Vikram Sathaye

Foreword
by Sachin Tendulkar

I had heard of Vikram’s cricket stand-up acts through common friends but
I actually got to see him perform only in 2006 in Sri Lanka during the Asia
Cup. Since then I have seen him perform at various cricket functions and
have loved his observations on the lighter side of the game along with his
true to life impersonations of so many cricketers across the world.
What also comes across from his humourous perspective on the game is
the fact that he is a genuine cricket fan and is quite knowledgeable about the
game as well. You will discover when you read certain chapters where he
interprets the various skills and insights many good cricketers possess. While
doing this he is also able to define the characteristics and personalities of the
players and people he has interviewed in his own humourous style.
Cricket is more than the players we see on the field. There is a world
outside the ground which includes the support staff, media, commentators,
touring parties and Vikram has covered those aspects beautifully through
many interesting anecdotes. I am sure the reader will really enjoy his theories
and his take on this wonderful game of cricket.
I would like to wish my dear friend Vikram success on his journey and
request him to keep making us and the world laugh in the years to come.
Sachin Tendulkar
P.S. Vikram I may have destroyed your initial life but you recovered pretty
well after the follow on.
 Contents

Author’s Note
Foreword by Sachin Tendulkar
Acknowledgements

1. How Sachin Destroyed My Life

2. The Master Speaks
3. My Way Is The Highway - The Sehwag Theory
4. In The Zone With Rahul Dravid
5. Yuvraj’s Got Talent
6. A Spinner Can Also Be A Cassanova
7. A Nation Of Speed Breakers
8. The Commentator Species
9. The Broadcasting Doctrine
10. I Got An Exclusive
11. The Sports Journalist’s Checklist
12. Fine Tuning The Indian Team
13. Getting The Figures Right
14. Touring Around The World
15. Sledging
16. The DNA Of The Indian Fan
17. The IPL Circus
18. Are Women Responsible For The Sporting State Of Our Country?
19. The Stand-Up Experiences
 1

How Sachin Destroyed My Life

“You are useless…irresponsible! See how at your age, Sachin Tendulkar is

playing for India! Look at his maturity and look at you! I am just fed up with
this boy…”

his was the typical rant of every middle-class mother in the late 80s.
T Before Sachin Tendulkar made his debut at the age of 16 in 1989,
everything was fine. We went to school, behaved like irresponsible teenagers,
achievement was something to be tackled later. You could even score 30 not
out in 50 overs and no one would say anything - life as we knew it, was great.
However, after Sachin’s debut, things completely changed. All of a sudden
we had a benchmark in our lives.
Gandhiji, Nehruji, Vikram Sarabhai and Kishore Kumar probably didn’t
do anything significant when they were 16 so my parents’ generation lived a
great life. It was OK to gain maturity at 40 because that was the age Gandhiji
returned from South Africa. Our lives, on the other hand, had become
miserable because of this one boy Sachin Tendulkar!
My mother used Sachin’s name to drive home her point almost on a daily
basis, whether it was completing my homework or polishing my shoes. It was
a great victory for her as she knew that a cricketing reference would hit me
deep in the gut and let me know she meant business.
 She was a quick learner and realised that benchmarking me against a 16-
year-old Chemistry genius would have had no impact on me. It was a
peculiar situation for me because I played a bit of domestic cricket around the
same time Sachin did and was completely besotted by his genius. However, I
also started hating him as he was beginning to damage my self-esteem. The
genius of a young Sachin Tendulkar made my entire generation of wannabe
cricketers in the 80s look like genetic garbage.
India is a peculiar country when it comes to cricket. Every person you
meet claims to have played cricket for his school, college or at least his co-
operative housing society at some stage in his life. How the entire Indian
male population fitted in a school cricket team is something we will never
understand, but that’s what we are made to believe. The Indian male believes
that by claiming to have played cricket for his school it will improve his
image in the mind of the listener.
I also played cricket for both my school and college in Pune and while
Sachin was trying to impress selectors for a spot in the Mumbai Ranji Trophy
team I was trying to convince my parents to at least buy me a new cricket bat.
Middle class parents in the 80s tried to justify their miserliness by saying
philosophical things like, “the bat is not important, it’s the mind that matters,
so first score the runs and then you will get the bat”, which basically meant
‘tough luck’! Years later when I brought up this topic with my mother, she
shut me up by pointing out that even Lance Armstrong was on record that
“It’s not about the bike.”
I remember that day distinctly, February 24, 1988, the day I took my
decayed furniture of a cricket bat and went to play an under-15 cricket trial
match where I scored 74 runs. I was ecstatic. However, as fate would have it
that was the same day Sachin scored 326 in a school cricket game in
Mumbai. My father didn’t even congratulate me because of this. I don’t
blame him, my 74 in comparison with Sachin’s 326 looked like Maninder
Singh’s batting contribution to Indian cricket. Sachin was destroying me
slowly but steadily. Inspite of my awe for him, my hate quotient started
increasing exponentially every day. He was robbing me of my glory with
every passing day.
I once had the opportunity to play against him but ended up as the 12th
man. I was watching him bat along with a teammate from the dressing room.
He had made an unbeaten 70 which comprised some stellar on-the-rise shots.
Everytime he hit one over the bowler’s head we looked at each other and
acknowledged our feeling of inadequacy. A feeling similar to what Abhishek
Bachchan must be having everytime he sees his dad’s scenes from Deewar.
After watching one such Sachin shot, which I couldn’t have even
imagined hitting in my dreams, I came to terms with the fact that I was better
off pursuing middle-class India’s dream of completing graduation followed
by an MBA. The shot he played was a slash over the slip cordon for a ball
that was of chest height. For a young cricketer like me at that age, who even
tried to hit full tosses in the V region because that was the correct thing to do
this shot was like watching Basic Instinct with your parents — Pure Scandal!
I mentally quit cricket that day because I realised I could never play shots like
these. The demoralisation was now almost complete.
The one thing I thank Sachin for is that because of him, I at least realised
very early in life that this is not a sport one should consider as a career
option. While we were discussing how to keep the square cut low by closing
the blade of the bat he was playing inside out shots over the cover point
region.
Years passed in the realm of mediocrity. As a typical student in the 90s,
on finishing my graduation with a BSc in Geology (yes there is a subject like
that) I enrolled for an MBA in Marketing. Strangely, instead of trying to
focus on Kotler and Buffet my mind was still focussed on Greenidge and
Haynes. Hours were spent trying to justify to friends how Sachin Tendulkar
and Vinod Kambli got the right breaks and how I didn’t get the
encouragement at the right age. My focus had now shifted to discussing the
game with my colleagues. One-upmanship on the basis of who knew the
statistics to Sachin’s 100s and his exploits was a regular pastime including
endless arguments on whether he was the greatest ever. Some of my
colleagues had made it a habit of taking an anti-Sachin stand based on his
2nd innings average. These people were important in their own way in
society because if not for them, conversations on cricket would not have
lasted more than 30 seconds. Even after quitting the game, I was still
discussing Sachin. He was sub-consciously haunting me everywhere.
Despite my mental disintegration, I somehow still held on to the notion
that I had a career in sports. So when I got my first job offer after completing
my MBA with the Professional Management Group – a sports marketing
company, I found some solace.
 My first salary was Rs 8,000 and I was quite happy with it. However my
joy was shortlived and I didn’t share it with anyone because it was also the
same day that Sachin signed his multi-crore deal with World Tel. There was
absolutely no way I was going to let anyone know my salary. Sachin had
slowly killed my sporting self-esteem and was now doing the same
financially.
A career related to sports still was at the back of my mind. This was also a
time when Jerry Maguire was my favourite film and it inspired me to believe
that I had it in me to make “Kho Kho” a global sport. Market realities soon
hit me and very soon every client I met told me, “Bhai aise phaltu proposal
mat lao, Is desh me sirf Sachin Tendulkar bikta hein.” The ghost of Sachin
Tendulkar just wouldn’t let go, he was now chasing me in my corporate life
as well.
A year later, I gave up on my “Kho Kho” dream, much like my cricketing
aspirations and I joined MTV India. This was at a time when MTV was
actually a music channel and as they say, music is amongst the best ways to
distract you from your woes and has the ability to heal damaged souls.
Time went by and I spent the next few years surviving as a lowly
marketing professional who took life one day at a time. My arch nemesis
Sachin was now replaced by two species called MS-Powerpoint and MS-
Excel. I soon realised that these were the only tools one needed to survive in
the corporate world and unfortunately for me, I struggled with both.
Apart from Sachin I had started hating another man called Bill Gates for
creating this piece of software and damaging my self-esteem all over again.
It was one of those boring days at work when India was playing a match
against Sri Lanka on a placid wicket. My mental state was like that of
Geoffrey Boycott playing a 100 ball 28 innings while I personally wished this
was the Sharjah game where Sachin hammered the Aussies and Tony Greig
went ballistic with his commentary praising Sachin. It was at this moment
that I started impersonating Sachin Tendulkar especially in the context of him
giving an interview to Tony Greig.
Whilst I was at it, my colleague Jiggy George noticed it and said,
“Awesome.” He gathered 3 more people and told me to do the imitation all
over again. To my surprise they loved it too. I used to imitate commentators
and cricketers as a student and here I was doing it in front of adults who
seemed to like it and were having a ROFL moment. For the next seven days I
had done this piece in front of all the departments within the company
making me rise on the MTV popularity charts and even improving my
relations with the HR department whose existence I always abhorred.
I started noticing the gravity of this incident unfolding over the next few
weeks. The environment around me seemed to be changing. People at MTV
stopped questioning my marketing skills and my appraisals were no more
about how ineffective I was in utilising our marketing budgets. The canteen
boy started serving my lunch much before anyone else’s, even my colleagues
who once feigned ignorance about my existence now insisted on offering me
a ride in their cars instead of letting me get smashed in the crowded local
trains.
One day my boss actually made me speak to his wife in Sachin’s voice as
he was running late for her birthday party and she forgave him because she
thought he was actually sitting with Sachin for a business meeting. This was
just the beginning.
From then onwards, from the streets of Mumbai, to corporate conferences,
board room meetings and even while salvaging client relations for my bosses,
all they wanted me to do was imitate Sachin.
It was an ironic situation. The man who had consistently shattered every
aspect of my life over the last 10 years was now turning out to be my biggest
asset. There was a somewhat sublime and heavenly feeling to all of this. My
self-esteem which had hovered around 0 for a long time had now reached
double figures. That 2-minute imitation of Sachin Tendulkar and Tony Greig
was changing my life. Sachin slowly started becoming an intrinsic part of my
life in a much more positive way.
News of my skills started spreading outside the office too and one day
another colleague of mine, Ashish Patil, asked me if I could meet a diamond
merchant as he was looking for an entertainer who could do cricket jokes at a
party. For that I would have to meet them in their office. After having gone
through a body search and having had my bag scanned, I was lead through a
long corridor by a mean looking security guard into a big white room. There
seated across a big round table were 3 elderly diamond merchants.
Incidentally one of them was bald like me and dressed in white, unlike me.
As I was asked to take a seat, I felt momentarily transferred into that scene
from the film Shaan and thought that my wrists would soon get locked on to
my seat. Just when I thought the diamond merchant would ask “Maal kaha
hai”, I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say “Beta suna hai Sachin ki
nakal acchi utaarte ho, kuch karke batao.” Here I was behind closed doors
being asked to imitate Sachin. My life was at ransom once more because of
this man. Fortunately 10 minutes into what I now remember as a blur, the
expressions on Shaakal’s face seemed satisfied enough to grant me my first
paid event, performing along with the King of Bhangra – Daler Mehndi. I
was absolutely ecstatic on being offered a platform where people beyond my
office could finally see and hear me. News spread far and wide, slowly but
surely. I was now getting invited to parties purely because of the fact that I
could imitate Sachin well. The Mumbai glitterati started respecting me, it was
quite strange because being a shy person, I was pretty uncomfortable with all
the attention I was getting. Strangely, I wasn’t getting it for who I was, but
rather for who I was imitating.
I just failed to understand why I was suddenly becoming the toast of every
party after being a non-entity all my life. Then I realised that at some level
my imitation of Tony Greig’s interview with Sachin had struck the right
chord to such an extent that people for that moment started thinking that
Sachin was with them, which in turn gave them a tremendous sense of
satisfaction and me a whole lot of respect. In a way they were subconsciously
experiencing some sort of proximity to Sachin through me. The entire
experience was very strange. Punjabi aunties would hug me. I was being
invited for meals at farmhouses, felicitated by the teachers who hated me in
school. It was bizarre! Such was the power and the mystique of a man called
Sachin Tendulkar and here I was wielding that power. But as some of you
Spiderman fans know – “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”.
As time went by, I thought I was turning schizophrenic. I started living 2
lives – one moment I was the ordinary Peter Parker-like Vikram Sathaye and
the next moment transformed into a Spiderman-like superhero – Sachin
Tendulkar.
Strange as it was I was beginning to enjoy myself being Sachin and in
doing so I started discovering a unique relationship that the people of India
had with Sachin. In this process I was also discovering that my impressions
and jokes came under a genre of performing art called “Stand-up comedy”
which till that time I had no clue about.
My big break came when I was invited to do a 15-minute cricket sketch at
the prestigious CEAT Cricket Awards where the entire Australian and Indian
teams were seated in the first row. This was my opportunity to impress
Sachin, which I knew would be a tough job considering I had competition
from stars like Priyanka Chopra, Urmila Matondkar and Akshay Kumar.
Despite being scheduled to perform in the middle of the show, being the
weakest link amongst a string of stars, I was pushed from the middle order to
the tail end. I had a great event, but by the time my performance started,
Sachin had already left.
I was disappointed to say the least. The wait to meet him turned out to be
longer than I had expected. Inspite of having started doing a few cricket
events, it took me a good year and a half before I got my first opportunity to
meet Sachin. I was invited by the Sri Lankan Cricket Board to perform at the
Asia Cup banquet in Colombo in the presence of the Indian, Pakistani and Sri
Lankan teams.
By then I had heard from a few sources that Sachin was a serious kind of a
guy who didn’t like being made fun of. I was sure of one thing, that no matter
what happened I wouldn’t do anything to upset him because making God
unhappy doesn’t fit well into the Hindu scheme of things. My friend and ex-
Mumbai captain, Sameer Dighe suggested that I go say “hi” to Sachin before
the show. I did that and it worked like magic. I had the entire Indian team
congratulating me after the show. Even Inzamam came up to me and said,
“Sabke samne pant utarne mein maja ata hein?” I just smiled…. Nobody
wants to mess with Inzi bhai!
The next morning I was having breakfast at the Taj Colombo coffee shop
before boarding the flight back to Mumbai. Seated on the next table were
Sachin, Bhajji, Yuvraj and Muralitharan. I was about to leave but somehow
despite my nervousness I gathered enough courage to go and say hello to
them. As soon as I did so I got a compliment from Murali on my Inzamam
impression which made me relax a bit, then a few smiles from Bhajji, Yuvi
and finally an acknowledgement from Sachin himself. This entire episode
lasted not more than 10 seconds. I knew it would look bad if I stayed any
longer, I wanted to wait, ask questions about everything under the sun but I
had to leave. Just when I was about to turn and leave a thin voice said, “Why
don’t you have coffee and go.” This was it, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had
asked me to sit and have a coffee. Period! There was no way I would refuse
even if I missed ten flights in a row. Well, the next 20 minutes I was listening
to Murali and Sachin discussing the intricacies of the Doosra with a few
inputs from Harbhajan Singh. Those words to me were as important as all the
words that Lord Krishna told Arjuna though I didn’t have to fight any war.
There couldn’t have been a bigger day for a mediocre cricketer like me to
be sitting and discussing the finer aspects of the game with some of the
greatest cricketers in the subcontinent. Finally, I felt a sense of acceptance
from the cricketing fraternity and a feeling of being considered of some value
and importance.
One of the most important things that happened at that show was that
there was a certain sense of endorsement from one of the most important men
in world cricket at a very prestigious event. It’s like if Narendra Modi has
decided to approve your proposal then the local BJP corporator would not
even bother to check your credentials. The moment word spread that Sachin
enjoyed the show the doors of the world of cricket opened up for me in a way
that I could never even imagine. All the other cricketers, Indian or
international who I was doing my material on stopped worrying about my
next moves and started accepting my craft and more importantly sharing all
their wonderful stories with me. A treasure trove of knowledge from the
world of cricket that I love dearly, was coming to me right from the horse’s
mouth. It was like being an insider.
Time went by and over the next eight years I developed a friendship with
Sachin which I will always cherish. During the time I spent with him I learnt
more than what I would learn in my entire academic career. Having done
over 1,200 corporate shows and even the occasional stints with Sony and
ESPN, I jokingly told him one day that I’ve had an unwritten rule that I’d
never imitate Sachin if he was a part of the audience. I would never take the
risk of irritating the bread winner of my family.
That rule was broken once. I was invited to Sachin’s party to celebrate
India’s long awaited World Cup victory. Amidst all the wild celebrations and
cheering I was put in a spot once again when out of the blue, Sachin’s
fabulous wife Anjali walked up to me and said, “Vikram, you have to do a
Sachin imitation tonight.” There was utter silence and I said to myself, “Aaj
to mar gaye, sabke saamne bajegi.” That silence soon turned into loud
cheering with everyone at the party egging me on with a “Sachin! Sachin!
Sachin!”. The approving nod from the master himself helped me gather
whatever little courage I could. Having never suffered stage fright, I was now
being put to the ultimate test and was soon about to break that long held self-
imposed rule. I finally took a deep breath and went about business as usual,
doing my Sachin imitation — covering everything from his batting stance to
that interview with Tony Greig and this time, for a change in front of him.
This was the moment that I had dreaded all my life, but had also eagerly
awaited.
I had finally repaid my debts to the Master. Here was the man to whom I
owed my apartment, my bank balance, match tickets and whatever little
prosperity I had built over the last ten years. I was ready to offer him
everything, but like all Gods he didn’t accept my offering.
Well in a strange way while Sachin initially destroyed my life, he later
recreated it by opening the doors of the world of cricket for me which I am
sharing with you in this book. Over ten years of following the Indian cricket
team across the world and chatting with the boys, I figured that cricket has
the ability to not only entertain you but also give you some tips that could
change your life.
 2

The Master Speaks

I think that there are only two entities that get unconditional love in India,
our parents and Sachin Tendulkar, and if there was ever a choice between
looking after one’s father in ICU and watching Sachin bat on 99, we know
what option the nation would prefer to choose.

he frenzy at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 2008 was

T undescribable. Sachin had scored a beautiful century. Just as he raised
his bat to acknowledge the thunderous applause, the proud Australians seated
besides me in the members stand, and known to dole out a compliment only
once in a decade, stood up and not only gave him a 3-minute standing ovation
but also raised their beer glasses and said in unison, “To the greatest batsman
in the world! For the last time in Sydney.” Little did they know that he would
be back four years later. I still get goose bumps just thinking about that
moment.
I happened to be sitting on the same seat four years later and once again
amids all the frenzy; I was surprised to see a couple in their 90s sitting
besides me. We got talking and just as I mentioned that I was amazed by their
passion for the game at that age, the wife remarked, “Missed his hundred last
time. Hope he gets a hundred this time because we have come a long way and
the next time we might not be alive to see him bat.”
 When I told Sachin this story I could see that he felt special. He added a
fun bit to this story and said that during an earlier Australian tour he had gone
for a stroll after the day’s play around Sydney along with a few colleagues.
Just as they were about to cross the road, an elderly woman came up to him
and said, “What are you Indian boys doing here wasting your time? If I was
you I would be watching Sachin Tendulkar bat at the Sydney Cricket
Ground!”
Having watched the Indian team play in most of the Test playing nations,
I now truly understand Sachin’s global impact. Wherever one travelled you
could see the frenzy amongst the locals and the sports media, as if a man
from the East had come to rescue the world, as predicted by Nostradamus.
Essentially, Sachin was not only affecting me but was affecting millions of
Indians across the world.
Over the last four years I must have seen Sachin receive at least fifty
standing ovations while entering and leaving the ground. My advice to his
wife Anjali is that she should record an ovation and play it on loop every time
he enters or leaves his room because I am sure he is so used to it that he
would need one to stay inspired all his life.
During the course of my travels I have met a whole lot of people who
worshipped him in their own unique ways. I met a woman in Pune who had
published a book on the statistics of his 100 hundreds. Yes a woman! For
most Indian men, she would perhaps be rated as among the most desirable
Indian woman, even ahead of the beautiful Madhuri Dixit. There was also
this man who could prove that he saw all of Sachin’s innings standing on one
leg. I used to always wonder what was it about Sachin that drove people to
behave like this? Why does the nation feel like Sachin was a part of their
family and his well-being was their well-being? What was the psychology
behind this?
I know of people who were superstitious enough to sit in the same chair
while Sachin was batting and not get up till the end of his innings.
Considering Sachin had scored over 30,000 runs in his 24 year career, one
can only imagine the number of productive hours that were lost in doing so.
If economists were to calculate the man hours spent in India watching Sachin
bat, we could finally come to terms with the reason why our GDP is just a
fraction of China’s. This to my mind is the only blemish in his otherwise
fabulous contribution to the country and the lives of Indians. In his defense, I
would argue that the fact that so many men spent most of their time watching
him play for 24 long years meant that during this time the crime rate was
possibly the lowest in the country.
For some reason, we felt our personal pride was at stake while he was
batting. It was almost as if we were batting instead of him. His successes
were ours to celebrate while his failures send us into mourning for days
without end. Unfortunately, whatever Indians have not been able to achieve
in their lives, they wanted Sachin to achieve it for them. Now that is what I
call pressure. Wherever he went people would chant his name. This
especially happened at the Wankhede Stadium where audiences loved him so
much that even if there was a Kenya vs Bangladesh game, they would still
chant “SACHIN! SACHIN!”
Over the years whenever I asked Sachin whether all of this ever affected
him, he always smiled and said, “When I am batting I do not hear anything
whatsoever.” For me this was simply difficult to believe because even the
presence of one other person in the room makes me lose my concentration,
even if I am reading a comic book. He said, “I have gotten disturbed only a
few times, once during a match against New Zealand in 2010 in Hyderabad.
It was a smallish ground and I was trying to focus on the game but whenever
I walked away from the pitch towards squareleg the crowd thought that I was
looking at them and they would start shouting in a chorus. This went on and
on, derailing me continuously in that particular innings.”

