The Ugliness of the Indian Cricket Fan

Consider the following excerpt from the chat client of an online cricket streaming website:

Desi_dude: INDIA WILL WIN TODAY!!!
Maakichoot: Sachin n Sewag will score century
ABC: bharat mata ki jai...angrezon ki gaand maro!
PakiBoy: Losers...totally overrated team.
Maakichoot: ur country is a loser...fuck off pig
Desi_dude: I WILL FUCK U SISTER PAKIBOY!!!

This exchange will sound typical for anyone who follows live cricket online. Now and then, the moderator intervenes to kick out someone from the chat room. But more often than not, such exchanges continue unabated on one side of your screen until you turn off the chat client. I certainly turn it off whenever I watch cricket. But that does not shut me out from the wider set of exchanges among Indian cricket fans that circulate in the virtual and real worlds. It must be admitted that I take a perverse interest in these exchanges, but only because they regularly demonstrate to me the ugliness of the modern Indian cricket fan, and more generally, the depressingly disgusting nature of metropolitan Indian life today.

After all these years of watching cricket, it is clear to me that most online viewers are males between 18 and 35. They watch mainly the games that India play. Usually, they cheer for boundaries and sixers. Occasionally, the bowlers receive praise, though they usually cop as much abuse as the opposition. Statistics offer solace and a sense of community: how else would you know that Virender Sehwag missed Gary Kirsten's record for the highest score by a batsman in a World Cup by fourteen runs? The slightest provocation, real or imagined, invites a torrent of four-letter words directed at Pakistan. English or Australian or South African teams fare slightly better for these young male viewers, partly because they offer alluring models of sporting success and partly because most of these viewers live in one of these countries or the US/Canada. Abuse invariably takes traditional North Indian forms of expression: mothers and sisters feature prominently, of course. Graphic descriptions of the female sexual anatomy, similarly, become the canvass for projecting fantasies of rape. Sexual aggression is closely allied to fervent nationalism: to win is to rape one's opponent's mothers and sisters. To win repeatedly implies total domination of others. This is, therefore, the goal of the typical online cricket viewer.

It seems easy to diagnose what's wrong here. These kids, some would say, need to be taught some manners. But I have no doubt that these viewers are lovely, well-mannered middle-class youth studying or working to further their mundane ambitions. And by their own admission, they eat and breathe cricket. Moreover, they view themselves as patriots defending the nation's pride at every opportunity. Their parents and families are surely proud of them. And they will grow up to be successful at work and financially. So what's wrong then? Am I just being curmudgeonly? Perhaps, but I'd argue that jingoistic nationalism stands for a wider malaise in modern India, and its implications for sports and life are equally pernicious.

Jingoistic nationalism is arguably the bane of modern sport. Orwell wrote of "war minus the shooting." But a tough sporting contest does resemble a war to its participants and a gladiatorial battle for spectators. It is only when politics that matter little to the sporting contest enter the fray that things get ugly. It is purely a matter of historical contingency that nation-states exist and that too in their present forms. The West Indies are not even a nation-state. England competes on its own instead of calling itself Great Britain. Both India and Pakistan have split into separate nations and cricket teams. Where is the need to get so riled up over national identities and rivalries? The IPL T20 tournament, modeled on the English Premier League, is divided into ten franchises, each associated with an Indian city. Supporting one's favorite cricketers across cities is commonplace there. Yet the Indian cricket team is the object of endless praise and ridicule, agony and ecstasy.

This paradoxical state of affairs is understandable only if we see the wider context for nationalist assertion over the past decade or so. The idea that India is a global superpower-in-the-making haunts the urban imagination. There is a restlessness, bordering on insanity, that desires a never-ending stream of glory and wealth. The metropolitan Indian obsession with the national GDP and its growth rate are worth noting in this regard. There are global cricket rankings, much like there are global GDP rankings, and success is defined narrowly as rising up the rankings. The anxieties and insecurities of the rising middle classes in urban India thus get projected onto sport. Personal anxieties intertwine with national ones, and a toxic mix is produced indeed.  For those living outside India, the problem is even more acute: the louder and more brashly one expresses one's love for one's country/culture/civilization, the more nationalistic one imagines oneself to be. A seamless garment knits together personal aspirations and anxieties with the desire to assert civilizational pride and national success. Do not be surprised to hear about "black Madrasis," "Habshis," or "Aussie convicts" when watching cricket. They are part and parcel of the new Indian identity: vulgar, insecure, and rotten to the core.

