the nature of great art, I tell myself, rising beyond the sweaty, mundane world of everyday into those ethereal heights that we can aspire to yet never attain. Even as twilight crept towards darkness, Anwar offered a masterful display of his art against India in the '03 World Cup, but it wasn't enough to defeat the old enemy, albeit for no fault of his. The Age of Heroes was drawing rapidly to its inevitable end, and our heroes were thus destined to fade away into cricket's Valhalla. And so did Anwar. My other two Pakistani heroes, Inzamam and Wasim, did so too, but not without leaving us an album of memories. Inzamam blithely flouted the unwritten norms of the age: his physical fitness reminded us rather more of Pavarotti than an athlete, his brutal bottom-hand shots were cloaked by silken elegance instead of resembling the routine violence of the present lot, and his calmness belied the pressures of modern professional sport. T.S Elliot once wrote, criticizing the modern tendency to see people as products of their age, that it is often ignored how much men must fight against their age to accomplish great deeds. If ever Elliot’s words applied to a cricketer, it would be for Inzy, who, much like Anwar, reserved his best for India. Even the most partisan Indian supporter must surely have felt that sense of awe and wonder that this man evoked in me. And finally, there was the greatest of them all, Wasim Akram. Now, when he chases money and women off the field for a living and Pakistan’s fast bowlers toil in pedestrian fashion, do we realize the true worth of his genius. Fast bowling has traditionally been dismissed by cricket’s elitists as a brawny affair, a working-class pursuit to be disparaged by gentlemen. Spinners have been regarded, however, as the possessors of wit and guile. Akram possessed a sharper wit than any bowler I have observed, barring Warne of course, but he was also a marvelous athlete capable of producing astounding bursts of speed from his short run-up. No sane person, least of all Indians, could afford to dismiss Wasim bhai as just another bowler: he tormented them, alongside Imran and Waqar, in ’89, and reached glorious heights ten years later in the cauldron of Chennai. I am quite certain that he helped fix many a match, but that only reminds us that genius too can be flawed. What would Pakistan not give up today to regain cricketers of the caliber of Anwar, Inzy and Wasim? But alas, time is cruel, and pray though we might, we shall never again witness the art and passion of these heroes. Their reign nonetheless continues unabated in the kingdom of our hearts.
Some may wonder why Indian players do not feature prominently in my list of heroes. Perhaps it is because most of them have made little impression on me. I cannot abide to watch the workmanlike efficiency of a Dravid or the stoicism of Sachin. To watch Dravid bat is like watching a carpenter saw wood day in and day out. Sachin's problem is different: he bears the heavy burden of greatness, and no matter how great his achievements, they always seem to be expected from someone as gifted as him. Nor did I ever feel thrilled watching Anil Kumble or Javagal Srinath. The latter took the better part of a decade to learn that pitching the ball up is the way to get wickets, but nonetheless continued until the end to dish out short-pitched deliveries for batsmen to feast on. Kumble is another matter: statistics and perseverance are only two aspects of greatness, but genius requires exceptional skill that Jumbo never possessed. Are there no heroes, in my view, from India then? That would be blasphemous, for which reason I have inducted Azhar, my favorite Indian cricketer, into my personal hall of fame. It is not so much Azhar’s captaincy on doctored home pitches that interests me, but his dazzling wristwork. Words are futile in describing the magic of his wrists and the elan that he brought to the crease every time he took stance with his drooping amulet. I recall an afternoon at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta, when Azza, against the run of play, stroked a whirlwind hundred of sixty-odd balls in the company of the No. 9 batsman. In the next match at Kanpur, he scored an even bigger hundred and helped India win for the first (and to date only) time against the mighty South Africans. As I watched Azhar bat, I felt that his art exceeded the grasp of us mere mortals: a ball outside off could be laced through cover for four, we knew, but Azhar taught us that the same ball could also be flicked with elastic wrists to the midwicket or long-on boundaries. And there was more. He was arguably the greatest catcher, especially at first slip, India ever had. His raised collar and unbuttoned shirt became the style of many a young cricketer growing up in India during the '90s. That he fell prey to the lure of money should not count against his inimitable style of play. For his life demonstrates vividly the lesson of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that even the best of men are drawn ever so often to evil and succumb occasionally too. That is the nature of tragedy. We may ponder if we wish what-might-have-been for Azhar, had he not fixed matches or been caught doing so, but doing so would prevent us from appreciating the tragic character of his art, by which I shall always remember him.