Thinking Out Of The Box

I remember my coach telling me, “Watch the ball, the seam and the
shining surface and you will know which way it will swing.” I once
sheepishly asked Sachin, “In the backdrop of a million people do you really
see the shinier surface?” I thought I would get a disdainful look from him. He
replied, “That’s the real challenge, the ball essentially has three phases, when
it swings, when it stops swinging and when it reverse swings. You have to be
able to gauge when you enter, which phase the ball is in as that will decide
the quantum or nature of swing.” Wow I thought this was like an astrologer
seeing the phases of the moon and then deciding on the right time for the
mahurat. He said that unless you are constantly observing the ball you will
never be able to pick it. There are times when you just can’t pick it and that
happened in Kolkata, in the famous 2001 Australian tour to India, where he
entered when the ball had stopped swinging for sometime. Suddenly
McGrath reverse swung; Sachin missed the ball completely and was out
LBW. That rattled him and he couldn’t get over the fact that he had missed
out because of his lack of judgment in understanding the state of the ball.

Sachin scored 14 centuries with this bat, priceless.

This is the coffin which carried the Master’s armoury.

One of my cherished moments with the Master, post the Boxing Day Test
2011-12, at a vineyard near Melbourne.

When will you ever see Bhogle at forward short leg while Sachin’s batting!
Playing gully cricket at a vineyard in Australia.
 Even with his family Dravid gives his 100 percent. A true champion.

Yes, Sehwag is Superman and for him the surface of the earth called the
“Pitch” is irrelevant.
Nice khichdi dinner with sports journalist Mr Lele, Harsha Bhogle, Suresh
Raina and MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni’s bat on the left is double the size of Barry Richards’s bat on the
right. Now you understand why the “helicopter shot” takes off with such
speed.
 During the next Test in Chennai he was still carrying the burden of the
Kolkata dismissal when he went in to bat. His mind was constantly thinking
about what to do to actually figure out how the ball was going to play. That’s
when an idea struck him. He decided to just follow the ball from the time it
comes on the field and not take the eyes off the ball even after the over
finishes and just go on. This gave him a photographic recording of the
condition of the ball enabling him to judge how it would behave the entire
day. So from the point the umpire handed the ball to the bowler, to the bowler
running in and bowling the ball, followed by it reaching the wicketkeeper and
then the fielders and then back to the bowler—he just constantly watched the
ball. Even during the drinks interval he was watching the ball go into the
umpire’s pocket. This even made the umpires a bit nervous but it became an
obsession. Well, the results were there to see, he scored a magnificent 126
runs in the first innings. Sachin says, “It was obsessive behaviour, but I had
to do it. I only realised the gravity of it when I reached the dressing room and
realised that I was completely drained, I barely reached the hotel and
immediately dozed off because of the sheer fatigue.” One thing was clear, if
one has to get extraordinary results and overcome challenges one needs to
think out of the box.
The one lesson that I always took away from my numerous interactions
with Sachin was the level of attention he paid to every single detail. I
remember once driving from Pune to Mumbai with him after an event in his
BMW SUV. Those 2 hours, yes 2 hours, that we took to reach our destination
were like a complete lesson in driving for me and an insight into his
knowledge of cars and Formula 1. I personally am not a great fan of cars and
speed so I did not understand half the technicalities but I have heard from
friends that even Narain Karthikeyan believes that Sachin is an excellent
driver. This obsessiveness is what makes a champion and that is something
Sachin reflected in abundance, in whatever he took up.
To me the most outstanding moment of the drive was the shocked
expression of the toll attendant when he saw Sachin hand him the toll money.
At first he took the money but nearly threw it back in shock when he saw the
Master in the driver’s seat.
As a cricketer, I have never carried a bat for my team, but I did it once for
Sachin. I remember we were leaving for the 2009 New Zealand tour a week
later than the Indian cricket team. Just before I was to leave I got a call from
his wife Anjali saying that she wanted me to carry Sachin’s bat for him to
New Zealand as it was just made by the bat manufacturer to suit the New
Zealand conditions. The bat was packed in the box with his name on it. From
the time I entered the Mumbai airport to the time I landed at Auckland, at
least fifteen people asked me about this parcel. It was simply crazy but the
power of that box was such that the airline even allowed me to carry excess
baggage. I had become a kind of VVIP because of the parcel I was carrying.
The authorities were considering it their moral obligation to ensure that the
bat reached the Master safely and on time, because in case it didn’t and he
didn’t get runs, they would not have been able to forgive themselves forever.
That’s what you call Impact.
It was a rainy day in Wellington before the first match when I went to his
room to deliver the bat. When he opened the room I saw something unreal
and I thought I had entered a carpenter’s workshop. Apart from the India
colours, his kit bag and clothes, there were an insane number of glues, tools
and apparatus lying there. Every time you met Sachin in his room during a
match, you would see something that would intrigue you. I’ve seen a
carpentry box which had an entire tool kit which would make even the best
interior designers proud. Just like a warrior who would test and service his
weapons, Sachin would sit there trying to do various things to his bat to get
the right balance. He says, “It would be difficult to find a manufacturer while
on a tour who could understand your needs and fix a problem so it was better
to carry your kit. I am like a carpenter of the team, I would carry sand-paper,
superglue, bat tape, steel wool, and the whole team depends on me for this. I
spend hours to ensure the bat has the right balance and weight distribution.
The final test of any bat is the sound it makes when you tap it with your
fingers in a manner you would hit a carom striker with your finger. I know
that sound since school and till the time I do not get that sound I would work
on the bat day and night.” Legend has it that once Dwayne Bravo had
misplaced his bat in the Mumbai Indians dressing room. When he found a
few bats which looked like his bat it left him confused. Well in a few minutes
the Master did the sound test by tapping the blades with his fingers and to the
surprise of Dwanye Bravo he got his bat and they lived happily ever after.

I am like a carpenter of the team, I would carry sand-paper,

 superglue, bat tape, steel wool, and the whole team depends on me
for this.
— Sachin Tendulkar

While he was narrating this story to me, I remembered a concert at which

I saw Ustad Zakir Hussain tuning his tabla for a full 10 minutes till he got the
right sound. I guess whether it’s music or sport, eventually it’s all about the
right sound and the maestros never start before they get that part right. That’s
what I call “pursuit of excellence”.
The relationship of any master with his equipment is a special one and
that’s what I was observing. I remembered some of my friends for whom that
special equipment was their Bullet motorbike. They would spend hours
shining the vehicle as if that meant the world to them. Even spitting on it to
give the handle a good shine. If only they had just 1 percent of that love for
their wives, their lives would have been so different.
Sometimes the need to be a perfectionist irritates the opposition. I have
seen this in many matches. When Sachin walks from the dressing room to
take strike he spends a little more time than many batsmen of his times. Many
times the fielding side would be irritated by some of his antics before facing
the ball. Typically this is how the scheme of things played out before he took
strike:
1. Walk to the crease
2. Adjust the box (i.e. his abdomen guard)
3. Take guard
4. Walk to the middle of the pitch and tap the ground
5. Adjust the box again
6. Practise a stroke and look at the fielding placements
7. Stretch the front leg
8. Ask for adjustment in the sight screen
9. Sometimes throw some soil in the air to check wind direction
10. Talk to the non-striker
11. Then adjust guard again and then finally face the ball

“Yes, I took a little extra time because I believed that unless you find the
perfect balance you should not start your mission. It’s about finding that
moment of complete control over the controllables that get you ready for the
battle. Unless you are in the right frame of mind and in harmony with the
surroundings it’s not worth starting. Remember you don’t get a second
chance. Each one has to find his or her right frame of reference before they
go on to do their task. I used to change my stance in the middle of the match
to suit myself. It was about that moment. After years of practising, your
instincts are honed to feel that comfortable position. I knew that standing at a
particular angle against Dale Steyn would help me get comfortable. Likewise
one has to find that for every bowler.”
Every ground is different when it comes to the light factor. Sachin always
preferred batting in Australia as the brightness was superb for sighting the
ball. In India, it varied. In Kolkata the seats were dark in colour and that also
had an impact on the overall lighting. Many a times the dressing room is dark
and as you step out and walk to the pitch your eyes need to acclimatise to the
light really quickly. That’s why Sachin purposely took a few extra seconds to
face the ball because he knew that unless he was comfortable and balanced it
wasn’t worth beginning the innings.

The Reservoir Of Energy

For 40 years of my life I’ve always wanted to get up early in the morning
and go for a jog but have never managed to do so. I justify this to my friends
in the evening by saying very inane things like, “I am not a very morning
person.” The fact of the matter is that I just can’t push my mind to do that one
activity which could have changed my life and given me the confidence that I
needed. On the other hand, there is this man who for 24 years has pushed his
mind to achieve what he did.
Sachin has always believed that every person has some reserve energy in
their body which they can tap when they need it the most. He explains that
several times when one is batting in very humid conditions like in Sri Lanka
or Chennai, your energy completely drains out by the time one reaches 70
odd runs. This is the time when running between the wickets suffers but one
needs to carry on for the team, else you may lose the game.
There comes a point when one is just done with it. This is the time he
says, one needs to push the hardest and when you do it with all your might
and show resistance to fatigue, new doors of energy open up. The point he
makes is that the quantum of reserve energy in the body is way more than
what one expects it to be. The harder the push the easier it is to tap into this
reservoir. Marathoners believe in the same philosophy. Research shows that
Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet operates at only 50 percent of his
potential, so one can now understand the hidden potential of the human body
and mind. The theory is that real fat burns only by the exercise one does after
one is tired. The same applies to comedy, only when someone heckles and
intimidates you from the audience is when you get the best lines. That is why
I remember that even during his off days, Sachin used to wear his pads and
practise in the sun in the middle of the afternoon. He explained, “No point
practising in the shade when you are going to play the match under the sun.”
I often wonder what the state of journalism in the country would have
been if there was no Sachin? He single handedly justifies the existence of 245
plus media schools in the country. During the course of his career, they have
covered every organ and injury in his body. I believe there are certain injuries
Sachin found out he had only because of the media.

The quantum of reserve energy in the body is way more than what
one expects it to be. The harder you push the easier it is to tap into
it.
— Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin’s Tennis Elbow has played a greater role in popularising tennis in

India than the combined heroics of Sania, Mahesh and Leander put together.
This despite them having won over 25 Grand Slam titles amongst themselves.
My only complaint at that time was that an elbow had got more media
attention than all the medical inventions of the 20th century. Kids of that
generation thought that Sachin’s elbow was the only significant joint in the
human body and this was affecting the way kids looked at Biology. Maybe
we could upgrade our syllabus and have dissection of the elbow instead of
earthworms to keep kids interested in Biology.

Control Your Ego, Control Your Destiny

 I once gathered the courage and asked Sachin why certain sections of the
sports media sometimes made statements like, “Sachin is not playing his
natural game.” He laughed at my question and said that cricket is not played
in one gear, you have to play it in different gears and that many times that is
missed by the experts and viewers.
Sachin says, “It was during the Adelaide Test in 1999 where McGrath was
bowling well. I knew that, so I decided I would just leave the ball for 5-6
overs because it is important to respect the opposition, which many people
did not understand. You cannot win every session of play and that is
something one needs to judge based on circumstances. So I let everything go.
At the dinner table, Warnie commented that I had destroyed their game plan
because the Aussies had wanted me to play a little aggressively so that there
could be a possibility of inducing an edge.”
The next morning Sachin decided that he wanted to dictate terms and
derail the Aussies. He decided to change gears so that he could make them
change their tactics and throw them on the back foot.
“So I hit McGrath for 3 boundaries in the first over and changed the
momentum of play which the Aussies were not expecting at all. I am sure
after that most of us would have said, “This is how Sachin should play” not
realising the sheer mind games that went on behind the contest.”
I guess sometimes allowing the storm to pass is very important before you
get on the road to achieving your goals or you might just get blown away.
Not allowing your ego to come in your way is also a challenge, as that could
take you off course. Sachin had displayed similar discipline even in 2004
where he actually scored a double hundred in Sydney by eliminating all
offside stroke play after the tennis elbow injury.
Sometimes your ego is your greatest enemy. Your ability to keep your ego
in check will help you handle situations effectively.
 3

My Way Is The Highway

The Sehwag Theory

“Bhaisaab spinner ko spinner batsmen banata hein! Agar usse aap ball spin
hi naa karne do, aur pehli hi over me usse bahar pheink do woh zindagi bhar
spin nahi karega.”

his was his response to a question I had asked Virender Sehwag about
T how he was the only batsman who could dominate the wily Sri Lankan
bowler Ajantha Mendis during the Sri Lanka tour.
On further probing he replied, “I don’t consider a spinner as a bowler. I
never did.”
Sehwag belonged to the new generation of cricketers who were naturally
aggressive and build their own logic for survival. We grew up listening to
stories about how Indian players in the 70s and 80s were often intimidated by
their English and Australian counterparts. The results of liberalisation and a
resurgent India were beginning to show not just on our economy but also in
the way we started playing our cricket. Virender Sehwag or Viru as they
fondly called him was one who most exemplified this change.
For me Viru was a man who knew no fear and showed no emotion. He did
things not because he was meant to but because he liked doing them. Viru
never got out because of any super bowling skills, he did so because he got
bored with the state of affairs. The last time Sehwag moved his feet was
when he was 2½-years-old. But on the whole, he has done more for Indian
cricket by not moving his feet than many people have done by moving their
entire bodies. Experts have always recommended that batsmen should get
their feet to the right position but his philosophy was a little feudalistic—“the
bowler has to bowl at the right place, as a batsman I will not move”. Who can
argue with whether or not his feet moved; the ball certainly did once it left his
bat.
For Viru, batting was an outlet for the frustrations he used to gather while
not at the crease. His facial expression when he scored 0 or a 100 was more
or less the same. It didn’t seem to matter much to him either way. I have
always wondered how a man playing international cricket could remain this
unaffected. Even if he raised his bat after a 100 it was as if it was a ritual and
something he had to do and given a choice he would do it even if he got out
on a duck.
Sehwag redefined the job of an opener. Years ago, when we were learning
to play the game we were told by our coaches that an opening batsman’s
main task was to see off the early overs when the ball swings a lot and reduce
the shine of the ball for the middle order batsman. Sehwag’s philosophy was
to make the ball old himself so he could enjoy the fruits of his own labour.
Over the years of knowing Viru one realised the method in his madness.
He always mentions that his aggressive game was a role he defined for
himself, he knew if he had to make his mark among the Sachins, Rahuls and
the Gangulys he had to take a different path for the same goal. Thanks to
Sourav he was given a clear mandate for which he feels indebted all the time.

Sehwag is Ghajini; he even forgets the format of the game he is

playing.

An incident I remember is when he got out early in a match in New

Zealand in 2009 and as soon as he entered the dressing room he snacked on a
sandwich and washed it down with a cup of tea as if nothing had happened.
John Wright once said that Sehwag’s ability to forget the past is what makes
him a genius. To me Viru is like Aamir Khan’s character in Ghajini who
suffers from short term memory loss, because one gets the impression that he
even forgets the format of the game that he is playing. Eckhart Tolle’s book
The Power of Now spoke exactly of this philosophy. It said that if you are in
the present then the baggage of the past and the fear of the future simply do
not affect you. Sehwag played and lived in the moment.
However, sometimes Viru’s aggression bordered on the illogical. I
remember asking Sachin how he handled Sehwag while opening the innings
with him. He said that it was rather tough initially because if you would tell
him, “Viru tu iski bowling ko cover pe khel”, he would come back and say,
“nahi paaji isse mein midwicket pein marke dikhata hoon”. Being the wise
man he is, Sachin changed his strategy over a period of time and would tell
him the opposite of what he wanted him to do and then wait and watch. As
planned Viru would oblige him by doing the opposite which was actually the
right shot to play! What was very clear was that Viru backed his own abilities
all the time and that was essentially the secret of his success.
Viru was never worried that a spinner would take his wicket as he had
figured out his own methodology to tackle them. With Mendis his theory was
that if his little finger went up it would be the one that went the other way.
Once he figured that out, life got easy and he hit the ball wherever he wanted.
Mahela Jayawardene picked this up a little late in the 2008 series and then
advised Mendis never to bowl that ball to Sehwag. Even as other batsmen
were struggling, Sehwag had massacred the Sri Lankan bowling attack.
“A batsman has to make mental notes about the bowler and keep updating
them in his database,” said Viru.
Unlike Mendis, however, Viru was unable to find the right approach to
tackle Muralitharan. During a team meeting, Sachin explained to the batsmen
that one needs to watch the thumb for Murali. If you see his thumb you know
it’s a doosra. Viru then started focussing on the thumb but that didn’t work
for him and neither was he able to pick the rotation of the spin. So Viru
ignored conventional wisdom and decided that no matter what he bowls, he
would hit him over covers, come what may.
I found this logic a little weird. On further probing, he said that if he
missed the ball he wouldn’t be given LBW to Murali because he spun the ball
a long way and therefore this strategy worked perfectly for him. Nobody in
the team dared to argue with him, however absurd it sounded. When I heard
this theory from Viru I was perplexed because it completely defeated the
theory of read the ball and then play the stroke. Viru said, “Sirji goal sab ka
ek hota hein, run banaana, magar har kisika tarika alag hota hai.” I guess I
couldn’t argue with that.

High Risk, High Return

For fast bowlers, Viru’s philosophy was to hit them where it hurts. If
Anderson’s strength was the in-swinger, then he would try to hit his in-
swingers for fours. Only then could he dominate and destroy his confidence.
With Dale Steyn, he wanted to ensure that he hit his out-swingers for
boundaries initially or otherwise he’d never bowl straight which is where he
wanted him to bowl. “It’s high risk but then I always thought that’s the best
way to win matches,” explained Viru.
He elaborates, “During a game in 2010 against South Africa in Eden
Gardens, I had decided that I would finish Steyn and Morkel in the first 5
overs. So I hit 2 boundaries in the first over of regular out-swingers which
was Dale’s strength and then I hit Morkel for 4 boundaries of the back of the
length deliveries which was his strength. Then next over I hit Steyn for
another 4 boundaries. The game was won then itself. In the next match I tried
the same aggressive strategy, but this time Steyn got the better of me as I
nicked one to the slips. During such occasions, your strength actually
becomes your weakness. The aggressiveness which worked for me in the first
innings was exactly the reason I got out in the second innings. At the end of
the day a batsmen has to score runs so it’s important that you follow your
instincts. When it works it looks good, when it doesn’t, the typical comment
is “Sehwag is so irresponsible”.”