The wider post-liberalization context of jingoistic nationalism in India today goes far beyond Orwell's notion of sports as a kind of war between nations. This is because it rests fundamentally on the sexual insecurities of young men who band together to participate in exhibitions of hyper-masculinity. Try watching a cricket match with a bunch of men in their 20s, and you'll know what I mean. "Mardangi" (masculinist assertion) holds the key to understanding the cricket fan's love of the motherland. For, in this view of nationalism, fighting for the nation means fighting for one's mother and land simultaneously. Logically, this kind of nationalism means destroying others' mothers and lands. Cricket victories are analogous to rapes and imperial conquests. All three terms (victory, rape, conquest) are used interchangeably in popular parlance. Asserting national pride goes hand in hand with a deep fear of what might happen if one were to lose a cricket match. Effigies are burned, cricketers are stoned, and their parents' homes vandalized or burned. Losing a match is akin to betraying one's nation and mother. The traitors must be punished for their crimes.

These extreme responses suggest deep-seated and unresolved sexual tensions in the minds of the male cricket fan. The graphic descriptions of the female body and violent sexual activity suggest more than a passing familiarity with the standard modes of pornographic representation of women. They represent a deep personal sense of sexual frustration/persecution or a thwarted desire to master the female body. The chasm between unsatiated lust and boundless desire accounts largely for the sexual politics of the jingoistic cricket fan. Winning is experienced as a bodily pleasure that partially offsets the frustrations of everyday life. The self and nation thus get braided together, and the desire for sexual recognition gets caught up with the quest for national glory in cricket and much else. The basic dictum for the Indian cricket fan thus appears to be "do unto others before they do unto you." In short, let's conquer the opponent on and off the field before they do the same to us.

When cricket or any sport is reduced to a mere assertion of jingoistic nationalism, does it really matter intrinsically? Can one really be so intent on personal/national conquest and yet admire a freakish leg-break or a sumptuous cover drive? I doubt it. The modern fan's experience of cricket is mediated more by statistics than ever before. This is obviously so for those who follow cricket in the form of text commentary on Cricinfo or the BBC. But even for those who watch on television, stats are constantly shoved down one's throat, but the viewers demand even more. Sehwag's average or Harbhajan's strike-rate have now become common knowledge. In an age of player auctions, these statistics are also an "objective" basis for evaluating cricketers. When I cast my mind back a couple of decades ago to the days of Mohinder Amarnath and Sunil Gavaskar, I shudder to think what might have occurred if those players were judged solely by their batting strike-rates or averages. Or if Ian Chappell's captaincy could be compared decisively to Clive Lloyd's after reducing both of them to a set of "objective" numbers. Statistics have always mattered in cricket, even in the nineteenth century, but they did not serve until recently as the principal basis for evaluating cricketers or experiencing the sport. And woebetide us all for the blight that rots our imaginations and blinds us to the many pleasures of the game.

All sport is, ultimately, a metaphor for life. It is meaningful only within the context of rules that seem entirely arbitrary and nonsensical to those who do not follow the sport. The virtues of fair play, courage, concentration, cunning, skill, athleticism, and leadership, to name only a few, are inextricably tied to sports. Cricket has arguably been an exemplar of sporting virtues insofar as its Victorian origins and colonial provenance made it a model of moral conduct long ago. As Thomas Arnold, the schoolmaster at Rugby told Tom Brown a century and a half ago, cricket is more than a sport, it's an institution. Cricket is a demanding game for a viewer. There are many moving parts, so to speak, and for the most part, the movement is rather slow. The extraordinary feat or heroic performance is the exception to the humdrum rhythms of bat and ball. Cricket's rules, too, are perhaps more complex than any other sport. Try teaching cricket to an American, and you will realize soon that the game is meant for men and women of higher intellectual qualities. This does not, of course, make it a patrician affair, since the plebs have always taken a keen interest in outdoing their social superiors at batting and bowling alike. As one social historian put it, had the French noblesse played cricket with their serfs, they would not have had their chateaux burnt. If sport is a metaphor for life, then cricket is a most intricate metaphor to unravel.