Aren’t we forgetting another gentleman whose exploits have captivated and inspired spectators in India and abroad like no other, that princely imposter Sourav Ganguly a.k.a. Dada? Both his bravado and his silken cover drives often made one forget that this rogue of a cricketer hailed from India. In a country where right-handness, batting with a dominant bottom-hand grip, and a preference for the legside are the norms, Dada stood out as an exception. His debut hundred at Lord’s in ’96 marked the start of a spectacular career of arguably India’s greatest one-day opener and most successful captain in all forms of the game. Again, at Lord’s, six years later, he would lead India to a thrilling victory with boisterous, bare-bodied celebrations that had the purists squirming. Yet Ganguly was no show-pony in the Sreesanth mold. He was among those rarest of Indians who thrives in adversity, be it on debut at Lord’s or on his comeback after being ousted controversially in ’05. Undoubtedly, his finest Test knock in ’03 came in Brisbane, where he outshone his famed peers on a fast, bouncy track and set the tone for a breathtaking assault on Steve Waugh’s Aussie fortress. Never a man to be kept down, Dada believed in taking the fight to the opposition. He cared little for those sweet nothings in which middle-class Indians specialize, and lost no opportunity to stick his fingers into the eyes of his opponents. Yet there was always an aura of greatness that prevented his actions from acquiring any cheap connotation. Boycott’s princely epithet did make sense, but it neglected the streetfighter named Dada. Perhaps the greatest compliment we can pay him is to acknowledge that, without Ganguly the batsman and the captain, Indian cricket would have continued to wallow in the mire of mediocrity it had generally chosen for itself. He made us believe we could be world-beaters after all.
Whenever we talk of world-beaters, we are compelled to mention the team of heroes that scaled peaks higher than any before them, surpassing even Bradman’s Invincibles of ’48 or Clive Lloyd’s Caribbean Conquerors. The Australian era of world domination under Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting has now ended, but can one ignore the superb brand of attacking cricket they pioneered? Hayden and Langer bullied opening bowlers around the world, their star-studded middle order comprising the likes of the Waugh twins, Ponting, Martyn, and Lehmann consolidated with clinical efficiency before the swashbuckling Gilchrist smashed the opposition to bits and the dynamic duo of Warne and McGrath made rivals regret they played cricket for a living. It is pointless talking of any one of these great men for each ought to be seen as part of a coherent whole that took Australian cricket to lofty heights around the turn of the millennium. The Australians strung together a record sequence of 16 successive Test wins on two separate occasions, and won an unprecedented three successive world cups. But there is much more than merely statistical records. No team failed to suffer at their hands. If Bangladesh took the game to newer lows every time they played, the Australians continuously raised the standards of the modern game. Superb athletic fielding, safe slip catching, running between the wickets, power-hitting, fast yet accurate bowling, and fiendish spin bowling: in short, a complete package of greatness. But now the package has been unraveled, and lesser mortals have entered the fray, reminding us that change in cricket, as in life, is inevitable even if the present struggles in vain to match the glorious past.
And can we forget the swashbuckling Sri Lankans of the ‘90s? Led astutely by the rotund Ranatunga, the side boasted a galaxy of batting stars who tormented bowlers across the world. Aravinda da Silva, nicknamed Mad Max by his teammates, cut and pulled with the same mix of élan and disdain with which he dispatched spinners across the fence. Little Kalu humbled many a Goliath with his adventurous brand of batting that reinvented the one-day game in the mid-nineties. Ranatunga himself could be more than a useful batter in his day, sealing many a Sri Lankan win with his calm manner. But my favorite was, of course, the Marauder from Matara, Sanath Jayasuriya. Although he put the Indian attack to sword on many an occasion, my last memory of Jayasuriya will be his assault on Manoj Prabhakar in the ’96 World Cup. Poor Prabhakar felt compelled to bowl off-spin, which wasn’t enough to keep his place in the side. Mediocres such as Venky Prasad, Dominic Cork, Mervyn Dillon, and Pommie Mbangwa suffered at his hands. So too did stalwarts such as Akram, McGrath, and Ambrose. In addition to his batting, Sanath dazzled us with his electric fielding and choked opposition batsmen with his fast left-arm spin bowling. At 40 today, he remains a pale shadow of his former self, but still remains the best opener in Sri Lanka by some stretch. Heroes are called so because their brilliant feats cannot be matched by us ordinary folks. By that token, Jayasuriya stands comfortably at the top of the pile, always a swashbuckler, always a genius.
You may wonder why we should remember men, however heroic, who have departed from the playing fields, and whether we should instead look forward to the young guns of today. In India, at least, there is much support for this presentist perspective. But I beg to differ. I do so partly out of that naïve blend of affection and admiration that teenagers reserve for their idols, but also from an awareness that the deeds of our heroes will not be surpassed quite so easily by others. There may never be another Lara or Akram. There never has been nor will there ever be a team as dominant as Steve Waugh’s all-conquering Australians. We are drawn too much by such pseudo-philosophical writers as Milan Kundera to believe that we must resign ourselves to live with an unbearable lightness of being in the present because there is no possibility of a Nietzschean return to the past. I wish to express my dissent forcefully to this line of thinking. We may not physically return to the past nor may we be forever young, but in keeping alive the vivid memories of our teenage heroes, we can certainly ensure a measure of immortality for them. In this spirit, I happily bear the Sisyphean burden of memories left behind by bygone heroes. Just as cricket, the colonial sport par excellence, has been transformed by postcolonials, the “natives” of yore, imposing their own stamp of identity upon it, we too can transform the unbearable lightness of our being into a delightful bundle of joyous memories to be savored forever.