Practising The Madness

Viru used to ensure that his routine was perfect. “I knew which pad to
wear first, when the thigh pad would go on and finally by the time I wore the
inner pad, my concentration would peak.” He made sure his practice was
divided into a 60:40 ratio, where the 60 was when he batted like it was a
serious net session and during the remaining 40 percent he would practice his
aggressive strokes, like the inside out shots and the walking outside the off-
stump flick.
Many people would question his batting style in the nets. His explanation
to them was simple. “Real matches are not like the nets, in a match when you
have 8 fielders on the off side there is no option but to play this flick shot.”
He played that shot successfully against the Australians in Melbourne 2003 to
get to his century despite the off side field being cramped with 8 fielders as a
pressure tactic. It wasn’t about the hours spent in the nets but the quality of
practice and match preparation which worked in his favour. When one
actually analyses what he is saying, it’s clear that the madness we saw on the
ground that day was actually practised in the nets before. I relate this to
Woody Allen’s line, “The best impromptu lines are the ones which are
rehearsed the most.”
Even for a world class batsman like Viru who built his life on domination
there were days when the aggression backfired and that’s when he got
important lessons from senior cricketers. As a dominating player one is
always bordering on being overconfident and getting ahead of one’s
limitations and that happened when he was playing down the order in a Tri-
Series game against South Africa in 2001. In his mind he had thought he
would hit Kluesner and Pollock easily and therefore he took on Kluesner and
hit him for a four and got out the next ball when India had to make 40-50
runs in the last 10 overs.
“Sachin and Srinath were livid at my dismissal,” remembered Viru.
Sachin asked Viru that evening, “Do you even think of what’s going to
happen?”
Till that time Viru had no idea what visualisation was so obviously he said
“No”. That was the day Sachin told him about the science of visualising
things before he went into bat.
Viru says, “There are essentially two moments, the current moment where
you are batting and the future moment. If you visualise the future moment,
the current moment becomes easier. From then onwards I started thinking of
the situation beforehand which helped my batting a lot and with the help of
Ramki, the video analyst, I was able to see videos of bowlers, how they bowl
the out-swing, the in-swing, and what they do while bowling the slower one.
The key lesson is that when you visualise the future moment you reduce your
anxieties thereby helping you face the current moment more effectively.”

A batsman essentially has to remain focussed for just 25 seconds

 per delivery, so why do I need to meditate for 15 minutes? —
Sehwag

If visualisation was tough, meditation was tougher for Viru. He realised he

couldn’t meditate for more than a minute, it was just not his thing.
Ask Rahul and Sachin about their experiences with Viru at the other end
of the pitch and their stories are full of fascinating insights about him. While
they were trying hard to focus on the game at hand, Viru would be whistling
and singing between overs. Viru’s logic was that his mind was always full of
negative vibes and random distracting thoughts like, where he would hit the
ball in the next over or the over after that. Psychologists suggested that this
was a common problem faced by all cricketers and that meditation would
help. Unhappy with the suggestion he figured out his own mechanism of
coping with the problem by singing songs and whistling which helped delay
his negative thoughts and concentrate on the next delivery.
Viru’s explanation: “I couldn’t meditate more than a minute. It was just
not my thing. I also figured that a batsman essentially has to remain focussed
for just 25 seconds per delivery, so why do I need to meditate for 15 minutes?
I just need to be able to meditate for 25 seconds each time and if I can do it
consistently over a period of time I am sorted.” It was brilliant logic, focus
for 25 seconds at a time and then fill the spaces with whistles and songs!
So here was a master who had found his own path whether it came to
practising, meditating, or attacking bowlers. He was someone who had his
own theorem to crack the cricket equation. When Greg Chappell was the
coach of the side I could feel that there was a sense of discomfort between
them on tours, the team looked very unhappy. In a way Greg Chappell was
like Viru, a man who had his own school of thought and his biggest mistake
was he tried to impose his methods on someone who had his own methods.
Raju Hirani cannot impose his views on Aamir Khan, he has to work with
Aamir Khan’s views, value add and make sure Aamir does the best he can.
Obviously I understood this, Greg didn’t because it seemed that Greg wanted
to be the boss. On the contrary Gary Kirsten and John Wright always took the
back seat and that is why they were successful coaches.
John Wright used to ensure that even during lunch and tea breaks during a
match he did not interfere with the team and used to get out into the field
with the reserve players and do fielding drills to avoid meddling with the
team.
From the Indian coach’s perspective, it was always a 50:50 situation. If
Viru played well, you usually won and if he didn’t then you had to rely on the
middle order. Unfortunately for India when he played well everyone else also
did and when he didn’t, others too failed. It was as if Sehwag represented the
mood of the team and therefore his contribution to Indian cricket is no less
than Madhuri Dixit’s to Indian men’s happiness quotient.
Interviewing Viru has always been great fun. I once asked him how life
had changed with success and stardom and he said, “Before me Najafgarh
was known for its violence, now it is known for Virender Sehwag.” Though
frankly, most bowlers across the world would think that both are one and the
same thing.
In a post-match interview with Ravi Shastri, Sehwag once said that he
decided to hit bad balls but then some of his teammates said that they were
good balls though he thought they were bad balls. Now that’s a tough one
because the definition of what is to be considered a good ball got a whole
new meaning. When future editions of Wisden magazine come out, they will
define a good length ball and then put an asterisk down below that says,
“Does not apply to Sehwag.”
What sums up Viru is a line Anil Kumble once said, “Most people first
settle down and then hit a six, but Sehwag first hits a six and then settles
down.”
 4

In The Zone With Rahul Dravid

“I need you to give me some attention.”

’m sure, like me, most men have heard this line a million times from their
I wives or girlfriends. Being someone with an attention deficit greater than
our country’s fiscal deficit, I suffered immensely because of this. It’s not easy
to give something which you do not possess. Though I was never clinically
diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) I still suffer from it and am
unable to focus on any task for more than 3 minutes.
My student days are a blur, thanks to my concentration or rather the lack
of it! How that phase flew by, I have no idea whatsoever. My trauma can be
gauged from the fact that even after 14 years since my last exam as a student,
I still have nightmares that I have a Chemistry exam pending from my first
year BSc and if I don’t clear it I will have to be reborn as a tripod or Bunsen
burner in my next life.
When you scored not-so-respectable marks as a kid everyone around you
would insist that you needed to focus and concentrate harder on your studies.
At that age one had no idea what “concentration” was because no one
explained this concept to us. So what did concentration mean and could it be
developed? Was it staring at your book a little longer? Most kids in India
were unable to interpret it right. They thought concentrating was another
word for memorising and therefore the kid who memorised geometry
theorems the best was considered the brightest in class. Interestingly this
process was called “by-hearting” or “learning by heart”. The fact that India is
the cardiac capital of the world is perhaps not because of our love for
samosas and aloo tikki but possibly because of the years we spent “by-
hearting” which ought to have added immense pressure on the heart.
Over the years I have come to realise that the ability to focus on a
particular task one moment at a time is the only philosophy worth following
in life, though the toughest to execute. Most relationships fail because one
can’t focus on the finer aspects. If men were to give the same quantum of
attention while shopping with their wives or praising their looks as they did
when watching Sachin bat, they would never get into trouble. Unfortunately
most men are busy worrying about EBITDA margins instead of concentrating
on dinner conversations with their wives and that’s where the problem arises.
During my youth, I was always enamoured by the women I’d see at
discotheques though it’s a different story that I invariably went home alone.
The reason, I later figured out was my inability to take a call on which girl to
focus on. Even during my corporate job I realised that guys who could
engage longer in negotiations were the ones who came out trumps and that
was a direct result of their ability to concentrate. I, on the other hand, was
more interested in quickly finishing the task at hand and knocking it off my
checklist, which to me was more enjoyable than doing my job. With the
proliferation of technology, concentration levels are at an all-time low, which
is visible in any meeting where most people are mentally never in the
meeting as they are busy with their devices.
“Why don’t you try meditation?,” was the most common advice I
received. But the problem is that everytime I close my eyes, I feel sleepy. I
even tried out Art of Living classes but got distracted by the heavy breathing
of the beautiful women around. In places like Bandra and Juhu, some of these
classes can be expensive and to pay that kind of money to learn how to
breathe which I had been doing for free all my life, just wasn’t in tune with
my middle-class Maharashtrian upbringing. If I were to trace the reason of
my mediocrity as a batsman, I guess it would boil down to the inability of my
mind to focus and that resulted in throwing my wicket away after having
scored 30 odd runs.
In all my experiences watching cricket I have realised that great batsmen
have a tremendous ability to be “in the moment”. In sporting parlance it is
also called “The Zone” and is best described as one in which your mind is in
a state of harmony and where every stroke is played out as one would
imagine. While every batsman aspires to try and enter this zone, these gates
are not open all the time.
Of all the batsmen that I have watched, the one who possibly spent a
considerable amount of his life in this zone was Rahul Dravid. He epitomised
the theory of one ball at a time. This was amply demonstrated on the cricket
field especially on that disastrous tour of England in 2011. On a tour where
nothing was going right, he pushed his concentration to the limits defying a
top rated English bowling side, scoring three back to back hundreds against
the likes of Broad, Bresnan, Finn and Anderson. That is why when I saw
Trott and Swann leave the 2013 Ashes midway I was quite shocked, as in my
opinion the pressure on an Indian player on an overseas tour is relatively
higher than what an English player would face.

The Zen Approach

In one of the matches I analysed Rahul’s innings and realised something
very significant. He was playing 4 fast bowlers on a lively wicket who
between them bowled about 10 overs in an hour. Many of the deliveries were
bowled outside the stumps, with a few short balls peppered in. Essentially
they bowled about 5 playable overs in an entire hour. If you consider that half
of them were played by the non-striker, Rahul got to play only 2-3 overs or
about 15 balls in an entire hour. This meant that he had to focus for hours to
survive and score. Staying on the pitch for such long periods required
immense concentration, will power and the ability to resist any temptation
that could cost him his wicket. Rahul always mentions that while Sachin and
Viru dominated the bowlers, he bored them into submission. In a way Rahul
was very much like Muhammad Ali who with his unusual “rope-a-dope”
strategy would tire his opponent before knocking him out.
Today, even if one has to sit for 5 minutes without doing anything we
immediately start BBM-ing or fidgeting with our phones. No wonder Rahul
is not a fan of Twitter and social media. Times however are now changing. I
think in the future, batsmen will carry their phones so that they can tweet
while at the non-striker’s end and hope to start trending by the time they get
out.
 The English still love their Test cricket and a conventional approach to the
game. Dravid, with his high levels of concentration fits their definition of a
good, serious bloke. But while Rahul may come across as someone serious
on the field, he’s just the opposite off it; always ready with a witty remark in
whatever conversation we have had. I once told him that he had the same
expression while batting as a math student who had failed in his final exams.
He calmly replied, “I sweat a lot and a sweaty man always looks serious.” It
dawned on me over many discussions that the fact that he was continuously
pushing himself into that zone made him extremely wired and serious. It’s
very simple, when you are focussing on something you have a serious
expression on your face and not a funny one. So when Amitabh Bachchan
looked into Rekha’s eyes the expression was intense and not jovial. That’s
why humourous men do not win favour with the beautiful women because of
the tall, dark, intense guys popularised by cinema.

My jersey number is 19 not because of any superstition but

because it is the best way to remember my wife’s birthday. —
Rahul Dravid

Rahul is now a total family man and his wife Vijeta has also started
practising again. Medicine, not cricket. Most great batsmen have had great
relationships with their wives because they have mastered the ability to give
their 100 percent in every aspect of their lives. One moment at a time! Rahul
and Sachin were smart because they ensured that they married doctors who
took it upon themselves to manage all aspects of the family and kids, which
helped them concentrate on their careers. Good concentration also results in
good decisions. But as good human beings post retirement, I have heard that
Rahul is helping out in the kitchen while Sachin is looking after the kids.
The clincher was when Rahul was asked about his choice of jersey
number at an event. He quickly replied, “The number is 19 not because of
any superstition but because it is the best way to remember my wife’s
birthday.” No wonder he is such a great batsman and husband.
“The mind has the ability to focus on only one thing at a time. You have
to decide whether it is the past, present or the future,” said Martina
Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of our times making a point
about focus and being in the moment, in an event I was attending in Pattaya.
I was floored by her clarity of thought and instantly became her fan as she
took us through her glorious tennis journey. Every middle-class Indian in the
80s hated Martina because she was the reason they had to see Chris Evert-
Lloyd lose day in and day out. It’s a different issue that most men in their
hearts actually wanted Gabriela Sabatini to win. My grandfather and me used
to watch women’s tennis for hours without knowing the score unless it was
Martina. But the Martina I saw was elegant, insightful and emotional. She
said in her speech, “Chris and me are very close now and the nice thing is
that we can both be happy at the same time because when we were playing it
could be only one of us.”
Being a performer at the same event, I got to spend some time with her
back stage. I asked her to explain to me the concept of “being in the moment”
because I have had a chat on this issue with a lot of sportsmen. She said the
toughest thing to achieve is the theory of one ball at a time. One has to try
and master it during practice sessions and only then would you be able to
achieve being in the zone in the big games. There are moments in a game
when you can hear the sound of the plane go by, screaming spectators and
that’s the time you know things are not going too well. It’s the ability to
effectively block these out which could be the difference between victory and
defeat.
There are two kinds of people, those who can concentrate on one thing at
a time and those who can concentrate on various things, more or less with
equal intensity. That is why I believe that women will rule the world because
of their ability to multi-task. My mother can negotiate with the subjiwali with
a lot of intensity and at the same time advise my sister on marital issues. In a
game like cricket, only a person who can do this well can become a good
captain. I have always been of the opinion that the best option is to get a non-
playing female captain for the Indian cricket team so she will not only be able
to handle Srinivasan but also motivate the Indian fast bowlers to bowl faster
by 10 kmph.
“A captain has to be a good multi-tasker and the more organised one’s
mind is, the better it is to lead a side,” said Ricky Ponting in an after-dinner
interview. He went on to add that conditioning and thinking about the game
needs to happen before the match begins. Therefore, he makes a checklist the
night before which helps him cover all the areas he needs to think of before
the game. Once he has thought through them, he is on auto-pilot on the field
because if he doesn’t do that, then his mind will remain cluttered and he will
not be able to focus on his batting. At the time of batting he doesn’t think of
anything but the ball and the important thing is that he delivers. He says that
the walk from the dressing room to the pitch is when you distill your thoughts
to the point of extreme concentration while facing the ball.
Greg Chappell also mentions that you have 3 levels of concentration. The
first level is when you are inside the dressing room. You are aware of what’s
happening, it’s not active involvement. The second level is when you go out
to bat — the walk where you think specifically about conditions, field
placements, and who the bowler is. The third level is when you are facing the
ball, that’s when the whole world shuts up.
Once your focus is on the bowler, you zero in on his face and try to get all
the information possible. Apparently bowlers reveal a lot of infomation on
their faces. Abdul Qadir carried a grin on his face when he bowled a wrong-
un. Studying the bowler’s body language also helps. I have heard that
Malcolm Marshall actually pulled his pants up as an indicator before bowling
a snorter.
Sachin once mentioned about how he cracked Murali’s action when no
one could pick the Doosra. After studying his action carefully, he went up to
team members and said, “FOCUS on nothing except his thumb, if you see his
thumb go down it’s the doosra, if not it’s an off-spin.” It’s amazing how such
minute observations can have such a dramatic impact on the end results.

The mind has the ability to focus on only one thing at a time. You
have to decide whether it is the past, present or the future. —
Martina Navratilova

Another aspect of concentration which intrigues me was a batsman’s

ability to actually find a gap by remembering the field settings and then
playing the ball through the fielders. A ball that was thrown at him at 150
kmph! The commentators always mention how the batsmen found beautiful
gaps and that irritated the hell out of me because as a mediocre cricketer I
never reached a stage in my batting where I could actually place the ball in a
certain direction. So I once gathered the courage to ask Ricky Ponting if
batsmen really found the gaps or was it merely a matter of luck. I knew it was
a brave question but what I did not expect was a life philosophy that was one
of the most impactful one I have heard in a long time. He said, “Ya mate,
batting is an an instinct you hone over years of practice and that enables you
to reach a level of expertise where you see the field placements in your mind.
A good batsman imprints the fielders in the sub-conscious, but an excellent
batsman imprints the gaps. There was a time I used to do the former and hit
to the fielders but the moment I started to do the latter I found the gaps.” I
was stunned by this analogy. When I mentioned this philosophy to my friend
Rajiv Bajaj, the MD of Bajaj Auto he immediately added his business
perspective to the same and said, “Exactly! In business, if you focus on the
competitors you’ll start behaving like them. But if you focus on the gaps in
the market you’ll become a champion company.” That day I felt like Peter
Drucker and Philip Kotler rolled into one.

The Art of Visualisation

As a part of concentration development and training of the mind one of
the things that batsmen talk about is visualisation. It is based on the principle
that if you can actually visualise future events in your mind, you are in a
better position to face the situation when it occurs. So whether proposing to a
girl or a client presentation one should make a habit of doing this. Both Ricky
and Sachin have mentioned that they play the innings in their head the night
before the match starts. Only when I heard this from the masters did I realise
why Sachin talks about having sleepless nights before the game. It’s because
of the game that is being played in the mind. Nasser Hussain once said that
he could actually visualise himself on a particular ground against Australia
and the ball whizzing past him. He had reached a level of expertise that he
could even visualise the Australians sledging at him. Now that’s some
expertise!
My inference is simple, essentially a batsman scores one century on the
ground and one in the mind. So now calculate the number of centuries Sachin
and Ponting have actually scored. The key to this is also the ability to
translate the century in the mind into reality which is not easy for lesser
mortals.
 My logical question to many of the greats, including Rahul, was that while
it’s easy to say that one should concentrate, how does a player actually
implement it. That’s when he told me the importance of the “routine”. The
things that a batsman or a player does before he takes strike, like adjusting his
pads, his gold chain, helmet, his walk to the square leg position, twitching of
the nose are all the actions needed to come to a moment of acute
concentration which is the key to focus. It’s amazing I never knew all the
imitations that I actually did for a living were part of the mental process. I
wish I knew this earlier as I would have possibly done all of these before my
Math paper.
The moral of the story is that, when your father wanted you to wake up at
6 am and plan your day, you wouldn’t have guessed that this was actually a
mechanism to build what was called Concentration and Focus. I now
understand why Ivan Lendl rubbed saw dust on his grip and bounced the ball
a number of times before his service. He was mentally setting himself up for
the point ahead. Likewise when Rafa Nadal, pulls his undies and bounces the
hell out of a ball before his serve — they are all part of his rituals which help
him focus. So no matter how uncomfortable you may feel as a viewer
watching him pull out his undies, it does seem to work for him.
According to Rahul, the key to concentration is breathing. He did this
between deliveries. Two or three deep breaths were all it took him to
ascertain how tense he was thus helping him calm down. A deep breath’s job
was to bring him back to his poised state.
A lot of batting is in the subconscious and that’s why he says the
subconscious can only be trained by practice, practice and more practice. It’s
the quality and not the quantity of practice that matters. There is no point
practising the same thing for an hour. It’s better to practise different things in
the same hour so that your subconscious gets used to the variety and can react
accordingly in match situations. That’s why they tell players to play in
different conditions to prepare the subconscious to replicate the experience
effectively.
That made a lot of sense. Just driving randomly for 10,000 hours won’t
make you an F1 driver. High quality focussed training over that period of
time could make you one. That’s why he says that teaching someone to bat is
very difficult. The ability to judge the line and length cannot be taught. So the
simplest thing is to watch the ball all the time and that would increase the
probability of picking the line and length a little early. It’s the same principle
of “are you watching the bird’s eye” theory that Dronacharya propagated to
Arjuna.
Rahul always mentions that he sometimes was a victim of over analysis
which many a times, bogged him down. The big problem is many batsmen
analyse their game when they are playing badly. Instead you should analyse it
when you are playing well. That would help you understand the kind of
mindset when in form and help you recreate the mindset to get out of the bad
phase. That’s why many players are superstitious about what they did when
they did things right.
Rahul explains, “Taking your mind away from the game is one of the
critical aspects in the switching off process. It helps recharge one’s batteries.
Having off-field interests like reading and watching musicals helped me a lot
because if I was alone in the room I would get tense, constantly thinking
about the game. So spending time browsing in bookshops helped me relax in
a big way and gave me a chance to know more about the world outside.”
Rahul also credits coach Gary Kirsten for challenging him intellectually
which helped him a lot.
The turning point in Rahul’s life came when ex-India cricketer Mr
Hanumant Singh gave him a book which changed his life in a big way. The
book was Johnathan Livingstone Seagull – a book about a seagull learning to
fly. Rahul carried the book during his Ranji trophy days and his teammates
from the North used to tease him saying “Ye seagull cricket khelna thodi
seekhayega”. Rahul understood the impact of the book on him and as they
say he clearly learnt to fly high.
His interest in reading not only helped him relax but also helped him in
his cricketing life in a big way. One of the problems Dravid faced was his
excessive sweating that was inhibiting him from making the big scores,
especially when he was feeling very tired. This was obviously due to
dehydration. In those days the Indian team did not have any professionals
who could understand his situation. It was bothering him. This is where his
reading habit helped him. He read about an Australian doctor, Dr Graham
Bates, who had helped sportsmen like Patrick Rafter and Mark Webber
overcome a similar problem. The next day, he called the doctor out of the
blue and the rest is history. After an umpteen number of tests on Rahul, he
finally gave him a solution called Carbolyte RD which changed Rahul’s life
and helped him solve his problem for good. This solution is now available in
Bangalore keeping in mind the amazing results it gave its most famous
consumer. Similarly he once called Dr Sherry Colder, an eye expert who
gave him certain eye exercises which helped him to a large extent and
extended his batting career by a few years. Rahul explained, “As Indian
cricketers we have always cocooned ourselves in our own world, but reading
helped me reach out to the world outside and that made me a better human
being.”
Reading and other leisure activites help players switch off from the game
which is as important as switching on. Conserving mental energy helps one
concentrate better. Sachin believes that as an international sportsman relaxing
is not as easy as it sounds. All I can say is, for someone who sleeps 8 hours a
day it is difficult to understand this, but then again the Master is always right.
 5