Still, millions have unravelled the metaphor of cricket. The English aristocracy has always had a tender spot for the underdog, so it is hardly surprising that cricket has never been an exclusively bourgeois sport. Working-class Englishmen, and later, colonials in the Caribbean, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent partook of the myriad joys of the game. To deceive one's colonial masters with a well-bowled googly or to impress the patricians at Lord's with a century has always been a key part of the game. It is wrong to believe that the spread of the game to the postcolonial world has rid cricket of its peculiar virtues. It has only broadened the range of skills and talents exhibited on the cricket field. It is hard to imagine cricket today, for instance, without the definitive contributions of the West Indian teams of the 1970s and 1980s. In India, the spread of the game beyond a small princely elite have given us the likes of Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Anil Kumble, and Mohammed Azharuddin. Most of our cricketers today come from fairly humble backgrounds, outside the big metropolitan cities, and work hard to hone their cricketing skills and achieve fame for their exploits on the field.

My own introduction to cricket came from a man born and raised in Bankura in West Bengal, who came to work in Calcutta, as it was called then, and kept alive his passion for the game by transmitting it to others such as myself. Joydeb knew the value of Dean Jones' quick singles, David Gower's stylish on-drives or Inzamam's towering sixes. He knew the personal idiosyncrasies of every player even before he had set eyes on them on television. Radio commentary had told him all he needed to do about Richards' imperious manner or Srikkanth's twitchy nose. Once, on a trip to Eden Gardens, he had found himself surrounded by nearly a hundred thousand  Bengalis cheering wildly for Kapil and Azhar. He couldn't make out most of what happened on the field, but he remembered Chris Lewis, the forgotten English all-rounder outdo the much-touted Pringle and Botham with a century and a bagful of wickets. It reminded him, he said, of the manner in which he had imagined Alvin Kallicharan sent the hapless Indian bowlers on a leather hunt all those years ago. On another occasion, Joydeb despaired that the rain-rule in one-day games needed to be revised drastically so that it could be a fairer contest for the team batting second. He rued the 1992 World Cup semi-final between South Africa and England as a classic example of justice denied. And he despaired that Kapil Dev had prolonged his career needlessly to overtake Richard Hadlee's bowling record.

Richie Benaud or Neville Cardus could not have understood the game better. Joydeb knew and loved the game without malice or contempt for anyone. I sometimes wonder nowadays what he might have made of the IPL or T20 cricket more generally. I cannot tell, to be honest. But I do know that he'd have detested the ugly jingoism that the Indian fan brings to the game today. It is true that he enjoyed an Indian victory on the back of some fine performances by his favorite players, Kapil and Azhar. But it did not happen often, less so outside India. To see, however, Viv Richards or Shane Warne in action was, for him, a marvel to behold. That men could push the frontiers of possibility by batting or bowling the way Richards or Warne did, seemed to him to be the primary reason for following the sport. No matter what we do or how much we earn, there is an unspeakable sense of exhilaration every time one's hero comes to bat or bowl. Words cannot capture what the mind and heart do instinctively. In those brief, flickering moments, the world comes alive with wondrous possibilities, and all else is forgotten. But when the hero is caught at slip or smashed for six, you sigh and realize they -- and you -- are mortal, after all. Therein lies the magic of sport. I can only feel sorry for those who can never experience it. 

Bring on the Ashes!

If you're waiting as eagerly as me for the Ashes to begin, read on. The English media is understandably buoyant about their team's chances. The Aussies are under massive pressure, especially after failures against India and Sri Lanka. Yet pundits are split on who'll win: Ian Chappell reckons Australia should scrape through with a 2-1 win, while Shane Warne leads the pack of trojan horses within the Australian camp; of course, the English are cautiously optimistic about their chances.

As a neutral in this mouth-watering contest, I wondered whether one could pen down some definite indicators of what lies in store for us this winter:

1) Over 80% of Tests in Australia yield results, so the odds of a 2-1 win are rather improbable. Let's say at least four of the five Tests will end in a result.

2) Australia's batting is roughly as strong as England's. The only problem is that Ponting and Hussey are in decline, and Clarke and North have underperformed massively over the past year or so. Watch out though for the opening duo of Katich and Watson as well as the lower middle order batting of Brad Haddin. If either Usman Khawaja or Callum Ferguson plays later in the series, I think they'll do better than North in the No. 6 position. It is possible that the Aussie middle order will crumble now and then, but expect them to pile on over 400 on good batting pitches such as Adelaide and Sydney.

