Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer: Sujit Mukherjee

Eleven reasons why Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer can lay claim to being one of the best cricket books ever written, probably the best by an Indian.

1. For not trying to explain India through cricket or to glorify cricket as a unifying force, as the opium for the masses. Sujit Mukherjee sees cricket as, wait for this, cricket.
2. For keeping the focus on the game, and the references to politics and power plays to the minimum, helped, no doubt by the fact that Bihar was not quite (and doesn’t look likely to ever be) a cricketing hotspot like Mumbai or Chennai.
3. For not trying to build or defend the author’s cricketing image. This was perhaps easy because while Sujit went on to represent Bihar in the Ranji Trophy, he was not a star cricketer.
4. For not name dropping. Notwithstanding point 3 above, Sujit has rubbed shoulders with the odd well-known name in Indian cricket. He writes about these in a wonderfully matter-of-fact manner, even the fact that he managed to tonk CS Nayudu for a few in an unofficial game in Kolkata in 1952 gets only a matter-of-fact coverage.
5. For the kind of insight he offers, almost by the side. Like when he conjectures on why Patna University fails repeatedly.
   

   One reason I thought was that our cricketers were so used to playing against one another that they got utterly out of depth when facing unknown opposition.

   Is it to overcome this problem that the English County Board allowed overseas cricketers in the county circuit? And then took it to the next level with the Kolpaks?
6. For faithfully reporting on local cricket from the U.S. – it turns out to be more interesting than the oft-repeated stories of Americans trying to understand the game.
7. For enabling you to read without having to refer to poetry books or lengthy literary classics. With no disrespect to those who adopt that style of writing, there is a certain sincerity that emerges from simple writing – Unknown Cricketer is a good example of this. This is all the more creditable considering Sujit was an English professor – surely he would have read some classics.
8. For, despite his fairly successful writing life, referring to it so unselfconsciously.
   

   An occasional writer of articles (like me) can never get over the fact that he is read. As for the rare writer of books (again like me), he can scarcely believe that he is purchased.

9. For the illuminating way in which he describes the selection trials for the Bihar state team. In three sparse and succinct pages, he reveals how the game is run in the country. I don’t think things have changed much even now, sixty-three years on.
10. For this passage, comparing watching a game at the ground and watching a game on television.
    

    Unavoidably, a sense of loss persists. The telecast shows me only what the cameraman wants to show; the telecommentary tells me only what the commentator is capable of telling, much of it pointless. Large chunks of the match, and not only of play, are left out completely; small chips of play are shown magnified beyond proportion of their significance.

11. For being only 168 pages long. And yet not sounding hurried.

Duality to trinity

Long has test cricket been referred to as the “longer form of the game.” Now, thanks to Twenty20, the media has begun referring to it as “the longest form of the game.” Well I never…

So does that mean that the language of the game will have to change? May be not all of it, but yes, cricket writing and commentating will have to jettison some oft-used expressions from the past and find new ones. Much like the game itself, the vocabulary also needs some refreshing. Which is just as well – it may help eliminate some trite, tired and over-used expressions. However, the phrase-challenged pundit may just find it a bit tough for a while.

Classical economists for whom cricket is a second love can no longer say “on the one hand, and on the other” because they now need a third hand to hold up the new baby. Unless, of course, one day cricket dies out (as some cricket futurists have forecast) and we return to the old economy again.

Old English scholars who write about cricket in their spare time will have to resist using expressions like “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” when referring to the similarities between test cricket and one-day cricket. Of course, they can extend it and say “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander but not for the swan” but that’s not quite as succinct as the original, is it?

While the formality of the toss will perhaps remain unchanged, bean counters need to toss out terms like “two sides of a coin” when referring to the forms of the game. They can become philosophical, though, and refer to the three forms as “two sides of a coin, plus the truth”, thus setting into motion an interesting argument on what truth is.

Punters will continue to play an invisible part of the game in all its forms, but the game is not a “two-horse race” any more. And you can be sure no one will bet against it.

The pedantic commentator can no longer use trite expressions like “the long and short of it”, and that is the long and short of it.

A “tale” of two coaches

I am not much of a magazine reader, except for Cricinfo Magazine. And if my newsagent is to be believed, it is probably going out of circulation. That would be a real shame, but that is not the reason for this post.

On a lark, I picked up the latest copy of Outlook, a general interest magazine in India. And it carried an opinion piece that made me wonder whether I was missing out anything at all by not reading magazines.

The piece is titled Only One Bully Here, and it compares Greg Chappell, the former Indian coach who led India nowhere in the Cricket World Cup, and Kabir Khan, who coached India’s women hockey team to victory in the World Cup. Before you begin to wonder when India won the Women’s Hockey World Cup, Kabir Khan is the hero of the Bollywood film title Chak De India. And while the author admits at the beginning that the comparisons “seem almost ludicrous,” he goes ahead and does a serious job, analyzing “how and why the two men achieved such different results, how both tried similar lines of attack, but one ended up with a triumphant smile and the other left his job in absolute disgrace.”

