Of cricket nostalgia and the appreciation of sport
The year was 1991 and we’d just adopted a dashing brown stray dog and unimaginatively named him Brownie.
I loved Brownie to bits. Being a child who was growing up without a sibling or a mother or a television (not necessarily in that order of importance), it was fabulous to come back home to a pup who would love you like crazy. You could feel his affection in every lick. Life was good.
A few months later, the 1992 World Cup started and since we didn’t have a TV at home, we listened to radio commentary for hours on end. That was until, a neighbor who upon seeing my enthusiasm in talking all things cricket, invited us to his home early morning to watch the India Australia match.
India was chasing 230 odd and Azhar had gotten us to the doorstep of victory. Australia’s regular glove-man Ian Healy wasn’t available for the game and David Boon was keeping wickets. The elders and those few kids along with whom I was watching, thought it to be a good thing.
‘Boon will surely give us 4 byes,’ said a cricketing sage from among us, sitting nearby on an armchair.
‘He isn’t half as good as Healy,’ chimed another.
The last over began with India needing 13 off 6. Kiran More got us two boundaries of the first two balls and then got out. David Boon didn’t give us any byes and as Moody (or Whitney, my memory fails me here) came in to deliver the last ball with 4 needed, all that stood between the Aussies and victory were two gentle South Indians -Venkatapathy Raju and Javagal Srinath.
Srinath was on strike and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that India were well and truly on the mat. And right then Javagal Srinath launched into the biggest cricketing heave of all time. He swung his bat right into the cow corner, over mid-wicket, with such force that for a second we worried that his lithe arms would sever themselves from his gaunt frame.
The camera stayed up following the ball for a long time. There was good reason, I repeat, very good reason to think that the impossible had happened until the ball eventually caved into gravity and the camera panned to a certain Steve Waugh waiting on the very edge of the thick boundary rope.
I remember this like this was yesterday. The ball flew into Waugh’s hands, like there was a magnet attached to them. But this was the kind of match that ICC World Cup 2019 has been totally devoid of. We are talking of twists of Machiavellian proportions because what happens next is that Mr. Cool, Mr. Calm., Mr. Collected Steve Waugh DROPS the fucking lolly!
India is BACK in the game.
Our eyes implore for the camera to be taken back to pitch. By now, there is mayhem in this neighbor’s house. It doesn’t help that this is a Bengali joint family from Calcutta. They live to cheer their side passionately from the stands and this Indian team is obviously like Mohun Bagan, Mohemmaddan Sporting and East Bengal rolled into one.
They howl and scream, egging our players to run as if Raju and Srinath in the heart of Brisbane can hear these cries from Vidyadhar Nagar in Jaipur. Meanwhile Mr. Cool, Mr. Calm, Mr. Collected Steve Waugh grabs the dropped ball and darts it back to the strikers end. Raju is almost there. We see him stretch as much as he can, living off the nutrition that his Mom had prescribed for him because you know well, 1992.
It’s a reasonably good throw but it is also bad enough to keep both sides in suspense. The ball lodges itself into the gloves of a David Boon and that man who we were all banking on to give us a loose bye or two, is the one to stab that bail into the coffin of an Indian defeat.
Everyone’s devastated, not to mention hungry because in the middle of all this no one has served us the promised elixir of breakfast.
I run back to my home without saying as much of a thank you to the kind uncle. I force the gate open and rush inside my house. I can feel the humiliation of that loss from a singular run. Or to be more specific, we fell short by a singular stride. It is a burning sensation within my gut I can’t get rid of. It hurts.
I live with that burn all day through, made much worse because we lose Brownie too that very afternoon. I’d left the gate open and that loveable rascal, always on the lookout for an extra biscuit wanders off. Hours of combing through those Jaipur roads doesn’t yield a trace and there are no Facebook or Whatsapp groups back, because well 1992.
It would’ve been a harrowing day for even an adult so you can imagine what I felt not just being on the losing side as a fan but also losing my only companion and my first dog. Years later, I’d realize that was the day I became a fan of cricket in particular and sport in general because inexplicably, the fact that we couldn’t tie that game hurt a tad bit more than losing Brownie.