3) England's batsmen have been in good form this month. The media keeps asking questions of Cook and Pietersen, but I doubt if either of them will score less than their career averages in this series. For me, however, Strauss, Trott, and Collingwood hold the key to England's batting hopes. They are solid in defense yet refuse to get intimidated by good fast bowling. The lower order of Prior, Broad, and Swann looks good for at least 100 runs in each innings. Think of what happened at Lord's earlier this year. In my view at least, lower-order batting gives England a slight edge: faced with a total of 300-350, they can reasonably aim for 400-450 in their first innings.

4) Australia's bowlers seem eager to take on the Poms. A juicy pitch under overcast skies at the Gabba will be to their liking, so the toss will be crucial on Thursday. I expect Siddle and Johnson to do better than they did last year in England. Hilfenhaus and Bollinger are, however, the bowlers to watch out for. Both have been Australia's best and most consistent bowlers over the past year and a half. I am not too sure about Xavier Doherty, Steve Smith or even the beleaguered Nathan Hauritz. I expect the spinners to concede over a hundred runs in the first innings of each Test. Honestly, I don't expect the Australians to bowl out England for under 200 in any innings, and I do think we've seen how hard it is in recent times for the Aussies to pick up 20 wickets. Unless something change dramatically, I see good honest performances on the cards with the occasional burst, but no consistently series-altering spells from this attack.

5) England's bowlers, much like Australia's, will relish the pace and bounce at the Gabba and the MCG. For flatter tracks such as those in Sydney and Adelaide, Swann and Broad will hold the key to England's chances, especially when it comes to slicing through the middle order or polishing off the tailenders. Anderson is a fair-weather bowler, to my mind, and Steve Finn is an untested proposition. I worry that there isn't much back-up for these four in the post-Flintoff era. England's prospects of taking 20 Aussie wickets will depend as much on their matchwinners as their support bowlers. On livelier pitches, this won't be a problem, but I imagine tough passages of play in warmer, drier conditions when Ponting & Co. manage to get going. But all said and done, Swann's presence makes me favor England over Australia in terms of bowling.

6) Australia's performances at home since 2007 have been iffy. They won narrowly against India partly due to umpiring howlers from Steve Bucknor and chums. Then they trounced the Kiwis but lost to South Africa comprehensively. Last year, Chris Gayle nearly pulled off a drawn series for the lowly West Indies. And who knows what went wrong with Pakistan at Sydney this January? In the interim, Australia are no longer world conquerors abroad, but merely honest triers. On the surface, the record since 2007 at home reads: W 10 L 3 D 2. But no one is deceived by the string of victories against lesser teams. The Aussies are no pushovers, but they are definitely vulnerable.

7) England's away record has been pretty impressive recently. They won against South Africa and could so easily have beaten India at Chennai in 2008. The mini-setback against the West Indies is more than amply offset by strong performances against Bangladesh earlier this year. I'd take a close look at the South Africa series last winter for clues on how England play on hard, bouncy pitches. I wouldn't rule out stage fright for Anderson & Co., but this is certainly the best English team to arrive on Australian shores for a long time. Of course, they'd have lost to Australia in their prime under Waugh and Ponting, but this is a different challenge.

8) So, what's my prediction? Since I expect at least four results and a close series, I'd shortlist possible three results: 2-2 (if things get really close); 3-2 (if England manage to pip the Aussies at the post in a close series); 3-1 (if England romp home in Brisbane and beyond). Honestly, can Australia win two Test matches this summer? I'm not so sure unless something miraculous happens. Can England win three Tests? Yes, I'd say, watch out for Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney. So, I really doubt Ian Chappell's prediction of 2-1 in favor of Australia. There'll be more results for sure, and I don't think the Aussie bowlers are good enough to take 20 wickets for cheap on two occasions against a long, strong batting lineup.

In short, I'm sticking my neck out and predicting a 3-1 victory for the Poms!