Yuvraj’s Got Talent

unjabis are naturally aggressive. At least 4 hormones will fall off if you
P touch them accidentally. Aggression is the backbone of their existence
and chewing gum is their weapon of choice to show those emotions. So if
you ever wondered what motivated those beefy Punjabi boys with apples in
their armpits at discotheques to chew gum, you know that it is their way of
underlining their presence. It’s quite similar to how lions mark their presence
in a jungle. A “Singh is King” kind of a message.
The fact that the Indian Army consists of so many Punjabis makes one
feel safe. The beauty of the aggressive vibe is that it is directionally
proportional to the love and affection you get from them. The long and short
of it is that their mere presence is intimidating to many.
Australians are to the world what Punjabis are to India. Yuvraj Singh’s
presence on the cricket field signifies the power of a Punjabi. His swagger,
stance and the way he takes strike is his way of showing his presence on the
field. The one person who effectively did this before him was Sir Isaac
Vivian Alexander Richards.
Many people who don’t know Yuvi are intimidated by him and try and
stay away from him. I was also a little wary because with people who have an
aggressive demeanor, one is not sure what to expect. The fact that I used to
imitate his walk and stance at cricket events all the time didn’t help either.
The last thing I wanted was to be roughed up by him. Yuvi and Bhajji have
the reputation of even throwing Sachin into a jacuzzi and once both of them
wore scary masks and barged into the room of the Indian team’s video
analyst who almost fainted with fright.
The ice was broken when he and his team invited me to perform at the
Yuvraj Singh Foundation fundraiser event in South Africa which was the
beginning of a long friendship. His only feedback to me was, “Saale meri
nakal jab tu utarta hein toh ek change kar le, mein chewing gum kabhi nahi
khaata batting karte samay.”
Despite this in-born aggression and never-say-die attitude, the one thing
that truly intimidates a native North Indian is his inability to speak English
fluently. Kapil Dev is full of stories about the many times when cricketers
from his home state Haryana would approach him for English speaking tips
rather than fast bowling skills. To address this inadequacy, Yuvi recounted an
incident when he as the captain of the Punjab team had introduced this rule
that on every Sunday, the entire team would speak only in English. This was
his way of ensuring that the language was learnt in a more interesting way.
On the first Sunday of this language project, he realised that the entire team
was listening to music on their headphones and no one was talking to each
other. What was worse, during the game there was no communication
between the bowler and the fielders or the wicketkeeper till it came to a point
where a fielder dropped a catch. Yuvi was livid. But what happened after that
made him burst out laughing because the bowler and fielder were talking to
each other in sign language with the bowler enacting the dropped catch like a
mime artist. They were more comfortable doing this than saying a few words
in English which probably would have made Yuvi drop a few catches
himself, unable to control his laughter.

Yuvraj had done the impossible: Stuart Broad looked like Stuart
Little by the end of the over.

Over the last 10 years since I followed his career, I have never been able
to get any nuggets of cricketing information from him as I realised that he
doesn’t like to talk about cricket at all. Unlike other cricketers who love
chatting about the game, Yuvi prefers playing the game and utilising his extra
time in leisure activities with his buddies. So whenever I tried starting a
cricket related conversation with him he would quip, “Yaar mujhse kuch
sawaal mat puch! Mujhe bhi nahin pata kya ho raha hein!”
If a cricketer of the calibre of Yuvraj Singh says something like this, you
are bound to laugh it off. But if you go deeper into the statement you will
realise that there is more to it. If one was to ask Pandit Jasraj how a certain
taan came out of his vocal chords or if you were to ask Amitabh Bachchan
what was the cause of his intensity during the dialogue delivery of Agneepath
you may not get a satisfactory answer. The reason being unlike idiots like me,
they never spent time deconstructing what they did. They just did it naturally.
It’s the people who are enamoured by their craft who actually try to
deconstruct their genius by using complex words and theories.
Despite meeting him over drinks on several occasions, I’ve still not been
able to get any pearls of wisdom from Yuvi. Yet, the next day he would go
out and hit 64 runs off 32 balls. It made me realise that even Yuvi doesn’t
know what he is capable of and his biggest challenge is to get himself out of
his own way.
The one programme on television that he probably doesn’t watch is
“India’s Got Talent”, because I can see that he hates the word talent. He has
been a victim of the word talent much before Rohit Sharma did. Somehow I
feel that both of them, in their mind probably want to shout out loud from the
rooftops saying, “No I don’t have any talent, just leave me alone.” Sometimes
being extremely talented has its flip side especially when you are going
through a rough patch in your career.
Yuvi has an amazing topsy turvy story. He had a great start to his career;
then he had multiple injuries before he made a successful comeback. An
unforgettable Natwest partnership with Mohammed Kaif in 2002, struggles in
Test cricket, 6 sixes in 2007, Man of the Series in the World Cup, cancer, loss
of form again and finally a Rs 14 crore IPL deal to bounce back with. The
one common line that every commentator and critic has said throughout
Yuvi’s entire career is, “He’s got so much talent, but then why the
inconsistencies?”
I was there when he hit Stuart Broad for 6 sixes in the 2007 World Cup.
This was divine intervention. Who hits a fast bowler for 6 sixes when half the
time batsmen are trying to open the face of the bat to get a single and go to
the other end? Stuart Broad had started looking like Stuart Little by the end
of the over. I thought Yuvi was as surprised as Stuart Broad was. I’m sure, no
sane man will attempt to do this ever again in the history of cricket. I have
still not recovered from the various angles of the sixes that he hit that day. It
has probably had the same impact on me as when Madhuri kissed Vinod
Khanna in Dayavan, albeit on the positive side. I asked Yuvi what was going
through his mind and he replied, “I was hitting the ball and they happened to
land out of the ground. Also I was hurt that 2 weeks back I was hit for 5 sixes
in an over against England.” Come on! This couldn’t have been revenge.
I guess it is difficult being Yuvraj because at one moment your career is
on a high and the next you are suffering and the ball is not even touching
your bat. How does one live with such uncertainty? Is life seeking a balance
from Yuvi because it gave him a lot of things that normal people didn’t get?
How does one stay sane when there is chaos in the mind? It’s like getting a
100/100 in Math in your prelims and yet failing in the finals. This is bound to
immerse you in fits of depression and that is the reason Yuvi can’t
deconstruct himself and his abilities like normal cricketers can. He is truly a
Miracle Child.
Angad Bedi, actor and son of the legendary Bishen Singh Bedi and one of
Yuvi’s very close friends said, “Iski problem hein ki isse sab jaldi aa jata
hein. He was a top skater when his dad threw away his skates, he was a
superb tennis player, he is a superb cricketer, every girl in the city wants to
date him, when he hits the dance floor girls will take their eyes even off
Ranbir Kapoor.” This I have seen personally. Such is the rustic charm of
Yuvi that once I saw 30 girls from 15 countries at Yuvi’s party. 80 percent of
them were from non-cricket playing countries like Latvia, Estonia, Germany
and France. He has made cricket popular in countries which even the ICC
was unable to break through.
Yuvi is a child and everything he does has a child- like quality.
Circumstances made him into a cricketer and the talent that he had, made him
into a champion. Angad recounts that once during a low phase Yuvi had
decided not to touch the bat for 2 weeks. When one day he entered Yuvi’s
house during this period he saw Yuvi looking at the TV screen and making
sounds which replicated a ball hitting the bat on the sweet spot. He was
actually visualising the sweet spot in his mind. This might sound bizarre but
that process was helping him get his mind back to the playing field.
Recognising Talent
One of the most important things about talent is its acknowledgement and
providing it the support it needs. Here is where the captain of the team plays
an important role. The person who cracked Yuvraj Singh was Sourav
Ganguly. Yuvi says that Sourav Ganguly backed him and Viru and that gave
them enough confidence to feel secure in the cricket team. Yuvi still recounts
that it was in 2000 that he started feeling confident enough to say that he
belonged in international cricket but the confidence to perform abroad came
at the Natwest Trophy in 2002. He and Kaif had no idea that they would be
able to achieve England’s score of 325 runs as India was already 120-5. The
stadium was empty and everyone thought it was all over. The victory was
snatched out of the jaws of defeat and that’s what made it special. What is
clear is that when a team has talented individuals like Yuvraj Singh who are
not sure of what they are capable of you need a good leader to handle them.
MS Dhoni’s greatest strength was to actually recognise and manage the
abilities of his players. This is evident from his recent success with CSK and
the Indian cricket team. Interestingly, MS Dhoni’s talent was recognised by
Greg Chappell. Kiran More, who was then the chairman of selectors, recalls
an incident about how Greg recognised MS Dhoni’s abilities. During a
practice session, Chappell was having a discussion with Kiran More about
the future of Indian cricket. At that stage, MS had been in the team for less
than a year. Whilst the discussions were on, both of them saw MS do his
drills and he seemed the happiest to do all the tasks that were assigned to
him. At one such moment when MS did something spectacular Greg looked
up to Kiran and said, “I know one thing for sure, that boy there is going to be
the future captain of India.” Despite his personal man-management flaws, he
did recognise a future leader.
I mentioned this to Rameez Raja and he said this trait of identifying talent
was something their captain Imran Khan had in plenty. Recognising talent in
a person is one thing, backing him during tough times is another. Pakistan
went into the 1992 World Cup after a string of average performances and
Inzamam who Imran had picked from nowhere, he also had not been in the
greatest of form. In one of the team meetings Imran said that Inzamam would
play all the games. This didn’t go down well with Rameez who eventually
confronted Imran during a jogging session. He said, “Imran bhai I know Inzi
is a good player but I think you are overstressing his importance and that is
affecting the senior players.” Imran ran for a bit and looked at Rameez and
said, “Mark my words…Inzamam is the man who is going to win you the
World Cup.” Rameez was stunned by his statement and when it actually
happened he realised the greatness of Imran’s leadership.

In God We Trust
Over the years one common trait I saw among people who were very
talented was that they were more superstitious than the less talented ones. But
generally, I have found that sportsmen are religious and spiritual and I have
corroborated this fact with many of them. I think uncertainty and insecurity is
what brings God into the picture. Praying to a force boosts confidence while
chasing impossible targets and the thought that someone beyond this realm is
supporting you gives you the strength to achieve those goals. Praying as a
concept also gives you the feeling of being in the moment. The problem is
when you are an atheist, in times of trouble you tend to feel alone or helpless.
I’m sure if the likes of Holding, Marshall, Garner and Roberts were bowling
at you in the 80s, even if you were Einstein you would have turned into a
believer.
Paul Collingwood told me a story about South African batsman Neil
Mckenzie which gave me an idea about how superstition can actually make
sportsmen do irrational things. In one of the matches Neil’s colleagues played
a prank on him and hid his bat before he went in to bat; they actually taped
the bat to the ceiling of the dressing room. Suddenly a wicket fell and Neil
had to go in to bat and he realised that his bat was missing and amidst the
commotion he found that it was taped to the ceiling. After a lot of fretting and
fuming he managed to get it and went into bat. Interestingly he got a hundred
that day. Can you believe it, for the rest of his career he ensured that his bat
was taped to the ceiling of the dressing room before he went in to bat. This
may sound irrational but that’s the way it goes.
The other thing we observe are the emotions sportsmen display on the
cricket field all the time. Even the nonexpressive Rahul Dravid threw his cap
when the Rajasthan Royals lost to Mumbai Indians in IPL 2014. Over my
years of research, and talking to cricketers and sportsmen in general, I
realised that the sheer physical and mental investment one makes in sports
coupled with the need for victory makes you do these things. If as a cricketer
you have not eaten dessert for 10 years to remain fit and you drop a simple
catch or get a wicket then when you express yourself it is far more visual than
what an accountant would do after getting the balance sheet right. Also a
cricketer facing a mediocre day in office can cause national ignominy which
never happens to commoners like us.
The standard advice I have seen senior cricketers or commentators give
players is “Enjoy the game”. Over the years I have tried to figure what that
means, do people not enjoy the game? Do they hate the game? What is the
essence of this statement? So here is the answer for all sports lovers to
understand. It means that one must try and discover the joy of playing the
sport, the reason why you started playing the game—that very emotion. It
could also mean that one must stick to the basics. The moment you start
playing anything competitively, the whole universe starts complicating your
mind and in this process negativities and bad manners seep into your system,
thereby confusing your brain. Therefore to deactivate yourself from this web
is possibly the meaning of “enjoy your game”. So easy but yet so difficult,
especially if the recipient of this is a young emotional player who has been
saddled with advice. Dinesh Karthik once said, “The only thing under your
control is your technique and what you can do, the rest you leave it to the
Almighty.”
As a true blue Punjabi kid Yuvi shies away from showing his softer side,
but we saw that candid moment once when he hugged Sachin after winning
the World Cup in 2011. It was Sachin who had advised Yuvi, when he was
going through the toughest moments in the dressing room, to do his best to
win the Cup for that “one special person” in his life. Little did Sachin know
that, that special person was Sachin himself.
 6

A Spinner Can Also Be A Cassanova

f 20 years back someone had suggested that Elizabeth Hurley would date a
I spinner, I would have roared in laughter even as I rolled on the ground.
Don’t forget that Sharmila Tagore married a batsman, Amrita Singh dated
Ravi Shastri only after he hit 6 sixes, Reena Roy married Mohsin Khan
inspite of him being a Pakistani batsman. Would Neena Gupta have ever
dated Larry Gomes instead of Viv Richards, despite his Lionel Richie like
looks? I doubt it. If Shoaib Malik was only a spinner there was no chance
Sania Mirza would have even glanced at him. These were the stark realities
of life as a spinner.
The “turning point” in every aspiring fast bowler’s life is when he realises
that inspite of doing everything that his coach has recommended and doing
most of the drills mentioned in Dennis Lillee’s The Art of Fast Bowling
things are not shaping anywhere close to being one. I was forced to realise
this when a kid two years younger than me thrashed me for 4 boundaries in
an over. I did some introspection to find that though my running speed was
like Imran Khan’s, my bowling speed was barely a yard faster than Laxman
Sivaramakrishnan. Yes he was a spinner in my time who bowled well and
sometimes spun the ball more than the length of his name.
It was difficult to accept this reality that was staring me in my face. Lord
Krishna had said to Arjuna in the Mahabharata that you can’t leave the
battlefield so there was no question of me leaving bowling altogether.
However I was not able to figure out what to do next. The only option
available to me was to become a spinner.
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that a day would come when I
would have to take this decision. It was like settling for a BA when all your
life, you wanted to be an engineer or doctor. Like most Indian kids of my
time, I idolised Kapil Dev and there was no chance that I would let him
down.
While spin bowling might be considered cool today, thanks to the likes of
Shane Warne and Muralitharan, it wasn’t so back then. With all due respect,
one never visualised Bedi, Prasanna or Venkataraghavan with hot chics on a
bike, but Kapil Dev or Imran Khan, definitely. So spin was never in my
aspiration list. But I had to come to terms with my limitations and kill my
ego, which was tough for a hormonally charged 16-year-old.
As a mediocre student, cricket was a kind of a safety valve for the
frustrations one experienced in the classroom. When one got bad marks,
which in my case was quite often, I could justify it by claiming to be a part of
the school and college cricket teams. My mother always saved me from my
dad by saying “he is bright but he couldn’t study because he was playing”.
The most horrific thing for any middle-class family was to accept that their
child was average in all aspects because that would dash any hope the family
had in you and make your parents look even worse in front of their friends.
So from my perspective it was important to be in some sports team. Also to
justify my mediocrity in class I had to be a batsman or a fast bowler. I would
never want my mother to feel embarrassed at her kitty party by having to say
that her son was an off-spinner. I still got away because my parents didn’t
care much, but in today’s competitive environment, parents would accept
nothing less than their child breaking every record Sachin has held, before he
has even turned 16. My neighbour actually believes that his son is an alloy of
Viv Richards and Sachin even though he can barely make it to his class team
and I can see that child buckling under parental pressure every day.

