The Hindu Business Line : Losing more matches than winning despite ‘Legends’

There is a school in Borivili living on the edge of Linking Road crammed with speeding vehicles and no police or traffic lights. Young girls and boys, with bags and books, try hard to keep to the broken bits of pavement but when they are chased by cars at over 80 miles per hour, they get reduced to dead statistics or a horror stories for TV cameras. The police have been ordered to look after the “lalbathis (red lights)” of politicians and bureaucrats leaving no time for anything else.

In many cities the job of the police is getting privatised and F&O (futures and options) settlements are struck with local goons doubling as “representatives of the public.” Otherwise, tell me why the police cannot get the auto and taxi drivers to ply their trade with tested meters to stop gross overcharging. It is a simple job and does not need an IAS or IPS or a B-School officer, who together will probably make it impossible for a commoner to travel. This writer is sure even school kids know the story even while writing history exams with questions on Gandhi and Nehru. When the modern history of India is written will any historian put down the name of a politician? Given a few years, our politicians and political parties could reduce India to a no-history and school kids will enjoy it.

At around 7 a.m. (again the timing is uncertain), the kids assemble in a dusty plot and yell out some prayers with giggles and laughs. One cannot blame them as the teachers do not know the meaning of the prayers and that is as it should be. With the gods (demanding prayers) on the side of promoters of coaching classes, the kids and teachers realise the futility of prayers. Their parents do the needful by appeasing dicey and illiterate operators of coaching classes and, going by common belief, get some insights into the question papers prepared “in secret” by bureaucrats for board examinations.

Again, in a few years, there will not be any schools in Mumbai, only coaching classes. When they grow up, school kids will having nothing to recall. Like in another two months after IPL, cricket will not be and a future generation will not realise that such a game existed in the world with Indian cricket teams losing more matches than winning despite “legends” (going by cricket commentators) like Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly and Kumble. They are so “legendary” they protest when they see grass on the cricket pitch at Kanpur, like my grand-daughter Shreya when denied a packet of Kurkure or Lays.

Blessed be the public that our “legends” do not insist on the entire Kanput cricket ground being shaved of grass. Then Kumble and Harbhajan could spin the ball from one end of the ground to the other. Going by our voluble and tiring cricket commentators like Gavaskar, Shastri and Bhogle, our “legendary” batsmen like Tendulkar and Dravid have played fast bowling in foreign pitches with canny footwork; they forget to add they have won only a few matches against the best opposition.

If that be so, why order Daljit Singh to do a barber’s job in Kanpur. This has happened many times in the past (remember the Nagpur incident when captain Ganguly flew back to Kolkata after seeing green when Australians chuckled) and yet our “legends” have to be given Cadbury 5 Stars to keep their courage going. There is the argument that every country fiddles with pitches. Yes they do and it does not make our action right. In the terribly unfair lands of Australia and South Africa there are fast and spin pitches; for instance, fast Perth (remember, we won a Test match) and spinning Sydney in Australia. We lose a test match to South Africa at Motera because our players were swinging to the crores thrown at them by IPL and cared not for being play-fit.

Recently, over TV the “legend” Sunil Gavaskar asked Indian spectators, “what more should a Tendulkar (yet, another legend) do.” For this writer he should stop playing cricket. Ahead of the South Africa series, John Gloster said Tendulkar had a problem with his groin and hip. Out came the “legend” saying: I am fit. At Chennai, he spent most of the time in the dressing room after scoring his patented duck and then the public was told he was hurt in the groin. And the same Tendulkar wants the juniors to respect seniors in the team. Hey, we had heard of such orders during the 1975 Emergency. Is the “legend” Sachin Tendulkar made of crystal glass with none having any right to pepper him including his friend Sanjay Manjrekar. Spinners also like turn and bounce (ask Warne) and then our critics have been telling us recently that we have Ishant Sharma and a packet of pacers as good as any in the world. Spinners will no more be critical; pace is going to count, the cricket correspondents said. Then, why use razors and scissors in Kanpur? Despite the noise over the India-Australia series in Australia, the record books will say India lost the series 2-1. That’s the bare bone fact.

We have never won a series in Australia and we have “legends” in our team. Wisden’s hundred best centuries did not give any place to Tendulkar. Mukul Kesavan in his book Men in White writes: Wisden’s innings were assessed by weighted criteria and ladder ranked; judged by those yardsticks, Tendulkar’s innings didn’t measure up. Vishwanath was there, Gavaskar was there, VVS Laxman was right up there – the fourth best innings of all time – Lara was severally there, but not Tendulkar.” And Kesavan adds: So a celebration of Indian batsmanship that concentrates on winning performances would exclude most of our cricket history, most of our batsmen and most of our memories. That can’t be right. And the reason it doesn’t seem right is related to the nature of cricket, not just our local predicament as supporters of a team that loses more often than it wins.” Thank God, India is losing all the time.

P. Devarajan

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Losing more matches than winning despite ‘Legends’

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