I continued my fascination for the sport well into adulthood. I played competitive leagues, appeared for a state trial here and there and when I failed to become a cricketer, I continued to be the biggest geek I could be around the sport. In 2005, I appeared for an ESPN Commentary Contest, that took me to within touching distance of a new career in sports broadcasting. I’d have had to leave my MBA if it came around. I didn’t even think twice. I was willing to give up my MBA to come close to the game. But I couldn’t get a silly passport organized in time and had to bow out of the final 14.
In 2007, I appeared for the same contest again. I came within touching distance again and this time was legitimately eliminated in a true reality-show like situation from a round of 16 this time.
I memorized all sorts of trivia and participated in any sort of quiz I could attend. Cricket opened up my world to sport and sport helped me understand the wafer-thin margins that lie between the vanquished and the victor and how these outcomes of triumph and disaster are indeed the greatest imposters of our lifetime, Rudyard Kipling(and SW19) remind us.
This concept of the outcome of a game being immaterial took a while for me to get my head around to. It’s not something every fan is comfortable with- the notion that one can enjoy sport without caring for who wins. And in that I wonder if we miss appreciating the beauty of a sporting duel, if we take sides, in every set and every game and every match that we see. You can diss the philosophical depth of Seinfeld but here’s an exchange from a Seinfeld episode, I came across a couple of years ago.
The setting is Jerry’s living room and a baseball game is on the telly.
George (wild celebratory mood, fist-pumping): ‘We won, we won, we won!’,
Jerry (munching a sandwich): Well, you saw. They won.’
I wasn’t exactly gutted or had anything much to think or say in India’s last loss to England at this year World Cup for instance. Daggers were out for our middle-order and spinners on Twitter and everywhere else and all I could think of was that England played really well and the outcome was kind of immaterial. Of course, we will have our favorite teams and sprinters and strikers and ball players and pugilists but sport can play so much of a larger role if its role in uniting people is brought forward a notch more. The moment of the World Cup so far for me has been that little pat Steve Smith left for Virat Kohli after the latter had just asked the Indian fans to show some respect.
It has begun to strike to me as incredibly stupid, for example the supremacy chatter battles between fans of EPL clubs and those that turn into brawls in pubs and stadiums and remember, I am the same guy who thought losing a match was worse than losing your pup.
Maybe it’s the inevitable wisening that followed but it is much more relaxing to enjoy sport this way even though I get that this isn’t for everyone. Or maybe it’s a closure that I found in another cricket match years later after that fateful match between Australia and India that I had witnessed as a nine-year old.
In 2008, I participated in an online quiz I saw on Cricinfo and after a few days I was couriered the prize for being the Grand Prize winner across India. Little did I realize that that prize for this quiz was two match tickets for the second final of the ongoing Tri-Nation CB Series in Australia. It was a landmark year because Cricket Australia had announced that this would be the last tri-series and it was made even more special because India made the finals.
India had won the first game and the word around cricketing fans the world over was that Australia was gonna come back very hard at India in the second. A friend and I packed our bags and landed in Australia almost sure that the Kangaroos would win the second game. Australia after all had a vice-like grip on this format winning most (if not all) of the previous editions of the tournament.
As luck would have it, India were indeed run very close but in a true cliffhanger finish, we won the second game by a thin margin of 9 runs. Thus, there I was in the same city where that devastating loss had taken place in my childhood-Brisbane- standing tall and proud this time amidst much bigger and brawnier Australians fans with an Indian victory to brag about.
It’s strange how I got united with sport and its whims at that exact ground in 2008 that had 16 years ago, played a role in my first heartbreaking step as a cricketing fan.
I never found Brownie again but I think in 2008, I had found closure for 1992.
While I am not the same rabid fan anymore, I am going to pause here, simply because Angelo Mathews in his fading years, in the time I have written this, has scripted a wonderful World Cup hundred against India and I just have to sit back with a beer and admire it for all its worth.