The only problem Abdul Qadir had was that he spun more than the
ball.
 Back in the 80s, there was a bowler from Pakistan who was making huge
inroads in our minds as a spinner and that was Abdul Qadir. The only
problem was that he spun more than the ball. A great bowler, but his action
would make Johnny Lever’s facial contortions and mannerisms look very
normal. I felt for Qadir. He probably was just trying to do funny things to get
attention to his craft because otherwise spinners would never get noticed or
even stand a chance in the endorsement market. One realised the value
created by the drama of Abdul Qadir only years later as now every spinner
who is making a mark is creating his own theatre and performing art. Paul
Adams with the head inside the knees action, Muralitharan with the popping
ghost eyes which can make Kathakali dancers look like novices, and the
latest additions being Sunil Narine and Ajantha Mendis who even added
inputs from another game called carrom board in their bowling. It was a
matter of survival, get noticed or die.
After a lot of deliberations I finally came to terms with the fact that I was
going to be a spinner. In my mind, a spinner was essentially a bowler who
started his career as a fast bowler but because he was a loser and mediocre, he
had no option but to bowl slow to stay in the game. Surprisingly, Sachin also
started his career as a fast bowler and I’ve often wondered if he also went
through this turmoil.
For years if you were a spinner, you’d be embarrassed to introduce
yourself as a cricketer because for some reason even you didn’t personally
believe that you were doing anything valuable. Even in team photographs one
would be somewhere on the side. Whatever fame Ravi Shastri got was only
after he started batting up the order for India, the “Sir Jadeja” status too has a
lot of batting in it. That’s the way the game goes.
I started as a leg spinner probably the same time Shane Warne started his
career. One of the first challenges for a leg spinner is to first land the ball in
the right place. I struggled with this for a long time. Despite a run-up,
reminiscent of the greats, for some strange reason my balls landed straight on
to the batsmen’s bat or directly in the wicketkeeper’s gloves. Months later I
showed some signs of improvement but then most of my deliveries landed in
my half of the pitch which is what happens with ordinary leg-spinners.
That’s when I turned to off-spin bowling. Now, off-spinners are accorded
the same status in cricket that mopeds get in the motorbike chain, with fast
bowling being compared to a Harley Davidson. Even there, my life was not
hunky-dory. As an off-spinner, I struggled with the same problems that
Harbhajan Singh would face later in his professional career; so from that
perspective I possibly was ahead of my times. My off-spin never spun and
always went straight or the other way. Therefore everytime Saqlain Mushtaq
gets credit for the Doosra I feel hurt and distressed. My leg spin was no better
as my natural delivery was the googly and I never got the leg spin to turn
which great spinners like Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra suffer today after
years of playing professional cricket. It was a truly challenging period in my
life.
Growing up in the pre-liberalisation era of the 80s and the early 90s, we
largely made safe and defensive choices under the influence of our elders
because of which our personalities lacked any sense of natural aggression. As
spinners, we just rolled our arm over and waited for some result which was in
tune with the Hindu philosophy of “Karma karte raho par phal ki chinta mat
karo”. Obviously with an attitude like this, there was no way we’d get any
wickets.
Thanks to Warne and Muralitharan this ignominy of being a spinner got
reduced over the years because of their sheer dominance and the way they
proved to the cricketing world that even spinners were real men. Shane
Warne ensured that he put this message across even off the field and proved
to the world that his off-field victims were more than his on-field victims
thanks to his ability to charm the maidens.
My perspective towards spin bowling changed when I first got to see
Muralitharan practise his craft from close quarters in Colombo. Watching
Murali bowl in the nets was an amazing experience because every time
Murali was at the point of releasing the ball there was this big hissing snake
like sound, which could easily reach the batsman. The rip he gave the cricket
ball was so hard that this sound was generated even before the ball pitched. If
he was bowling in the subcontinent then the snakes would definitely get an
inferiority complex. The rip he gave the ball, which felt like it went through a
million revolutions, was possibly similar to the way God spun the Earth and
then left it to rotate. When he was about to leave I overheard him telling a
colleague, “The batsmen should know how much I can turn the ball, but then
the wicket will come when I don’t turn the ball”. It was only years later when
Indian spinner Murali Karthik explained to me that I understood what
Muralitharan actually meant.
 During a discussion, Muralitharan once told my dear friend Murali
Karthik and me over a cup of coffee that he used to love turning the ball, but
for years he was unable to get as many wickets as he wanted to. In one of the
matches Aravinda de Silva walked up to him and said that if he stopped
turning the ball he could get wickets. This was something Muralitharan just
couldn’t digest. Once on a flight with the legendary Kapil Dev, the former
Indian captain told him, “Your problem is that you are predictable because
you spin the ball too much, I know where your ball will be and I can hit you
all day. You have to start learning how to bowl straight.” This utterly
confused him and he just couldn’t get the plot. This was like telling Sunny
Leone that if you want to be a successful actress you need to wear a sari and
cover yourself with a pallu. That was the time he watched Saqlain Mushtaq
bowl the doosra and was amazed by his success. Once he got his inspiration
it took him four years of daily practice and it was only in 1997 when he
started getting it right. His first victim was Steven Fleming and it was only
then that the Murali magic started in its true sense.
Wow! The best spinner in the world is saying that unpredictability is the
reason you fox your victims. No wonder I never made an impact with
women. I was just too predictable, I didn’t do different things. I just did the
right things and that just doesn’t work with either women or batsmen.
Women like surprises, now I know why. Whether in life or in cricket how
consistently unpredictable you are is what makes you great.

Its not about how many deliveries you have, its about how many
deliveries the batsman thinks you have. — Shane Warne

It didn’t stop there, he went on to say that the mantra for a spinner to be
successful is to create an illusion, then bowl the line and length and then
finally let the wicket do the rest. What does “creating an illusion” mean in
terms of cricket? Illusion is what one associated with people like David
Copperfield. Ironically, David Copperfield’s illusions not only helped him
wow audiences, but the heart of a super model called Claudia Schiffer.
When it came to Murali, I wondered if the big popping eyes at delivery
and the wicked smile created the illusion. According to him Shane Warne
was the master of creating a reputation and taking the batsman’s wicket even
before he bowled the ball and that’s the most important thing that he had
learnt from him.

The “Warne” Mind Games

Shane Warne knew what mind games and reputation bring to the table. He
had two main deliveries, a good leg spin and the straight on. That’s it. But he
made the world believe that he had 15 of them. Warnie once explained to
Murali how he created a web of deceit in the minds of the batsmen.
Step Be big and overbearing. This comes with reputation. The ability to
–
1 play with the mind of the incoming batsman.
Rip the first ball the hardest and make it spin like a top. This ball is to
Step tell the batsman how much you can spin the ball. The objective of
–
2 this ball is basically to make the batsman think that this guy is going
to spin me out.
Next, bowl the ball straight. This ball is going to tell the guy that not
Step
– only do I spin the ball but there are some balls which are not going to
3
spin at all. So the batsman is confused and starts thinking.
So these are essentially Warnie’s two main balls. But then the third
Step
– ball, he will change the line from outside the leg stump to the leg
4
stump coming wide of the crease.
Next one he will come close to the stumps and change the line to
Step
– bowl it on middle and off stump, by this time the batsmen is so
5
confused that he will edge it to the slips.
This was getting to me. These guys played mind games and planned every
spell of theirs. No wonder it’s called a “SPELL”, it’s just the right word. I
was constantly wondering whether everything that Shane Warne did helped
him get the reputation, the SMSes, the pills from his mother, the leaked
photographs. Come to think of it now, I am not surprised he had so many
girlfriends. These are the exact steps that can be used to be successful with
the girls too.
Get a reputation. Girls like macho guys. Give her an extremely expensive
gift so she knows that he can do a lot for her, surprise her, make her play
everything you throw at her and she will be bowled over forever. What
learning! A little too late though.
 This was getting to me, here was I who thought spinning was a weakness
and not something one would consider to be macho, but these guys had
converted it into an art form.
Murali said that sometimes it didn’t work with certain batsmen like
Sachin, Rahul and VVS Laxman and that’s where he had to rely on memory.
A spinner ought to have a good memory so while playing against the Indians
he used to memorise his routine by repeating to himself a few things so he
didn’t make a mistake while bowling and his lines were, “Keep asking
questions to Sachin, don’t bowl to Dravid on the back foot and don’t bowl on
the leg side to Laxman.” No wonder India produces better spinners! Thanks
to our education system, memorising is something which naturally comes to
us and if you are smart engineers like Kumble and Ashwin, then that’s far
easier.
Anil Kumble was someone who was smart and enjoyed the best of both
worlds. He bowled spin but then he bowled with pace. This was substantiated
when Mohammad Yousuf was once asked how he planned to play Kumble.
His answer was that the best way to play him was like an in-swing bowler.
Bizzare but true.
For a long time Anil Kumble was the senior most bowler in the team and
along with Zaheer Khan, the captain of the bowling attack during India’s
campaign in the 2003 World Cup. Shayamal Vallabhjee, who was then
assisting coach John Wright during this campaign, told me about the sheer
discipline and intensity Anil Kumble brought to the team. In the initial part of
the campaign, when the bowlers were struggling with their line and length,
Anil Kumble gave the boys a piece of advice that got the message across to
the bowling department. He said, “If you are struggling with your line and
length try to imagine that there are only two people on the ground—you and
the wicketkeeper. It teaches you discipline.”
Just as fast bowlers hunt in pairs, spinners do so too. India’s success was
also because of the combination of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. Two
complete opposite personalities operating in tandem. The silent introverted
leg spinner along with an ever excited aggressive off-spinner. Here was
another character who added a lot of value to Indian cricket not only by
taking 400 Test match wickets but also for lowering the stress levels in the
team. It was always a challenge for the Indian captain if he had to choose
between the two. While one was accurate and could contain the opposition,
the other one was slightly expensive but a wicket taking bowler. Bhajji loved
setting up batsmen and when I asked him about his craft, he said, “I enjoy
playing with the batsman’s mind but sometimes it can back fire. You may
have a good armoury and a plan of balls including the regular off-spin, one
with cross seam, a doosra and even varying speeds; but then you have to
execute them as well and sometimes while trying to do so, the batsman
derails your plan by playing strokes which are completely unexpected. This is
the real challenge for the bowler.” I related this to what my marketing
professor said once, that any good business organisation may have many
plans but how adaptable they are to competitive and market needs is the true
test.
They say, spin bowling is very much like chess where one is constantly
playing mind games with the opposition. Also understanding your craft and
reading different pitches is very critical. Sometimes when the pitch is good
one tends to get over excited and tries to do too many things. I used to get
confused when the commentators said that one needs to bowl slower if one
needs to get more spin and then when it came to a turning track they said
spinners who bowl a tad faster tend to get more wickets. I once got irritated
and at an unearthly hour called Murali Karthik for an explanation. He
patiently said, “It’s plain and simple mate. When the pitch is doing a lot you
have to bowl fast because then the ball spins anyway and the faster it spins it
gives less time to the batsman to react and he gets out. So if the conditions
are good, let the conditions do the damage.” This is something even my
grandmother told me once, “Jab acha chal rahe toh bas chup chap baith ke
apna kam karo.”

The Engineering Mind

It’s interesting how the legacy of Indian spin bowling now rests on
someone who is a pretty canny unconventional spinner who probably bowled
the ball of the century when he got Hashim Amla completely foxed by a
carom ball. It was one of the evenings when Harsha Bhogle along with his
wife Anita and me were deciding who we should be inviting for our Cricket
Adda, an event where we invite cricket lovers to chat on various topics along
with an expert as a guest. Harsha immediately said that we should go for
Ashwin because he is someone who is extremely articulate about his craft
and all things cricket. Well unlike many of us these South Indian boys have
the ability to not only pursue engineering to satisfy their parents but also have
a professional cricket career. Well, if you see the bowling styles of Anil
Kumble and Ravi Ashwin you will realise that they have applied a lot of their
engineering mind to their craft. Even when he was playing domestic cricket,
Ashwin was blogging for cricinfo.com, which shows that he was a thinking
cricketer even back then.
That one evening with Ashwin convinced me that he will be the future
captain of India. He said, “I am very clear that I want to become an
entrepreneur irrespective of how many years I play this game.” When he was
asked about the most important quality for a spinner he said, “Cricket has
changed. Spin bowling is no more about mystery because of the videos that
players and the support staff put together. There is no X factor left per se and
you know the stuff that every bowler can pull off. Most spinners in
international cricket have good skill sets but what separates a good spinner
from a great one is how brave he is. Imagine if you are bowling 2 balls to
Kevin Pietersen and he has 12 runs to get. He is batting on 50. You very
much know he’s going to tonk you for 2 sixes, so then what do you do? Do
you try to contain him or do you try to get him out? These are the mindsets
you are playing with and if you get in the negative zone than you’ve had it.
You may not play the next game.”

A delayed decision is a lost opportunity. Even if it’s a bad decision

it’s better to take it, rather than allow someone else to take it. —
Ravi Ashwin

“The only option for a spinner is to adapt and be brave enough to even get
beaten up once in a while. Don’t be defensive even if things go wrong. Take
fast calls and remember that a delayed decision is a lost opportunity. Even if
it’s a bad decision it’s better to take it rather than allow someone else to take
it.”
I remember my elders telling me that the best way to understand any
concept was by trying to explain it to someone else. Ashwin said this worked
beautifully for him as he had started coaching tennis ball cricket players at
the age of 20 and learnt a hell of a lot from it. He mentions that being a coach
made him realise that there were a lot of basic things even at the international
level he was forgetting to implement. It was through these coaching sessions
with the players that he found out through experimentation and observation
the correlation between pressure and performance.
He says, “A spinner bowls well when there is no batsman. Then when you
keep an ordinary batsman, he bowls two bad balls in an over and when there
is a good batsman he automatically bowls 4 bad balls including 2 full tosses.
This is how the mind of a bowler works, so it’s important in a way that one
should focus on the process.” Very similar to what great batsmen say, “Don’t
play the bowler, play the ball.”
Spinners these days are everywhere and are having a whale of a time
making their own style statements. England had Graeme Swann and Monty
Panesar. Monty kind of represents the old-school spinner like me who has
somehow managed to hold fort by increasing the quality of his bowling. He is
one of the most uncoordinated human beings on the planet. Inspite of having
the longest fingers in the business he misses high fives by a foot.
I recently read Monty’s autobiography, yes he has already written one and
I can understand where he is coming from. He’s probably thinking, “I don’t
know much about my future, let me get the book out of my bucket list or
years later I may not even get that deal.” The one thing I was really proud of
Monty was that while his teammates peed on the pitch, he peed on a bouncer
in a night club. This is such fast bowlerish behaviour. This is the attitude I
like, for he just might be the first and last person of Indian origin to take on a
bouncer.
 7

A Nation Of Speed Breakers

“When will India produce another Kapil Dev?”

“My mother 65, father no more…not possible.”
Kapil Dev, responding to a journalist.

m sure he’s answered this question in his baritone Haryanvi accent at a

I’ zillion press conferences.
In a nation of batsmen and spinners, Kapil Dev was truly the first and
last athletic fast bowler we’ve had and I doubt this phenomenon will ever
happen again.
If you grew up as a boy in the 80s, the chances of you having a Kapil Dev
poster in your bedroom and a Samantha Fox poster in your bathroom were
pretty high. Of course if it was the other way round, there would have been
an aberration in the family. Between them, they summed up the passion
quotient of young Indian boys in those post Emergency years.
I remember meeting Kapil Dev as an impressionable 6-year-old and was
completely mesmerised by his personality. Even in those days it was difficult
to understand his Haryanvi-English accent, but unlike an older me, I wasn’t
judgmental back then. His charisma was far more overpowering than his
accent. I have come to believe that Kapil Dev’s English and Srikanth’s Hindi
have destroyed the educational fabric of this country.
Over the years I have had the pleasure of being part of a number of events
with Kapil paaji and every one of these interactions has been a source of new
material for me. He takes great pride in narrating stories about his and the
Indian team’s troubles with the English language during their early years. He
is one of the few people who has that rare ability to laugh at himself more
than any film star could possibly dream of. Today nine out of ten
conversations one has with him are about golf or some business deal. He is
one of the only ex-cricketers I have seen who has mastered another sport post
retirement and through that platform managed to befriend CEOs and is
believed to be associated with diverse businesses from coal, oil and power to
name a few. Fund managers have a lot to learn from Kapil paaji’s truly
diversified portfolio.
Growing up in the 80s, it was a treat to watch Kapil Dev twitch his
shoulder blades while walking towards his bowling mark. He said this was a
habit that he developed in the hot English summers where it would get very
sweaty. His delivery stride was beautiful with his head turning sideways
while delivering that lovely out-swinger.
I have always believed that fast bowling was never taken seriously and
given the importance it deserved in our country. This is something that can be
blamed on our feudal history and the caste system. As a kid, every boy who
played cricket wanted to bat. Unfortunately, cricket equipment was relatively
expensive and invariably owned by some unsporting spoilt rich kid who
thought it was his birth right to bat and when he got out he would take the
bat, ball and stumps along with him and go home. Bowling was always
regarded as a menial and laborious task delegated to the weakest and most
ignored kids and by chance if any of these kids got a wicket, the rich ones
would dub it a trial ball. So invariably, most fast bowlers came from weaker
sections of society and were always exploited. A typical case of the means of
production belonging to the rich, leading to exploitation. Inspite of this, Kapil
Dev’s domination makes him a folk hero. If this was the state of fast bowling,
do we even need to discuss fielding? I am personally guilty of having
exploited this loophole and still regret having made my sister field for hours
whenever we played cricket with the promise that I’d let her bat. Like most
politicians of the 80s who promised roti, kapda aur makaan, my promise too
never came true.
 This attitude towards fast bowling was the reason that India produced
reluctant fast bowlers. One need not look beyond Munaf Patel to understand
why. If you thought Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s face showed a sense of
tranquility, then multiply that by 100 and that’s the level of calmness you see
on Munaf Patel’s face while he walks to his bowling mark! Irrespective of
what’s happening on the pitch, there is a constant smile on his face and he
doesn’t seem to get affected by stupid things like being hit for a 4 or a 6.
Even when he walks to his bowling mark you get a sense that he’s walking in
the woods or trying to achieve nirvana. At one point of time, he was one of
India’s fastest and most feared bowlers but he lowered his speed because he
didn’t want to hurt the batsman.
If you thought Munaf was bad, we also had a struggling fast bowler by the
name of Ashish Nehra. I refer to him as struggling because with him, you got
the impression that someone was holding him from the back and he had to
struggle to reach the bowling mark. Nehra was a good bowler but he always
seemed to have had great difficulty running. Even when he’d run after the
ball while fielding, one would feel like requesting the ball to slow down
because it was too much agony to watch him do so. I don’t blame Nehra for
this. It’s just that Indian bodies are not designed to do this kind of hard work,
though I’ve always wondered why we’ve never had a steady stream of
aggressive, hot tempered strappy fast bowlers from Punjab. I guess they saw
more merit in singing bhangra and being the next Yo Yo Honey Singh. Less
effort, more rewards.
Or maybe BCCI purposely didn’t want them to bowl fast because they
wanted Anil Kumble to retire as India’s fastest bowler. Somehow I feel that
fast bowlers like Munaf, Ashish and the others could have done a lot better if
they had been managed well. I thought Ishant was far luckier than the rest,
though I believe his long hair and prominent Adam’s apple sometimes cause
imbalance in his bowling.
Cricket has been a batsman’s game. We all remember the hundreds scored
by the great batsmen but would never remember a crucial match winning 3-
wicket haul by someone like Chetan Sharma. The reason I mention Chetan
Sharma is because I believe that the BCCI should compensate him for the
mental trauma he suffered after that one bad delivery in Sharjah. For some
reason he was blamed for all of India’s ills during that period ranging from
our diplomatic failures with Pakistan to the high oil prices during the Gulf
War. I feel for Chetan Sharma for what he went through during that phase in
his life for that one full-toss. I wonder if any batsman has ever had to go
through that kind of agony for getting bowled on a full toss. Probably never!
It didn’t end with Chetan Sharma. Can you even imagine what would have
happened to his wife or son? Imagine being at a kitty party and being
introduced as “Pata hein yeh kaun hein, woh last ball six, jinhone match
harvaya tha, unki Mrs.” No team would have ever given Chetan Sharma’s
son the option to bowl the last over, even in galli cricket. If I were his son, I
would have taken special permission from the Ministry of External Affairs to
go to Pakistan and slap Javed Miandad for what he had done to my father.
Jokes apart, when one actually talks to seasoned fast bowlers like Kapil
Dev and Wasim Akram, one realises that there is a lot of method to the art of
fast bowling. Zaheer Khan was someone whose evolution as a wily fast
bowler I had very closely observed. He never spoke much, but when he did
you could see that he had really thought through his bowling. He says,
“Bowling is like meditation and for a bowler, that walk back to the bowling
mark is the most crucial part of his routine because that’s what defines what
will follow. Typically the thought pattern during this walk will also reflect
what state of mind he is in at that point of time. Sometimes it is negative and
sometimes it is positive, if it is positive it means you are in the best state of
mind and that reflects on your form too. Most good bowlers constantly talk to
themselves during the walk up to the bowling mark because that helps
deconstruct the situation and gain clarity on the next ball. The key for a
bowler is to slow things down and that comes with experience.”
One of the key exercises that Zaheer Khan did was to reinforce his mind
with positive thoughts. When Glen McGrath would go through a rough time,
he would take time off to watch his past wickets. Fortunately for him, he had
over 500 of them to choose from. This would immediately make him feel
positive. Similarly Zak as we fondly call him keeps video clips of his best
balls bowled on his iPad and watches them regularly. Apart from that, he
value adds by watching batsmen’s bad balls which give him a fair sense of
the weakness of the key opposition batsmen and helps him set them up.
The great Richard Hadlee said that a bowler has to be like a quizmaster
who constantly needs to be asking questions to the batsmen. He meant that
figuratively and not literally, else Derek O’Brien would have been India’s
greatest fast bowler. One of the things Zak said is that most batsmen take
change of pace to mean the slower one but for him the most effective ball is
the one that he bowls faster. That is the more effective change of pace. When
one says that the batsmen is set it essentially means that he’s gotten used to
the pace and bounce and that is what one has to disturb and the faster ball
does that beautifully.
As a senior bowler, you also do the thinking for the junior bowlers and
guide them. An inexperienced bowler is usually nervous and unable to clearly
analyse the situation. Therefore it becomes important for the senior bowler to
point out the deficiencies and help the junior bowler focus on the basics.