The Return of Match-Fixing and Pakistan

Over the past week or so, I've been following, with much dismay, the slings and arrows directed at three young Pakistani cricketers, and by implication, the entire Pakistani cricket team and indeed, the entire Pakistani nation. The past few weeks have featured former cricketers, cricket officials, and fans making insinuations of the worst kind not just at the accused trio but at Pakistan as a whole. Michael Atherton opened proceedings by recommending an end to Pakistan's tour of England, and immediate punishment for the accused cricketers. He then went on to prescribe leniency for the 18-year old rookie paceman Mohammed Aamer on the condition that he was put on a rehab program. In other words, he prejudged, like many around the world, the guilt of the accused. Indian cricketers such as Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar sounded more diplomatic when they said that the guilty should be punished, but they seemed to imply that at least some cricketers were guilty of spot-fixing in the Lord's Test. The ICC President Haroon Lorgat made similar remarks when he banned Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer, and Mohammed Asif from further cricket until they were proven innocent of the charges against them. Apparently, there was adequate evidence to justify such a ban, despite the repeated official statements to the contrary.

What is, after all, the evidence? A sting operation that caught a sports agent caught taking money on camera, and some no-balls balled during a Test match. We, therefore, need to ascertain that (1) the News of the World journalist has not doctored tapes, and (2) there is a watertight argument linking the transaction caught on camera and events on the field. As experts and fans alike will recognize, even if (1) can be somehow proven, (2) is rather difficult to prove with the available evidence. To put it rather bluntly, the evidence is flimsy and the case is weak. I'm not a betting man, but if I were, I'd put my money on the trio playing cricket again pretty soon.

Now back to the allegations. I found them actually more revealing than the video evidence of spot-fixing. When Ian Healy, for instance, talked about the 1994 Rawalpindi Test and how Salim Malik might have been fixing it, he conveniently ignored the fact that his former Aussie teammates Shane Warne, Tim May, and Mark Waugh were co-implicated in that scandal. Moreover, amusingly, it is Healy's missed stumping of Inzamam that attracted the most suspicion on the final day of that Test match. So before one gets sanctimonious about Pakistan's cricketers and its incompetent board, why not take a closer look at the Australian cricket fraternity and its role in protecting Warne, May, and Waugh from scandal? Closer home in India, expectedly, morons are having a field day. Fan comments on cricket websites are a good indicator of the bigotry that blends brilliantly with sanctimonious sentiments. We are told that Indian cricketers are not like that. Yet almost every bookie accused until date has been an Indian; a former captain and many star players ended their careers after Justice Chandrachud found them guilty after extensive investigations; the most expensive tamasha in cricket, the IPL, may well be the most corrupt in the history of the sport. The subcontinent, with its massive market for cricket coverage, is thus, unsurprisingly, the hub of corruption in cricket. In a global age, of course, the corrupt spread their tentacles worldwide, but the creature itself lives and thrives in South Asia. In sum, those pointing a finger of suspicion at Pakistan alone should realize that there are three pointing back towards them.

A final comment must be reserved for the serial Pakistan baiters in public life. Former ICC President Malcolm Speed, whose chief claim to fame is the horribly organized 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean, urged the authorities to oust Pakistan from the cricketing fraternity. Now, Speed has a long history of run-ins with Asian cricketers and officials. But his opinion here resonates nicely with that of many elsewhere. Australian and Indian newspapers are full of similar remarks. The English, though more restrained, are pondering the deeper structural problems in Pakistani society that have caused the current debacle. Some editorial writers have even taken the liberty to connect the latest episode in the match-fixing saga with support for the Taliban, military dictatorship, Punjabi dominance within Pakistan, and Third World poverty in general. Presumably, the argument here is that poor Pakistanis, oppressed by Punjabi elites and military dictators in power, are turning to terrorism and corruption for succor. This is a patently absurd line of reasoning. If true, one would need to explain why the current recession in the North Atlantic world is not causing the poor and unemployed, oppressed by Washington and Wall Street, to turn to terrorism and corruption. But the analogy would be immediately deemed invalid, because Pakistan, in the eyes of the West and its lackeys in India and elsewhere, is in a category of its own. It is a pathology, an anathema to the civilized, and an ode to evil itself. Hence, every accusation and every allegation can be justified without evidence, and individuals are seen invariably as symptoms of a national malaise. Almost everyone and their grandmothers are now self-proclaimed experts on Pakistan, including some ignoramuses in my department. And woe betide the rest of us...