Well, there is a simple reason the results are so different – one is real life and the other is reel life. The rest of the reasoning is purely a function of that. Kabir Khan can afford to tell his prima donna Bindia, “this team can have only one bully and that’s me,” and it is sure to have the right impact because the film’s director would have scripted Bindia’s response appropriately. But if Chappell had tried the same with Saurav Ganguly, who would have played director?

I kept checking back and forth to figure out whether the article was written tongue-in-cheek, but it does not seem to be. One possible opportunity could be to get the film’s director to coach the Indian cricket coach (if and when there is one). Except that the person will have to coach the Indian players also to get them to respond appropriately to the coach. And the opposition so they fall for the coach’s plans and let India win.

I don’t think I’ll pick up another magazine in a hurry.

Comparison or . . .

As the India-England series gets underway, the media is awash with the expected admixture of nostalgia, all-time team lists, predictions and hopes, speculations on individual head-to-heads, wishes, superlatives and hype. And that one activity that cricket writers can never tire of – comparisons. Among the recent is the one comparing Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid on Times Online.

Much has been said against comparisons. They are odious, they are speculative, they are unfair, they are biased, they do not consider context appropriately, numbers aren’t everything… the rants go on. Of course most of this is true. But does that mean we stop doing comparisons?

Cricket, or for that matter any other sport (or entertainment even), loses a lot of its charm if you don’t compare players – within teams, across teams, across generations, across different forms of the game (I don’t remember reading a piece on whether Tendulkar in whites is better than Tendulkar in coloured clothing, but I’m sure there is one, or may be more than one)… the comparison parameters can be endless. And so can the debates.

Can you even talk cricket for any meaningful length of time without making comparisons?

For the rabid Tendulkar fan, Sachin is the No. 1 player, only because there are others who takes up slots No. 2 downwards. Which is comparison in itself, isn’t it?

For the Statsguru seeking number cruncher, Mutthiah Muralitharan is the best spin bowler in the world because his average is better than any one else’s. In his mind, there is no, er, comparison.

For the cricket-crazy connoisseur, David Gower is a better batsman than, well, any one else you care to name, for reasons only another cricket-crazy connoisseur can understand. What a waste that connoisseurship if he can’t make statements like that?

Of course, a comparison piece in the media is bound to evoke counter-arguments and denials, heat and fury. One reason for that is perhaps that a comparison is a personal opinion, so people react strongly when a journalist (who, for the most part, is expected to be fair and neutral) indulges in a comparison piece.

But may be there is more to it. Any comparison is not likely to find more than fifty per cent of readers supporting it; the other half are likely to go the other way. And what good is a comparison if it does not invoke that polarisation? And what good is a comparison if you do not get an opportunity to counter it?

Compared to a comparison, what would you rather have?

cricinfo.espn

June 11 was quite a mixed day for cricket-related alliances. It was a day on which one potential alliance came unstuck while another, perhaps more important, got inked. Just as Graham Ford was reaching the conclusion that Kent was more attractive than India as far as coaching jobs are concerned, ESPN announced its acquisition of Cricinfo. In a sense, it is a logical move, a coming together of two unquestioned leaders – one in the television medium and the other in the online space. Enough will be said about the synergies, the challenges, the culture clashes and the like. So let me ponder over something else.

Cricinfo editor Sambit Bal, in an eloquent letter to the site’s readers, admits that one of the big reasons for the move is the fact that the site needs, “let's not be coy about it, fresh investments.” I would love to see how cricinfo uses this infusion of funds to create new products that are exciting for the reader while being remunerative for the site and its investor.

This is a very personal thing (and I know Sambit Bal’s letter does not refer to it as a focus area), but one of the areas that cricinfo can perhaps focus on is their print offering. The Cricinfo Magazine is the only magazine I read regularly, and it is a total delight to read. And this is not just because it covers the subject of cricket. It is to do with the language, the tone, the wit, and the statistical analysis – quite often I’ve even recommended the magazine to colleagues who are not particularly into cricket just for the language. Unfortunately, they don’t get around to reading it because it is just not easily and commonly available.

Of course a lot of the content that is available in the magazine finds its way into the web site, but the pleasure of reading the magazine is unbounded. It’s the test match to the web site’s limited-overs game, in a sense.

Considering that there is no cricket magazine of note in the country, the Cricinfo magazine could just blaze a new trail in cricket journalism. And extend the concept into book publishing, of course focused on cricket.

On a different note, I hope ESPN does not use the cricinfo format (and team) to get into tennisinfo, soccerinfo and such like. While those are definite business possibilities, I believe the cricinfo format is not a generic sports format – it has evolved from the game of cricket and its inherent characteristics. So while extending the concept may work, the formats will have to be different. You can’t play tennis with stumps, or have lbw’s in football, can you?