Self-Analysis
As a bowler, you discover your bowling abilities and chinks during match
situations. Therefore it is imperative that bowling in matches remains the
focus supplemented by the gym and strengthening of core muscles. In 2006
Zak realised that when bowling over-the-wicket, the ball swung way too
much and would go out of control. That’s when he first decided to try coming
around the wicket. With a slight change in his wrist position, he discovered
the now successful round-the-wicket strategy which he uses so effectively.

I watch video clips of my best balls bowled on my iPad regularly. I

also watch opposition batsmen’s bad balls which help me
understand their weakness. — Zaheer Khan

Zak realised his run-up was too long and by the time he reached the
bowling mark he was falling apart. A shortened run-up also helped him get
the incoming delivery going. He says that if you can’t bowl consistently at
145 kmph then at some point in your life, you’ve got to decide your optimal
speed and focus on the skills instead. When you are young, you should bowl
as fast as possible and over a period of time, add different deliveries to your
armoury. Build your house with a strong foundation and you can always
modify and add your showpieces later.
According to Zak, even using your armoury is a skill. A chance discussion
with a few leading batsmen in the midst of a rough patch provided him with
one of the most shocking insights that he had become predictable as a bowler.
After his first two deliveries, batsmen were able to predict his bowling
pattern. The fight between the batsman and the bowler is not only a physical
duel, but also a mental one in which the aim is to get into the other’s head
and outsmart each other.
Sometimes this happens off the field too. Zak recalls an incident when he
had got Mathew Hayden out three times in a row during the India tour and he
wanted to make sure that he played that into Hayden’s mind because he knew
Hayden would be thinking of getting aggressive soon and batting him out of
the attack. So at a function one evening, Zak walked up to him and said,
“Mate I’ll get you out once again.” The following day Hayden refused to
score a single run off Zak for nearly six overs and that put tremendous
pressure on the Aussies, needless to say, Zak had done his job.
Minimising injuries and maintaining peak physical fitness is essential for
every fast bowler. So how does one do that? He says it’s like a buffet and you
choose the dishes you want based on your appetite and your body
requirements. Some would go for salads, just starters or a full course meal.
Likewise, when formulating a work out, one would mix and match from a
buffet of pilates, circuit training, weights, aerobics and more depending on
your fitness objectives.
Gary Kirsten played a key role in Zak’s recovery from his shoulder injury.
Gary took him to the Cricket Club of India and made him bowl for over an
hour. Besides giving him inputs, he made him realise the positive aspects of
his bowling. That’s what a good coach should be doing. Observing what’s
going on in a player’s mind and then taking corrective action.
One of the other notable Indian fast bowlers who never got his due was
Ajit Agarkar. He once explained to me that swing is all about how one
maintains the ball which the Pakistani bowlers had mastered. Apart from the
designated players who do that the person who also helps maintain the ball is
the spinner. The spinner holds the ball closer to the palm, so if his hands get
moist then it adds moisture to the rougher surface reducing the swing.
Therefore a spinner who holds the ball on the rougher side to get a better
grip, has to sometimes sacrifice this and hold the shinier surface in order to
maintain the ball’s balance. No wonder they say that bowlers hunt in pairs.
One of the toughest balls to bowl is the ball which is bowled straight
because if you can land the ball on the seam, then it does what it has to but
rarely does anyone get that delivery right.
Measuring one’s run-up is the start of the bowling process. Ajit always
believed that marking the run-up a little longer was always fun because a
batsman felt a little intimidated by the length of the bowler’s run-up and only
realised the futility of this after the ball was bowled. Ajit used to measure his
run-up by the standard procedure of counting his steps. During a match
against the Aussies Jason Gillespie noticed that the run-up length marked on
the two sides of the pitch differed by almost a foot. When he checked with
Srinath, he was told it was Ajit’s marking. Ajit till then had no idea that he
had different lengths on either side. From then on, he ensured that his
bowling run-up was measured by a tape and not by his steps. One would have
never guessed that such things mattered.
Steve Waugh used to constantly mess with Ajit’s head. One day when he
came into bat he went up to Ajit and said, “You talk better than you bat.” Ajit
gave it back to Steve Waugh by nearly destroying his elbow during his
farewell series.
Ajit played for Middlesex where he had the opportunity to train and bowl
with Glen McGrath. He recalls one of the incidents when McGrath turned in
about 5 hours late for a match. It so happened that his car broke down.
Everyone knew the reason except Ajit, so he asked McGrath when he finally
appeared, “Why are you so late?” Pat came the answer, “Mate that’s what
happens when you put petrol in a diesel car.” It’s good to know that unlike on
the field, McGrath made a few mistakes off it.
But his clincher was when Ricky Ponting got in his way and tried to taunt
him. Ajit shut him up in a way that can make the best stand-up proud. He
walked up to Ponting and just said, “Mate do you have a century at Lord’s?”
For those who don’t know, Ajit has the enviable accomplishment of scoring a
century at Lord’s.
 8

The Commentator Species

Dermot Reeve was asked what was his most memorable moment of the 2011
World Cup and his immediate response was, “Sidhu allowing me to speak
one line during the tournament.”

avjot Singh Sidhu is one man who has single handedly destroyed the
N life of his co-commentators.
Nowadays, most commentators working with Sidhu say that in case he
doesn’t allow them to speak for an entire over, they declare it a maiden.
My experiences with Sidhu during live gigs were always fun because he
was very clear about what he was going to say and you had to adjust your act
accordingly. I remember him once telling me, “Ask me why I’m a true
leader?” I told him that the question did not fit in the scheme of things for
which his reply was that he had a great one-liner for this question and
therefore it was imperative that I asked him that question. Needless to say, I
had no choice. When Sidhu decides to step out, you don’t bowl lolly pops to
him was a lesson I had learnt a long time back while watching him thump
those hapless spinners out of the park. One thing is for sure, Sidhu has been a
mascot for all the literary greats whose wisdom was forgotten and Mark
Twain and Oscar Wilde must be thanking Sidhu for reviving their one-liners
from wherever they are now.
 Even the great Imran Khan got mesmermised by the Sardar during an
interview. The Oxford educated Imran may have even wondered if
Shakespeare was born in Patiala. I remember Imran confronting him with “I
am optimistic about Pakistan’s success” for which his reply was, “Optimistic
is the one who thinks bullshit is a fertiliser.”
Rahul Dravid had once said to me that in his entire cricketing career,
Sidhu had never uttered a word. So when I asked Sidhu how this
transformation came about, his reply was “Meditation”. What he said after
that was the clincher, “Sathaye saab, when 50 percent of the world loves you
and the other half hates you then you know that success has come to you.”
Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t ignore him.
How times have changed. My first memories of commentary involved the
duo of Sushil Doshi and Ravi Chaturvedi which was not the best of
experiences. This was not because they were bad but because for some reason
words such as “Manovagyanik dabav”, or descriptions such as “Kadee
pariksha le rahe Madan Lal”, never captured the glamour of the game in any
sense. I guess we have to accept certain things, one of it being that this game
is not fun with the Hindi language, just like swear words in English sound
like sweet nothings in Hindi. It is a different issue that often English
commentary also sounded the same. They used to say that Bob Willis’
commentary was actually used by mothers to put their babies to sleep. I guess
it also had to do with the nature of the sport because scoring 40 off 100 balls
was considered an excellent strike rate back then.
Then Tony Greig happened and an entire nation realised that cricket
broadcasting is actually supposed to add value to the sport and make it
entertaining rather than be a burden. His high pitched voice in combination
with the likes of Bill Lawry and Ian Chappell was like Pandit Bhimsen Joshi,
Jasrajji, and Mansoor Ali Khan saab having a combined concert. When Tony
Greig was commentating sometimes even Ravi Shastri looked like Viv
Richards. Such was his impact.
But the one moment that etched his voice in the Indian psyche was his
loud banter during Sachin’s famous Sharjah hundreds. One wonders that if it
wasn’t for Tony, would some of Sachin’s centuries have looked even half as
impactful as they did. Therefore I have always believed that much of the
credit for Sachin’s earlier successes should be attributed to Tony Greig’s
boisterous praising of the Master. So there was someone else before me who
made a career in India because of Sachin. And it was this very imitation of
Tony and Sachin that landed me my first assignment with Sony Max during
the Cricket World Cup in South Africa.
When I landed in Cape Town and headed to the studios, I was introduced
to the crew and because it was the first time everyone had met, even the Extra
Innings team had no idea what to do with me. They were also experimenting
with cricket programming back then, so they told me that they would figure
out what to do with me once they got there. The only stuff I had in my bag
was some 20 odd cricketers’ batting styles and around 5 voices of cricketers.
All of it untested.
Gary, who was the head of the broadcasting team, was English. I was
introduced to him by a production executive who said, “He does some
cricketers, Have a look at him.” I was as embarrassed by the introduction as
he was. Then he asked me, “I believe you do a Tony Greig?” Now Indians
enjoying my take on Greigy was one thing, but an English head of production
wanting to see my imitation was a different ball game.
“C’mon we’ll test you out now, come with me.”
I followed Gary and by this time I had started sweating because the last
thing I wanted was someone saying, “Why the hell did we get this guy here,
he is shit!.” I got my first shock of the tour when I entered the studio.
Standing against the wall were two 6 foot 8 inch men who cumulatively
could cover 22 yards of the cricket pitch if they were lying down. One was
the West Indian fast bowler Ian Bishop who apparently bowled the fastest
ball Sachin faced in his life and the other was the man who got me this job in
the first place, Tony Greig. I didn’t know how to react because it was a weird
situation I was thrown into. Even before I could recover, Gary said to Tony,
“We want to get this bloke on the show and apparently he does a good Tony
Greig.” That was it, my heart sank because I could see what was going to
happen in the next 5 minutes. We all knew this man’s reputation. After all,
the media had portrayed him as an arrogant, loud, smart man who along with
Kerry Packer started the World Series Cricket in the 70s. Suddenly I hear,
“Mate, show us what you got.” I don’t know what happened after that, but I
rattled all my Greigy lines in a jiffy and the last thing I remember is Tony
Greig’s loud guffaw followed by a baritone voice telling Gary, “Let’s shoot
the guy.” Now considering the violence in South Africa, that statement can
have very different meanings. Fortunately for me, he liked what he’d heard,
especially when I shouted “Wonderful Shot!” thrice and made a remark that
if there was a calculation done, the impact of him saying “Wonderful” would
be far greater than that of Eric Clapton mentioning it in millions of renditions
of his song “Wonderful Tonight”.
On cricket tours, Tony used to be the life of a commentary box. Before the
producer could cue him, saying “Tony you’re on”, he would be busy chatting
with his mates about the weather, the women, Kerry Packer’s influence and
then suddenly rush and take guard in his inimitable way. It might be the most
inane news, but he loved to make it sound good. I remember a gaffe that he
made in Birmingham when the Pakistani section was blowing horns like no-
one’s business and suddenly he shouted, “Oh what an atmosphere, these
horny Pakistanis are having a party.” There was a stunned silence in the box
but then it was back to business in a few minutes again.
Tony Greig and Ian Chappell were two individuals who I thought were the
epitomy of professionalism. They would know everything about the game
before it started. Tony loved the concept of breaking news and unlike the
Hindi channels who cook up breaking news, he worked hard for the same.
Though he would like a bit of sensationalism, I would see him constantly
chatting with match referees, groundsmen and authorities to get some news
he could use in his broadcast. When it came to insights on the game, I think
no one can match Ian Chappell. I call him the Yash Chopra of cricket as he is
the biggest cricket romantic out there. This man is full of anecdotes for every
cricketing situation there can be. I also believe that his liver is beer and wine
proof because it is difficult to visualise him without a glass. I remember
meeting him at a bar in London at 9 am and he was having a beer. It was a
different issue that I had just woken up and he had finished 40 laps in the
swimming pool. These Aussies are made differently. Period! Ian is like your
favourite uncle who could cook up a story whenever you wanted as a child,
whether it was Spiderman or Superman.
This man could be extremely witty and sarcastic in his commentary and
could say things with a plain face which could make you smile
instantaneously. I remember an instance when Pakistan was playing India and
Javed Miandad was the coach of the Pakistan team. Abdul Razzaq was
batting and Javed, the enthusiastic bloke that he is, was making gestures to
Razzaq from the player’s balcony explaining to him how he should be
playing. Ian’s reaction on air went something like, “Razzaq is a good
cricketer which is evident from the fact that he is not watching Javed
Miandad giving all those instructions.”

The reason you see humour is because you observe beyond what
everyone does and that’s what a good commentator is supposed to
do.
— Ian Chappell

He is one of the few guys who can tell the viewer more than what he sees.
A classic example of that was when during one of the matches Dhoni had
asked for 4 bats from the dressing room and held 3 of them together and
practised a stroke. All the commentators thought that he was changing his bat
as he had managed to destroy the previous one while hitting a helicopter shot.
Suddenly there’s a voice which says, “MS is trying the bats together and
practising the stroke because that will acclimatise the hand to a heavy bat
load. So when he holds one bat while he is batting his hands would feel much
lighter after that exercise.” I was amazed at how he pointed out such a subtle
thing while the rest of the world was busy having coffee.
He once told me, “The reason you see humour is because you observe
beyond what everyone does and that’s what a good commentator is supposed
to do.”

The Art Of Cricket Presenting

Cricket anchoring has also evolved in a big way, from Narottam Puri to
Mandira Bedi. Even Darwin would have been proud of this evolution. This
whole new phenomenon was described as “Wrap Around Cricket
Programming.” For puritans it was scandalous but it definitely made the
game more youth friendly and surprisingly women friendly. I thank Mandira
for diverting some of the women folk from Shanti to the ‘Ashanti’ of the
cricket field. She did it the hard way and I saw that in 2003 when she made
her debut on a bouncy wicket in South Africa. She will have equal
significance in Indian cricketing history like Sarojini Naidu or Jhansi ki Rani
had in our freedom struggle and trust me that’s not an exaggeration. To have
broken into cricket’s male bastion was as difficult as fighting the British in a
war. Bishen Singh Bedi couldn’t achieve 1 percent of her success inspite of
taking 266 wickets and successfully captaining India. This was clearly an
example of a High Risk – High Return strategy.
Well she had one of her most embarrassing moments when she called
Harbhajan Singh a leg spinner. In some way she was technically right
because in the last 2 years most of Bhajji’s wickets had come from doosras
which theoretically was leg spin. However Mandira was not one to give up,
she purely survived on the basis of her grit. Another of her contributions was
in making noodles extremely popular in India thanks to her noodle strap
blouses. I was quite surprised that Maggi never thought of using her as a
brand ambassador. Her historical significance is also due to the fact that the
saree suddenly became as popular as Gandhiji after Munna Bhai. So I can say
that out of the 22 yards on a cricket pitch, at least 5 yards belonged to her.

One of my most embarrassing moments was when I called

Harbhajan Singh a leg spinner.
— Mandira Bedi

Said Mandira: “It was the “Big occasion syndrome” for me too, amidst ex-
cricketers, suits, technical stalwarts and me wearing interesting clothes. They
said, “Don’t worry, just do what you are good at.” And honestly I didn’t
know till then what I was good at. As Shanti on TV I was given my lines but
as Mandira I had to make my lines for live TV. I was making mistakes by the
minute and was constantly telling myself that I have been selected out of so
many people and that I can’t be letting everyone down. I just could not stop
weeping for the first 7 days.”
Unlike Shaanti, here the weeping would not have helped garner TRPs so
Mandira left the ablah nari tag and decided to take on the cricket world and I
give her full credit for how she transformed herself. I remember whenever
she spoke in the studio she got a raised eyebrow. She was constantly asking
herself whether she belonged here and there was a time when she told Sneha
Rajani the Head at Sony Max that she could not do it anymore as there was
just too much criticism. That’s when Sneha told her, “We got you here
because we believe in you and if you empty the baggage in your brain of
being a woman and the bigness of the moment and it being a male sport, etc,
etc, you will be fine.”
Mandira said, “Live broadcasting taught me to be present in the current
moment and not worry about the gaffes made in the past or the anxiety of the
future. Heaven and Hell is in your own head. So with swollen eyes I decided
to throw away my baggage the next day and just go for it and things just
changed after that. A few days later my confidence came out, a little too
much, after the famous India vs Pakistan World Cup 2003 game at Centurion
which we won. We had a huge celebration that night and I came pretty
groggy the next day for the telecast. Mark Nicholas asked me live on air from
the ground about my celebrations the night after India’s win. I replied
instantaneously, “Oh it was terrific but I can’t describe it to you as we are a
family channel.” Mark was shocked by my answer. Actually everyone was
shocked including me. I didn’t realise what I had said. It was another
blunder!!! But one thing I realised after this was I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Mandira talks about the fact that she always did her homework but the key
challenge was to apply it on live TV. One good piece of advice she got was
not to load up the questions so heavy that the player had nothing to answer.
Cricketers are reluctant speakers. She says, “One has to ensure it’s not about
you and the fact that I was the only woman present meant sometimes it
became about me. So even if Shah Rukh Khan made it about me, I still had to
recover from the flattery and make it about him. Having said that, one has to
bring one’s personality into what you do, otherwise you won’t make a mark.”
If you are associated with cricket one is also vulnerable to controversies
especially when India is not playing well. When India was eliminated in the
initial rounds of the 2007 World Cup and the media had nothing to write
about, they created a controversy around Mandira’s tattoo which she had for
years. She had to issue an apology saying it was not done to hurt anyone’s
religious sentiments. She added, “Then came the saree which I wore which
had the flags of all the World Cup teams and Star News did a piece where
they interviewed soldiers in Kargil saying “The flag you are protecting is
what Mandira was wearing on her body”, I was once again under scrutiny.”
She remembers that she got a lot of hate mail from Bangladesh because
she said, “What! We got beaten by Bangladesh.” There were Facebook pages
dedicated to “Hate Mandira”. She further added that the West Indies World
Cup was just a disaster. A wrap-up show at 4 am when India is not playing
and 3 people are watching is the worst punishment one can get as a presenter.
Her 5 days in Pakistan were among the best experiences she has had. She
said, “I had one embarrassing moment there as well. I was watching the game
and Irfan managed to come to the area where we were sitting. I remember
getting excited and screaming out, “Irfan I love you”, like a true fan. As I did
it, I realised that the camera was focussing on me and it was on the screen for
all to see.”
Another ace cricket presenter on TV is Gaurav Kapur whose strength
actually lies in making all the player interactions very comfortable and
engaging whether it is a discussion with Wasim Akram on reverse swing or
with Sunil Narine on the carom ball. He mentions the importance of talking
to the players before the interview and helping them formulate answers for
the standard questions. When you do that then the interviews become
impactful. He says, “Imagine if I had to bat in a cricket match and I went
there in front of thousands I would expect my non-striker or the other
cricketers to calm me down, make me comfortable, similarly when players
are giving interviews it is not their domain and therefore one has to give them
support to face the balls on this pitch called live TV.” This is absolutely true
because I have seen a lot of presenters just rush to a player and throw the
mike at their face after they have scored a century and ask, “How are you
feeling after this hundred?” To me this is the most inane question as no sane
man would feel hurt or distraught after scoring a hundred.
The other thing he says is, never underestimate the viewer. Always
consider that he or she knows more than you and even if 10 people are
watching a show ensure that those people feel satisfied by the broadcast.
Gaurav says someone who inspired him in his cricket journey was Rahul
Dravid because of his manners and the way he carried himself. The other
thing about Rahul he mentions is his curiosity. He recounts an incident where
he and his fiancé were having dinner with Rahul and for 2 hours Rahul did
not even mention the word cricket and actually understood the nuances of his
and his fiance’s profession which was shocking because normally with
cricketers one rarely gets to see this quality. Gaurav also mentions that in the
newer generation he is amazed by the single minded focus of Virat Kohli
when it came to his diet which is probably the reason why he has those 6
packs. Even after a lot of coaxing by friends once Virat refused to have
chicken curry during an evening out. When Gaurav asked him about it, Virat
said, “Ek saal se meine chicken curry nahi khaiye hein because the curry
makes you put on weight.” Now that’s creditable. For a Punjabi lad with
Virat’s aggression to stay without chicken curry is akin to a Gujarati family
managing without thepla for the rest of their lives.
 9