Much Ado About Nothing: The New Tradition Wars in Cricket

As the cricket season winds down in the Southern Hemisphere, two highly-charged issues have made the headlines for all the wrong reasons: umpiring and ball-tampering. The former is a long-running grumble among players and spectators alike, who are apparently torn between preserving "tradition" and getting more accurate umpiring decisions in matches. The latter is also a long-standing grumble, or perhaps a whine, made primarily by batsmen and batsmen-turned-administrators who invariably position themselves against bowling "cheats" as custodians of the game's hallowed traditions and morals. Whereas the indiscretions of umpires such as Mark Benson and Daryl Harper have brought the UDRS under the traditionalists' scanner, Shahid Afridi's recent ball-biting frenzy has outraged the holy cows pasturing on cricket fields or in living rooms. Nevertheless, I want to argue here that both issues are, overtly or covertly, the handiwork of cricket's conservatives, who use "tradition" as a red herring to somehow preserve a dysfunctional set-up that is nonetheless favorable to them.

Let's begin with the butt of many new cricketing jokes, the Umpiring Decision Review System (UDRS), which is supposed to have been available at all Test matches since 1 October 2009. (That this is not the case is basically due to the bullying tactics of the cash-rich Board for Cricket Control in India, who don't care much for the system.) The new system allows batsmen and bowlers to ask umpires to review their decisions if they believe they've gotten a raw deal. In order to prevent abuse and save time, every team is allowed at most two unsuccessful reviews per innings or four per Test match. So far, so good. The empirical argument favoring the new system is pretty clear now: the accuracy of decisions during the trial period in 2008-09 rose from 95-97% earlier to around 99%. What does that mean in real terms? Consider that there are 40 wickets in each Test, so if we reasonably suppose 2.5 appeals per wicket based on past experience, we have roughly 100 appeals per match. What the ICC is saying here is that the new system has reduced the average number of errors per game from 3-5 to 1. This is, I think, a pretty big deal. We are still not error-free, but we are getting closer to that elusive ideal using better and newer technologies as they now become available.

So what's the problem according to the defenders of "tradition"? For starters, some people in bowler hats and tweed suits are lamenting the good ol' days when the umpires, like schoolmasters, commanded real respect. The new generation, they and their colonial cousins say, are just going completely astray. I hardly need to point out that those who make such specious arguments invoking "tradition" are also pretty likely to look back fondly at the good ol' days of empire and white hegemony worldwide. I frankly don't feel the need to listen to such "people" (if that's what they are) seriously. But I do take seriously the argument that the game may lose a source of human touch. This is deceptively true insofar as it invokes Dickie Bird, Dave Shepherd, Venkat, etc, as wonderful characters that graced the game with their presence. But let's be clear here: people don't watch cricket to watch umpires! Let's also not forget that the actions of a "good" umpire named Steve Bucknor set in motion the UDRS trials in the first place. There is, however, a final and cleverer argument, that the UDRS is no more fair than the "traditional" set-up. Ian Chappell has made this argument most forcefully in recent times: unless, he says, there is justice for all under some new system, we should not be satisfied by justice for some. I disagree. Any new arrangement that reduces umpiring errors by 2-4% is a bloody more fair system than anything preceding it. I'm afraid my beloved Chappelli has it wrong here. His is sadly no more than an old-timer's rant against the ravages of time. We ought to listen respectfully from one ear and cast it out quickly from the other. "Tradition" is simply a red herring here for a range of people who, for varied reasons, do not want to accept with Tennyson that "the old order changeth, yielding place to new." Well, tough luck, chums! And goodbye...

Now let's turn to the global hullabaloo over Shahid Afridi's ball-tampering in Australia. The English and Australians are now grinning and saying "we always told you the Pakis are cheats." Indian fans, especially after the unfairness meted out to Pakistani players by Lalit Modi & Co., have found much to cheer with their usual mix of jingoism and sadism. The Pakistani public and media are, on the contrary, profusely apologetic in deference to good colonial custom: "Yes, sahib, we did big wrong. Please punish." Inzamam-ul-Haq was so shocked that he rushed out of the oblivion of his local sweetshop in Multan to denounce Afridi's "disgraceful" behavior, hoping no doubt that his captaincy at The Oval in 2005 will not be associated with the recent Perth incident. as part of a seamless narrative of dubious Pakistani morals. Yet there are the inevitable murmurs going back to Wasim and Waqar in 1993 or even to Imran and Sarfraz in the late '70s. Somehow, those who couch their arguments in terms of "tradition" have now rediscovered their voices to condemn Afridi, and by implication, Pakistani cricket.

Well, here's my honest response: bollocks! The defenders of "tradition" are almost all batsmen or former batsmen, who have been the old aristocracy of this sport since the days of W.G. Grace. The good doctor is rumored to have told an uppity opponent: "They've come to watch me bat, son, not to see you bowl." Bowlers are, not just figuratively, the working class yeomen of the game since the late 19th century. Pacemen like Fred Truman and Alec Bedser actually came from the coal-mining towns in the industrial north of England, so their talents were always offset by class prejudice in English dressing rooms by the snotty Oxbridge batsmen in their striped MCC ties. The class prejudice may have ended formally in English teams, but it lingers on worldwide. The balance between bat and ball has tilted to such an extent that a recent one-day match was called off after nearly half an innings simply because a couple of balls (out of nearly 150) threatened the Sri Lankan sissies at the crease. Pancake-flat pitches are, of course, very much the norm nowadays everywhere, though the complaints are muted because India's winning record abroad has improved in the flat-pitch era. The IPL is a ziggurat-like monument to this very prejudice in favor of the bat: sixes, not wickets, is what the public want to see. Oh really? Did Indian fanatics enjoy the thumping their team received from the bats of Hayden and Ponting in key tournament finals? Do the TRP ratings rise whenever the team batting first had piled up a billion-odd runs? Or do they actually plummet because the contest is effectively killed halfway through the game?

What we're dealing with here is blatant prejudice against bowlers. Declaring ball-tampering as an illegal activity reflects that ancient prejudice in a modern garb. Long before Imran Khan taught his proteges to "make" a ball, county cricketers knew and applied these workaday skills. Yet no one said much; it was simply assumed as part and parcel of the game. A year before he died, the wise Bob Woolmer wrote an earnest plea to bring these "dark arts to light" for two reasons: firstly, there is nothing inherently wrong in using naturally-available materials on a cricket field such as nails, sweat, lozenges, saliva, or even teeth to "work" on the ball; secondly, any activity under the present circumstances that evens out the balance between the bat and ball ought to be welcomed anyway. I quite agree. This is obviously not a "cultural" argument about Pakistani cricket, as Ramiz Raja has foolishly argued today, but a global one. The law ought to apply to everyone or none at all. Yet there is an addendum here about Pakistan. They are the perennial "bad boys" of the game, partly because Big Brother next door envies their cricketing skills and hates their guts, and partly because the former white custodians of the game find them to be easy target for their racism in a politically-correct age. Just like Pakistan has come to be associated with "terrorism" in the North Atlantic world, it has become associated with the sin of "ball-tampering" in the cricketing commonwealth. That this is unfair and discriminatory hardly takes a genius to realize. Yet surprisingly few people state the bleeding obvious (though there seems to be no scarcity of Modi-lovers among the cricketing fraternity or in corporate boardrooms).

To cut a long story short, we find here yet another attempt to re-define "tradition" to suit conservative interests in the game. In one case, it's the no-changers up to no good. In the other, it's the old batting aristocracy at it again! To both sets of conservatives, I offer a one-way discounted trip to Pluto. Until that happens, however, there are some serious wars to be fought over tradition in order to revitalize the radical currents that have always animated the game at its finest. Let's start by asking a couple of tough questions of the conservative defenders of "tradition." Do Lalit Modi's IPL and CL ventures, and the umpteen T20 leagues spawned by these initiatives, constitute "tradition"? Likewise, does the monopoly exercised by the Indian cricket board over the game's finances and administration constitute "tradition"? You can't play the "tradition" card only when it suits you. So next time you hear Ian Healy and his Channel Nine mates poke fun at Afridi and the Pakistan cricket team or lament the good ol' days of umpires, throw them some history books, or better still, some old videos of their own spotless conduct on the field, including respect for umpires. As for the fans, well, they're a bit like New Zealand or an old flaccid penis (both shaped similarly anyway): everyone knows they're down there, but no one gives a damn!

The Age of Heroes

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.