The Broadcasting Doctrine

“I have always believed its not about me. My glory comes from making
others look good.”
Harsha Bhogle

he Indian male believes that he knows cricket better than anyone else in
T the country. He is convinced that if he was batting at Perth or Durban he
could have adjusted his batting technique better than Dravid and Laxman put
together. My uncle never played the game and was always averaging around
105 kgs during the course of his lifetime. He never got up to even pick up the
remote to change the channel but had strong views on the fitness quotient of
the Indian team and how Raina’s sliding stop technique needed some fine
tunning. Like him, my grandfather could barely lift his back but had a theory
on how Sachin should change the angle of his back lift and improve his
performance. How an Indian garners the audacity to make such statements is
an area of research worthy of a thesis.
Indians, especially Maharashtrians and Bengalis, are born theorists! A co-
operative bank cashier for 25 years, my dad’s friend had enough courage to
talk about everything from economics to cricket and quantum physics. From
the limited enclosure of his tiny cabin he could device a foolproof solution to
the Simla Agreement and in the same breath will tell you that MIG 21s were
becoming flying coffins because of the sheer negligence of the Indian Air
Force. That’s why they say that it is knowledge that creates problems in
India. Lack of it can make you an expert.
However, over the last 20 years, there has been one man who made his
opinions count in the world of cricket and that is my dear friend Harsha
Bhogle. Every Indian cricket lover has envied and aspired to be in his shoes. I
was one of them. Harsha has lived every Indian male’s dream.
Soon after I completed my MBA, which I had to do to overcome my
middle-class Maharashtrian guilt and get my family off my back, I headed
straight to Mumbai. Here I met Harsha and shared with him my vision of
becoming the Jerry Maguire of the cricketing world. I tried to impress him
with my insights about the game and how I could change the way cricket was
run in the country. I was hoping that he would notice the glint in my eye and
predict my greatness. That did not happen. He just gave me one simple piece
of advice, he said, “Your ideas seem interesting but I think you should get a
real job.”
Harsha’s advice seemed to have no effect on me and like him I went on to
pursue a career related to cricket after a corporate stint. However, neither of
us would have predicted that 9 years later we would be in the commentary
box together. Watching Harsha in the commentary box during the 2006 South
Africa series was like doing an Executive Programme in Sports Broadcasting
at a premier institute. It also made me realise the fact that commentary is not
as simple as the world thinks it is. For millions, their opinion of commentary
is that one just has to sit there, talk and then hang out with the cricketers.
Sadly that’s not the case. A cricket commentator, especially someone who
has not played the game at a certain level, is naturally looked down upon by
the cricketing fraternity and completely not welcome. So Harsha’s greatness
lies in the fact that he honed his craft braving the toughest of conditions.
People don’t realise that players also hate commentators till they become
commentators themselves. I haven’t seen a single player ever have a heart-to-
heart conversation with a commentator; even if he has played 100 Tests. The
most significant learning for me was that a sports presenter, however tough
the conditions might be, still had to endeavour to make the expert sitting next
to him look good along with executing the mandatories well. That is why he
was the only person who could handle Sidhu and Boycott equally well at the
same time. Harsha says, “Live telecast is the ultimate team sport. You have to
feel good about what you are doing, but sometimes it can be taxing during
long tours. You see everyone chilling around you while you have been told to
fill in for another hour. Sometimes I wondered why I was the only one to
come first and leave last. But then I had to make peace with the fact that I had
to work the hardest as my route to this profession was different.”
Just like the director is all-important for an actor unless you are a
superstar, the most important person in the broadcast room is the producer
who the commentators revolve around. A typical day would have the
commentators come into the box and check the roster which will tell them
their various slots. I have always felt the senior players are not worried about
what is in store because as an expert commentator they more or less know
what to expect in a game. One person though would come before the rest of
the gang and make sure he knew the surroundings well before the game
started. That was Harsha.
The commentary box is for some strange reason, one of the most
uncomfortable places to work in; whether it’s the SCG or the Centurion. It is
almost modelled on the anda cell at Arthur Road jail, possibly smaller than
Mandela’s Robben Island cell where he spent 17 years. Harsha sits there
along with ex-cricketers like Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Ian Chappell and
others who between them have played millions of Test matches. Besides
those physically present, he has an ear piece that helps him listen to four
different people including the producer who is instructing him on the flow of
the broadcast. Whenever his wife Anita complains about Harsha not listening
to her, I wonder if it is true because in the broadcasting room he has the
ability to listen to eight people at a time whilst watching the proceedings. To
me this ear piece is the most irritating piece of equipment because it blocks
your thoughts. But he somehow manages it with consummate ease. While the
experts are giving their opinions, the producer may say things like, “Ok now
change the conversation to Sehwag’s batting and we will follow it up with a
package on Sehwag’s boundaries”, in his ear piece. Just as he is about to cue
the boundaries he would get instruction that the tape was not functioning and
so he would need to talk about Kumble’s bowling and Harsha would ease
into the Kumble package without making the expert feel that he had been
rudely cut off. This he would do continuously for hours with a smile which
was as pleasant as Aishwarya Rai and Vidya Balan’s put together. While
doing this he would be the only one following the game at all levels and
paying attention to all the developments around the match.
 What separates a great player and an average player is that a great
player knows it’s a big day, and he has to perform on the biggest
stage but pretends it’s just another day. — Nasser Hussain

I used to always wonder how Harsha would be wired all the time and how
the flow of events registered in his brain so beautifully. I remember being
nervous doing a segment once because I couldn’t hear anything in the ear
piece and was not sure how to react to the camera. He calmed me down and
said, “On a live telecast your mind should be very sharp and clear and don’t
get carried away by the occasion, consider it a normal day in your life.” He
said that the worst days of his live TV career were when he got carried away
by the occasion because he wanted to be at his best. Harsha explains, “I
decided to do many things and over analysed the things I was going to say. It
was during the 2007 T20 World Cup where everything went wrong that day
— me, the TV crew, literally everything. I was about to cue a tape and then
some wrong tape got played. Just as I was about to cue an interview, some
other interview came up. The director’s instructions in my ear piece were
barely audible so I had to rely on gut feeling and it just didn’t work out well.
I remember Nasser Hussain telling me, that what separates a great player and
an average player is that a great player knows it’s a big day, and he has to
perform on the biggest stage but pretends it’s just another day. The moment
you psyche yourself for the big day, you are taut; you are not thinking clearly
and that’s when you lose the plot.”
As a kid I remember there were times I used to give all the answers to my
parents at home, then go for the exam and fail miserably. There is something
about pressure that gets the worst of you whether in school or in real life.
The ability to remain calm under pressure is very important in live
television and this is something that Harsha always stresses on.
He says, “Live broadcasting always happens on the move and more often
than not, one is rushed into a telecast where one reacts to the situation at
hand. But you know that in your subconscious mind, you know a hell of a lot
more than what you actually said. If you are doing a certain match, what
happened in the last three games should come to you as a throwaway line.
But when you are rushed and too many things are happening around you and
your mind is somewhere else, then you start searching for facts and it affects
the way you are looking down the camera. The small pieces of information
that you add to the commentary are what makes it look good and the ability
to retrieve that information from your database is where you make an impact.
If you don’t have a clear mind you may not be able to do it that well.”
Well my throwaway line in my Trigonometry paper was always Sin2 θ +
Cos2 θ = 1.
On screen, Harsha appears to be one of the happiest people on the planet,
but I know the effort he takes to appear so. Even if he is angry off camera, he
would control it by walking out of the box just like a batsman walks towards
the forward short leg fielder to relax before he takes strike.

Informed Nothingness
One evening when we were having dinner, Harsha emphasised the
importance of preparation in live broadcasting. He said, “It’s important that
one always has to have a go-to-line. Sometimes the producer is new and
maybe stressed, so he forgets to tell you what the next tape is about, but you
have to still go on and look natural and fill the time before he recovers and
tells you what the upcoming details are. That is the time you fill in with
things which are called “Informed Nothingness” where one is not saying
anything profound but one has to make it seem interesting till things are back
on track. You have to ensure that you don’t start a new point in this phase
because then it would be difficult to come back to the original point when the
producer is ready. Most importantly the viewer should never come to know
that things had gone out of control.”
However in my opinion, in the case of Navjot Singh Sidhu, one can’t
really tell the difference between commentary and “Informed Nothingness”.
I always thought that one of Harsha’s biggest strengths was to bring out
the emotion of the moment and that entire last session during Sachin’s
retirement Test match was a moment to cherish. I don’t think anyone else
would have done justice to the final lap as Harsha did.
Harsha reminisces, “I remember distinctly that I was getting into that
moment. When Sachin started the lap my emotions had started to show, my
words were flowing, in a sense everything had happened in front of my eyes.
Ian Bishop was next to me, I suddenly noticed him putting the mike down. I
saw that and asked him to please pick it up and join the conversation. He
replied softly, “No, you know the emotion of the moment, just carry on”. I
hadn’t rehearsed those words, they just came. Till that moment happened I
was a commentator but after that I became a fan. But you couldn’t lose the
discipline of a commentator. The moment belonged to someone else. So I
cannot fill that moment with my own words. It had to be measured with the
right pauses. So every time the pictures were breathing I told the viewers a
story. It was just a flow which wouldn’t stop. It was truly special.”
Somehow I had noticed that Harsha always delivered his best lines for
Sachin, Rahul and VVS Laxman. When I asked him about this he said that
when you know certain players as people and you like and respect them you
want them to do well and when they do well you start to feel their happiness
also and then the words that come out are laced with that warmth. With the
new players it is a little different but the good part is that he finds it easier to
be objective.
Many readers would probably not know that Harsha has a huge following
in Australia because of his radio stints there since the early 90s. There are
many times during the Test matches that one will see a group of Aussies
suddenly laughing loudly as they would be listening to ABC radio
commentary where Harsha and Kerry O’Keefe would be having a whale of a
time. I always wondered how beautifully he bonded with the international
commentators but in countries like England there used to be a certain
unfriendly vibe among the Indian and the English commentators. I witnessed
that during both the English tours. At the Lord’s Test match in 2010 I really
wanted to walk up to Michael Vaughan and reprimand him for the statements
he was making about VVS Laxman. He claimed that VVS had applied
Vaseline on his bat. I had taken that allegation personally and I wanted to tell
him that VVS is such a nice and conscientious guy and that he wouldn’t even
apply Vaseline on his face, forget the bat! Just relax! That was the time
Indian and English commentators were fighting about Decision Review
System (DRS) decisions. I distinctly remember the day in Nottingham when
Sanjay Manjrekar, Harsha and me were having an hour-long chat on the DRS
and technology in cricket over dinner followed by some Kishore Kumar
songs. Thanks to Kishore Kumar our tempers remained under control. Also,
having Sanjay Manjrekar with us is always a musical experience.
When I pointed out the cut and dry attitude of the English commentators
Harsha agreed with me and explained, “There are two styles of commentary,
Asian and International. The Indian commentators are not liked in England,
because our society is different. Our movies are dripping with emotion. In
our commentary when we bring in emotion the English would say, “C’mon
it’s a game, cut the crap”. What they don’t realise is that they are catering to
their audience while we are catering to ours. So the best commentary team is
when there is a mix of the two.”
Harsha though says that his biggest learning was when he went to do radio
commentary in Australia for the first time. The commentary there was way
different from that in India where one described each and every ball. Here the
focus was not on the delivery alone but on things outside of the game as well,
though related to cricket. That was quite a change in perspective for him, he
realised that one needs to know far more to do this kind of commentary and
therefore the peripheral knowledge on the game requirement was higher than
what was required in India.
Harsha cites Ian Chappell as his work ethic compass. Harsha narrates, “It
was a hot English summer in Bristol in 2002. The brightness and heat outside
was so strong that they had to cover the commentary box with black cloth
which made it feel like a green house. It was during this moment that Harsha
mentioned twice in his commentary that it was hot and they were perspiring.
After that session Ian walked up to him and said, “Mate can I have a word
with you? If Kerry Packer was here he would have told you that he doesn’t
pay you to tell people how hot it is, he pays you to tell people what’s
happening on the ground. How does the viewer care?” That day I learnt a lot.
Since then every time I feel like complaining about things going wrong; I
hear Ian’s gruff voice in my head. I remind myself, that if the batsmen can’t
crib about the conditions, how can I? I also remember Rahul Dravid telling
me that every bad pitch is an opportunity so it’s important to enjoy tougher
conditions.”
Harsha explains, “Broadcasting has become difficult now as cricket has
also changed with the newer shorter formats. Earlier you could sometimes get
away with your analysis but now you can get battered on Twitter and this
generation doesn’t hold back. But surely it’s a new challenge. Commentary
entails a lot of hard work and time away from the family. In the last three
months I have done nineteen 50 over games for the U-19 World Cup
followed by 10 ODIs and then the Asia Cup final, the entire T20 World Cup
and then 25 games in the IPL. The entire journey wouldn’t have happened
without my wife Anita. How in all these years she never gave up on me is
simply amazing. Everyone in their life gets one lottery in my case it’s Anita.”
I remember during the 2011 World Cup, Harsha was relentless in the
commentary box for the entire 41 days. At a function hosted by cricket
commentator Mark Nicholas just after the World Cup, he quipped, “For me
the “Man of the Series” from our point of view is Harsha Bhogle.”
 10

I Got An Exclusive

Sourav Ganguly exclusively spoke to the Telegraph and said, “No

comments.”

his is a popular joke amongst the journalistic fraternity that signifies the
T desperation to get exclusive coverage. However it’s not the Indians
alone but journalists from across the world who face the same pressure to get
exclusive stories. Senior journalist Clayton Murzello once told me about an
incident about a post-match press conference at Pietermaritzburg during the
2003 World Cup when India took on Namibia. This is one of the few cricket
arenas with a tree inside the ground which the authorities have consciously
decided not to uproot. A South African journalist who realised that not much
had happened during the match asked Sourav Ganguly, “Sourav, did India
have a specific strategy for the tree and can you share it with us?” Namibia
may not yet be a great cricketing nation but giving the tree more importance
than the team was a little harsh. But that’s the nature of the beast. Ricky
Ponting once said to me, “It’s interesting that I once gave an interview three
years back and I am still seeing newspapers in India printing parts of that
interview as exclusive coverage.”
Sometimes foreign journalists also play truant when trying to get
headlines out of the Indian team. During a warm-up game in the Australian
tour of 2011, a local journalist kept on asking about various cricketers caste
and background. Unknowingly people told him where the cricketers came
from and which state they belonged to besides other such details. The next
day there was a big headline in the papers which read, “THE CASTE
SYSTEM STILL EXISTS IN THE INDIAN TEAM.” It was completely
uncalled for but that’s the way it is.
As a student, I never imagined that someone could actually make a living
out of sports writing and clicking photographs at sporting events. For some
reason, one assumed these things got automatically printed. So when I finally
met a sports journalist, I was shocked that such a profession actually existed.
Get paid to watch and write about cricket! How unfair is that? But who knew
that in a way one day I would be part of this privileged club.
I believe that even today more than 70 percent people read the newspapers
backwards like an Urdu book, starting from the back page and working their
way to page one. The right wing may misuse these stats to highlight the
impact of the Mughal rule in India, but such was the effect of the sports page
on many of our lives. It took me forever to accept that there was anything
more important than sports. For years my parents and teachers tried to
inculcate the habit of reading the editorial page but I just couldn’t go beyond
cricket news. To me the scoreboard was my editorial which I would
religiously digest. I came from a generation that collected centre-spread
posters of cricketers from magazines like Sportstar, Sportsweek and
Sportsworld. As a student, anyone who had a large collection of such posters
was considered a dude. Inspite of my liking for cricket, I must confess that
the number of posters I had of Gabriela Sabatini exceeded all cricketers.
My first media experience was the 2003 ICC World Cup where an entire
media contingent comprising of photographers, reporters, camera personnel
and commentators was travelling to South Africa. It made me wonder why a
cricket tour required so many people to travel and what was it that they
actually did. Was this a paid party? Did they all get lucky like I did? Though
getting lucky in this context had nothing to do with the opposite sex, the
feeling was equally pleasurable. Imagine if there was media when Alexander
conquered the world. Sometimes cricket media contingents are probably
larger than Alexander’s army. In hindsight if 30 legislators from Karnataka
could undertake a study tour to the Amazon jungle via a desert safari in
Dubai, then we were surely on a mission of far greater national consequence.
There are two kinds of cricket journalists, one is a devout fan and lover of
the game and the other is a failed cricketer who thinks he knows it all and
uses his pen to vent out venom that he has accumulated over the years, from
playing ordinary cricket. The latter’s frustration is always bubbling on the
surface and overflows especially when India is playing badly. This journalist
like any other wannabe cricketer genuinely believes that if not for
administrative politics, he would have played international cricket for India.
Cricket as a sport looks very easy especially when one is watching it from the
sidelines as it gives ample ammunition for one to criticise.
The fan journalist is a simple lover of the game who appreciates the
beautiful things that make this game special like, the lush outfield, grass on
the pitch, the leg glance and the dew factor. The failed cricketer turned
journalist always looks down on the fan journalist.

Sports journalists share their waistlines but never their headlines.

With the advent of 24-hour television and the internet, the life of a
journalist has become a tough one. The constant need to churn out story after
story and exclusives has made journalists very competitive and hence a love-
hate relationship has developed amongst them. When in India they are
indifferent to each other, but the moment they are travelling abroad this
hatred metamorphosises into unbridled love. One of the reasons is that
foreign tours are very expensive and unless they share accomodation, they
wouldn’t be able to save a pound or two. Money unites people and as a wise
man once said, money saved is money earned. This prospect creates strange
bedfellows. A foreign tour for a journalist is a bumper assignment especially
if its a tour to South Africa, Australia or England. However, if it’s
Bangladesh then it’s a bumper assignment for the batsmen. The match
making process kicks off the moment a tour is announced. They start calling
each other for sharing accommodation and other requirements. Someone
carries food items, someone a pressure cooker and there is a proper checklist
that each one follows to show their contribution to the tour. It’s common
knowledge that there are certain journalists who are close to certain cricketers
and depending upon who’s playing well at a certain time the power of that
particular journalist rises. In case you are in Australia then the journalists
who are close to the batsmen are completely ignored. Fast bouncy wickets
you see.
However close journalists they might get on a foreign tour and
irrespective of the level of camaraderie developed over a few drinks, when it
comes to sharing their story it’s always like the Silence of the Lambs. I have
seen journalists sharing their waistlines but never their headlines. They might
discuss everything over an evening; from boasting about the various stories
and tours covered in the past, to who scored in what context and how they
knew which player would be the Man of the Series. By the end of the evening
they would tell each other their life story but not the story they were filing the
next day. This was one secret that couldn’t be let out because it was also the
sole differentiator amongst the herd. The rivalry continues in the press box
with all of them keeping their laptops in a semi-closed state with their heads
inside and carefully keeping an eye out for those snooping on them. Another
rule I learnt here was “Smaller the font, bigger the story.”
The other zone of entertainment is the post-match press conference. MS
Dhoni is a master at handling the media and their many questions. He can be
cocky but yet make a point. He can be very humourous too. He hurt his
middle finger during the 2006 South African tour and when a journalist asked
him, “MS which finger did you hurt?”, he smartly said, “I can’t show it to
you.”
On the other hand, Inzamam’s press conferences were usually entertaining
irrespective of what had happened with the game, purely because of his
innocence. There was an interview where there was a barrage of questions
that were thrown at him on Abdul Razzaq’s performance. The clincher was
when a journalist repeatedly asked him, “Aap Abdul Razzaq ke baare mei kya
kehna chahenge?” After a few seconds of silence, he softly retorted: “Bhai
saab, kuch karega toh bolunga.”

Fielding Lagana
A cricket journalist’s boon and bane of existence is the cricketer, and
getting a quote from him can make or break his career. With tremendous
pressure from the bureau back home, they are always edgy and waiting to
find some news or the other in order to justify their foreign trips. Most of the
time the BCCI bars cricketers from speaking to the media and that makes
their task tougher. So the entire tour is about getting that one byte, even if it
comes from the waiter who serves the players tea in the dressing room.
Sehwag once narrated an incident to me about a nagging journalist. He called
him and said, “Viruji ek interview dedo, nahi toh meri naukri chali jayegi.”
The answer Sehwag gave was just like his uppercut. He replied, “Mein kya
karoon, tujhe naukri meine thodi na lagvayi thi.” In cricket journalism if one
has not cracked the code of befriending cricketers, then one has achieved
nothing. The process of creating this web of friendship and letting a player
fall into it is referred to as “fielding lagana” by journalists. The journalist
with a touring cricketer’s local number is the King of the Jungle.
Many people may not get the gravity of the words “fielding lagana”.
Players keep on changing with tours, but the methodology used remains the
same. Once you know that a certain player is showing potential and the
nation is starting to get obsessed with him, it becomes your responsibility to
ensure that you create a maze and get close enough to him to ensure your
salary for some months at least. It’s a tough job but you’ve got to do it as
there is no other option. The maze first starts with sending him birthday
messages and anniversary greetings, if he’s happily married. This then moves
on to birthday wishes for the cricketer’s son and other family members and
could ultimately reach extremes like greetings for Teachers Day, World
AIDS Day, Gudi Padwa, Pongal, Dassera, and many others restricted only by
one’s imagination. The biggest evolution happens when the relationship
changes from SMS to BBM. When this happens, you know you hold some
potential of getting into the inner coterie.
The only place the media can meet players is the post-match press
conference, the hotel lobby or a restaurant where the player would possibly
go for dinner. It is extremely important to know where the players are eating,
especially on a foreign tour, because that is the time they are in a relaxed
mood and it’s easier to get a meeting with them for a future date. If you can
throw in a few recommendations on what to eat and convince the chef to
make something that the player likes then you have reached a high level of
customer satisfaction. This could win you brownie points which you could
redeem at some point in your career. So the moral of the story is that if you
want a byte, catch the player having a bite!

The process of creating this web of friendship and letting a player

 fall into it is referred to as “fielding lagana” by journalists.

Journalists are a persistent lot and believe that one has got to keep trying.
It’s sometimes about being at the right place at the right time which could
lead to a jackpot story. Harini Rana, one of the few women reporters,
subscribes to this theory. She explains, “Some of the biggest stories are done
by being aware of your surroundings. During the Chappell era, there used to
be a lot of stories around vision documents, players’ camps and various
processes being followed by the team during those camps. I was at the team
hotel when a player mistakenly dropped his dossier at a table. When I visited
the conference room where the team meeting was held an hour later for
another meeting, I noticed a bunch of papers. After having read through
them, they went on to become the headlines of the following day.”
Harini also says that the hotel lobby is the place to get the best stories but
one needs to have abundant amounts of patience. She once had to do a Brett
Lee interview which was scheduled for the morning, but eventually took
place at 6:30 in the evening. She says such events put life in perspective and
made her calmer and gave her the strength to face tougher eventualities in
life.
Well not all cricketers are easy to deal with. Some of them do not take
their dropping from the team very well and Harini once reported such a story
of a cricketer who refused to talk to her ever again.
People who had mastered the art of “fielding lagana” off the cricket
ground were the journalists from Bengal. If you thought the most
intimidating field placements were done by Douglas Jardine for the
Australian players during the Bodyline Tour then what the Bengali
Journalists brigade did during the reign of Sourav Ganguly as captain was
tenfold. If you ever saw black cat commandos surrounding a noted politician
multiply that effect by hundred and that is what the Bengali journos parading
in and around Sourav were like. He was a messiah for them, if he was God on
the off side for us, he was God on every side for them. It was like watching
the passing out parade of the National Defence Academy. If he turned left
they turned left, if right they turned right. Sourav Ganguly was the reason
they existed and on tours whether in England, Australia or South Africa they
went about with the confidence that Al Capone would have had in his
heyday. They knew that as long as Dada was captain they were safe. It’s
understandable because for a Bengali newspaper it was sacrilege if they
didn’t get a Sourav exclusive and some other newspaper from the north did.
So every Kolkata journalist gave a feeling that he was closest to Dada, hence
by the end of Sourav’s tenure as captain the most words one heard in the
press box were Dada, Dadi, Skipper, Mohraj and many more.
The major difference between the sports journalism of yesteryears and of
today is that in the past the endeavour was to write elaborate articles
describing in great graphic detail the playing conditions as there was limited
access to high quality television back then. The competition between
journalists was on the basis of who described the cover drive the best. They
were all inspired by the writings of the great Sir Neville Cardus and KN
Prabhu. However things are a lot different now as most readers are more
interested in the car that Suresh Raina drives than the beauty of his cover
drive. I remember during the 2011 Australian tour, some journalists seemed
to be waiting for some kind of argument or fight to break out between
Sehwag and Dhoni as they figured this fight sequence had the potential to
give them higher TRPs than all the fight sequences of Sholay and Dabangg
put together.
With the advent of e-mail and other technologies, covering a cricket
match has become relatively easy. However back then the effort required in
meeting deadlines using typewriters and fax machines and was a challenge by
itself. Senior cricket journalist Ayaz Memon once said, “We did all our work
on typewriters and anyone who had a Brother typewriter was considered
extremely cool. Most couldn’t afford even a simple one. My prized
possession was a Rs 800 typewriter I picked up from Lahore during the 82-83
Pakistan tour.” The pressure to deliver back then was relatively low because
however big or small the victory, cricket news was always restricted to the
back pages unlike today where “Breaking News: India Won The Toss” could
be just under the masthead in case there is some space left by the advertisers.
In the past, cricket journalists have had to share a room between three
people and cook for themselves as they couldn’t afford to eat outside
regularly. Ayaz recounts when once a whole lot of journalists were invited by
Peter Roebuck, an eminent Australian cricket journalist to a restaurant for a
party. The entire contingent was quite excited as they thought “Chalo ek meal
ka kharcha saved.” After having a sumptuous meal, Peter announced that the
bill was to be shared by all the members present. The Indian journalists were
in a state of shock not knowing that this was a common practice in many
countries around the world. Many Indians I know are pretty scared by the
possibility of such an incident and it takes them years to get over the trauma
of spending at such a party.
There has been a tremendous evolution since India has become the
cricketing super power. Indian journalists worry less about paying for food
now as the type of food being served in press boxes internationally has
changed. I remember during the 2003 World Cup in South Africa one would
regularly get cold cuts and continental grub; but by 2006 one had started
smelling curry even in the outfield of the cricket ground.

Roleplay
One of the lesser known facts is that journalists also play a pro-active role
in highlighting upcoming talent to the selectors. They are at times the
communicator between junior and senior cricketers.
Young cricket journalist Devendra Pandey mentions a time when he
called Indian selector Dilip Vengsarkar and suggested he watch out for an
upcoming bowler called Umesh Yadav which possibly helped in some way
since it’s not possible for selectors to be present at regional matches all the
time. Journalists covering local cricket also facilitate meetings between
promising youngsters and their cricketing heroes and sometimes even pass on
extra equipment from senior players to them. Devendra refers to journalists
as “Narad Munis” for the role they play across the board.
Akshay Sawai is someone who has covered many sports apart from
cricket. He talks about the fact that sometimes an interview with a senior
cricketer can be an education in itself. An incident he recounts was during a
domestic tour game against New Zealand in 95-96; he confronted Sachin for
not pushing the opposition harder for a win by applying an aggressive
mindset. Sachin was startled by this question, and asked him whether he had
seen the field placements properly, including the slip cordon. Akshay then
realised that there were indeed certain things he had failed to notice. This
encounter had helped him grow as sports journalist.
Akshay says that even interviewing sportspersons has a certain science to
it. If you have only 5 seconds and one question to ask you better not miss the
opportunity by asking an irrelevant question. This happened to him once
when he got to meet the great John McEnroe during the US open in 1999.
This was also the year when Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati were in peak
form and were touted as the best doubles pair in the world. Big Mac refused
Akshay an interview but said you can ask me one question. Akshay was so
awestruck by the moment that he rattled out a question about his tremendous
season in 1984. Akshay says, “It was a wasted question. I got carried away by
the moment. If I would have asked him about the Indian boys, maybe I would
have got a more relevant and better headline for my article.”
 11

The Sports Journalist’s Checklist

ne of the most amazing things of a cricket tour is the relationships you

O develop while travelling, especially with freelance journalists. They
have the uncanny ability to befriend people from various countries and
develop a long lasting bond and friendship. One such senior journalist I
befriended was Sunandan Lele who has covered Indian cricket for over 25
years. I am extremely jealous of him as he can easily claim to have seen at
least 85 out of the 100 centuries Sachin Tendulkar has scored, live. It can’t
possibly get better than this for any cricket lover.
Over the last 10 years, what I have learnt from Sunandan, no media guru
could teach me in my life. It’s almost impossible to find someone who has
not only been loved by every colleague of his but also by every cricketer I
know. Sunandan was the captain of the Maharashtra U-19 cricket team and
one of the millions who couldn’t make it to the Ranji team and therefore had
no option but to get a job as a sales representative in a regional Marathi
newspaper. After years of hard work and some stability in life, he
transformed himself into a freelance journalist who took assignments from
various media houses and funded his own tour. But life was tough for the first
10 years as he could barely make any money after spending on his air ticket,
hotel stay, food and local transport. So there was no option for Sunandan but
to become a walking talking cost saving machine. Even today on a cricket
tour Sunandan carries a rice cooker, masalas and hundreds of ingredients to
make two daily meals for an entire two month long cricket tour. For years, he
says, it was simply unaffordable for him to eat at a restaurant. The one thing
that saw him through those tough times, was the art of gifting. Sunandan
carried with him Indian gifts like Narayan Pethi sarees, small bags and
artefacts on tours. For all those who don’t get the gravity of this, Sunandan
once gifted a Rs 100 zari bag to the media manager at Wimbledon and ended
up watching a Roger Federer match. He says these below Rs 500 a piece gifts
made him the most popular Indian in every cricket playing nation in the
world. According to him, it is not the cost but the thought behind the gift that
matters, though strangely this logic does not apply to one’s wife.

Lele’s 10 Commandments For Every Wannabe

Journalist

1. Knowledge
If you are doing a Rahul Dravid interview please read up about him. I
know of a young journalist who once asked Rahul whether he played matches
in Australia. Can you beat that! If you are knowledgeable, a player will tell
you things you’d never expect.

2. Expand Your Horizons

A good journalist should watch a match from different viewing points on
the ground and should interact with as many people as possible. This helps
you get an all-round perspective about the game.

3. Bowling the Right Ball

Ask a cricketer the right question and he could tell you things that might
give you your next headline. Do not ask mundane questions like “How are
you feeling?” after the player has scored a century.

4. Love All
Don’t forget the guys who are playing badly. Love the 16 members of the
squad equally, you never know who will start performing when, and by then
it may be too late.

5. Dinner Diplomacy
The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and cricketers are no
different. There is no substitute for dal-roti. Pasta and Fungi Marinati is for
impressing your girlfriends. So ensure you know the best places to get an
Indian meal across the world and you will catch cricketers in their best mood
out there.

6. Art of Multi-tasking (go beyond the sport)

A journalist should make sure that when he or she is covering cricket
matches, it’s important to try and go beyond the sport and write about life
outside the cricket field as well. This means that, they need to cultivate some
interest in other walks of life as well. Whilst touring South Africa, you also
need to write about the historical significance of the place to add value to
your article.

7. Where to Stand
It’s important to understand that cricketers and officials are reluctant
spokespersons and therefore ensure that they wear shades whenever they
come for press conferences.
The Indian team celebrating after the win in Durban 2006, a rare overseas
victory.

Me doing a segment on funny spinners in a lighter moment with Wilko and

Wasim Akram during the 2006 tour of South Africa.
This is Murali’s bowling hand, look at the state of his index finger because of
the “rip” he gives the cricket ball.

Steve Waugh appreciates as I tell him how he stands in the slips with a
chewing gum in his mouth.
 Mohandas Menon, Harsha Bhogle and Ian Bishop cramped up in the
commentary box.

This was my big moment of being with the commentary team during the
2003 World Cup. With Tony Greig and Michael Atherton.
 An overwhelming feeling standing outside Nelson Mandela’s house in
Soweto, experiencing history.

Only the official masseur Mane kaka knows why Bhajji is meditating.

This behaviour is very similar to filmstars on an early morning flight. So as a

journalist one can’t see where they are looking and trust me they can see
everyone. Your only chance of catching Dhoni’s attention is to stand at a
strategic place where he will cross you and where you can communicate. It’s
a small observation but it’s a big one for a journalist.

8. Buying Time From the Player

One of the most strategic things that Sunandan shared with me is that
whenever you go to a player’s room, order for a coffee or a sandwich in the
room. In a 5 star hotel it takes a minimum of 25 minutes to get the order and
that ensures quality time with the player.

9. Technology and Learning

Every journalist’s key to success is the ability to befriend technology in
every possible way because you never know when something can happen and
if you don’t know how to shoot, upload and send the pictures to your local
office you know what you will miss.

Ok! I know that’s 9 and not 10, but you get the drift.
 12

Fine Tuning The Indian Team

hile millions of Indians would give an arm or a leg to get a chance to

W touch Sachin, Rahul or MS Dhoni at least once in their life, I met
someone who did this for a living. Meet Ramesh Mane aka “Mane kaka”, a
man who went on from being a chemical plant operator to someone who
keeps the cricketers “well oiled” and fighting fit.
Like many others mentioned in this book, fate and a sequence of
unplanned events had made him an integral part of the Indian team. A lack of
fulfillment with his job as a chemical plant operator led him to attend social
service camps on the weekends and eventually a course in acupressure. He
was soon conducting camps at the factory and as he honed his skills over
time, even started giving massages to sportsmen at the factory.
This carried on for a while until one day he was summoned by Balwinder
Sandhu to come and treat a young Sachin Tendulkar who had a back problem
during one of the Ranji Trophy games. The rest as they say is history.
Ramesh Mane served as the Official Masseur (yes there is such a
designation) for the Mumbai Ranji team for 7 years and then eventually from
2005 onwards he has been the official masseur and one of the most respected
members of the Indian cricket team.
Mane kaka recalls, “When I first entered the Indian cricket team’s
dressing room I was told about a custom that required every new member to
stand up on a chair in the middle of the room and introduce himself in a
language he wasn’t fluent in.” Many had been subjected to this and all had a
good laugh listening to a north Indian fast bowler speak in English followed
by south Indian batsman speaking in Hindi. Finally it was Sachin who
mediated and said that though this rule was sacrosanct, he would like to
relieve Mane kaka from it and he went on to personally introduce him to
everyone. Mane kaka said, “Sachin never liked older people being
disrespected and this showed even in a lighter situation like this one.”
Whichever part of the world you meet Mane kaka in, he always has his
jadi butis packed along with a cooker which he uses for preparing his
ayurvedic concoctions. He first started experimenting and implementing his
theories on the Ranji team players and has even used needles to relax fast
bowlers who would get extremely charged up after a game. He says his job
was to not only ensure the physical well-being of the players through
massage but also create a mentally relaxing atmosphere in the dressing room.
One of the many things he always does is create a praying space for players
across religions to make them feel at ease.

Mane Kaka’s Music Therapy

Mane kaka believes that unless the mind relaxes, the body will not and
hence one of the techniques he uses during his massages is music therapy.
International players are subjected to constant pressures and are hence prone
to anxiety attacks. Music helps them relax and achieve a meditative state of
mind. Not surprisingly, one of his main jobs was to understand the music
tastes of all the players. At any given time, he has at least 3 iPods with
different kinds of music catering to players in the team. One of the first things
he does after every tour is to go to Rhythm House to source the latest music
available. I’m not sure if Himesh Reshammiya ever made it to this list, but it
would be interesting to know the impact his music had on players. I once told
Mane kaka that he could easily take up DJing as an alternate career option
anywhere in India.
Over the years, he has managed to develop a taste for music from across
the country. So while Gujarati bhajans help Ravinder Jadeja relax during his
massage sessions, Sachin prefers Ganpati bhajans which he has been
listening to since his school days before he goes out to bat. Mane kaka says
that he has observed Sachin’s batting patterns and realised that whenever he
has played certain songs he has batted extremely well. Maybe now is a good
time for those artistes to demand an extra “Sachin performance based
royalty” for their music.
Sachin himself has acknowledged that his all time favourite has been Lata
Mangeshkar and we will all agree that this woman has never had a bad patch
in her life. Hanuman Chalisa is very common amongst many players
including the likes of Gautam Gambhir. He also observed during his stint at
the IPL that Dale Steyn would get motivated by listening to gospel music and
would start dancing in the dressing room propelling him to bowl faster on the
ground. I would have never imagined gospel music as being one to which
people danced to, but if it worked for Steyn, it must be good. I guess as an
opposition captain the only thing one can do as a strategy against a bowler
like Steyn is to ensure that someone steals his iPod before the game so he
might just be a little less effective.
The legendary Kishore Kumar has undoubtedly been one of the most
popular voices in the Indian dressing room. Mane kaka always says that
before he came to the team he was not that big a Kishore Kumar fan but now
knows every song of his inside out as they are always listened to in the
dressing room. During my IPL shows I was quite impressed by Suresh
Raina’s singing abilities but according to Mane kaka it is none other than the
Indian captain MS Dhoni who is the only player who can sing the entire
repertoire of Kishore Kumar songs with the right lyrics.
As Indians, no matter which gastronomic capital of the world we are in,
we are always homesick for the comfort of Indian food. Mane kaka has gone
beyond his call of duty and even played the role of whipping up delicious
Indian food so that the young players in the team never feel homesick.
When players are on a long tour, especially in countries like England or
South Africa, their yearning for a simple home cooked Indian meal would
often take them to his door and he would cook them a meal of simple dal rice
or khichdi. He always carries a separate bag on tour which consists of dal,
rice and various masalas because he cooks all his meals during the tour and
he knows that if he wants better performances from the players he better feed
them authentic Indian food once in a while. He recalls an instance when
almost 80 percent of the Indian team was unwell because of the extreme cold
in Ireland. Eventually it wasn’t some complicated medication but a meal of
simple khichdi, the night before the game which helped the team recover and
win the match the next day. My immediate reaction to this story was that the
BCCI should make khichdi mandatory on forthcoming tours.

BCCI should make khichdi mandatory on forthcoming tours.

Mane kaka believes that all the players he has seen do well have also been
good at meditation and visualisation (The exception to this rule was of course
Viru). He specially mentions Rahul Dravid who according to him was the
most hardworking person he ever saw in the Indian team. Once when they
were staying in the team hotel in Kanpur someone complained to him and the
other support staff that there was lot of noise coming from a particular room.
Mane kaka realised that that room belonged to Rahul and he was quite
surprised as Rahul was the most disciplined of the lot. He later found out that
Rahul was practising the night before the game using a hanging ball and that
is what was creating the noise. When Mane kaka informed the guests, they
were overwhelmed and apologised and said, “We can’t stop the great Rahul
Dravid from practising, please tell him to carry on.”
I had been hearing about this low profile individual for a long time. One
always knew from the players, support staff and the media about this
masseur-cum-uncle of the Indian cricket team who looked after the players
like his own kids. The public always sees the glamourous side of the cricket
stars but at the end of the day these young kids who come from small towns
feel at home when they see a Mane kaka like character around them to help
them with the smaller but essential things in life. One always tends to forget
the contributions made by such individuals to the team.
 13

Getting The Figures Right

here was a friend of mine whose wife was so irritated by the fact that he
T was watching cricket the whole day that she asked him, “Do you even
remember the day we got married?” Yes, he said, “That was the day when
VVS Laxman scored 281 against Australia in Kolkata.” She filed her divorce
papers the next day. When somebody asked him on what grounds, he said
“EDEN GARDENS.” I have to admit that this is not an entirely original joke.
There has been a similar joke in England that has been floating around for
years but I, just like a good cricketer, adapted this to suit Indian conditions.
But seriously I do believe that an ideal marriage in India is possible only if
the two people involved are in love. In love with cricket that is. Is that even
possible? I never thought it was until I met Mohandas Menon and his wife
Valsa. Mohan has been a cricket statistician for more than 20 years and guess
what? His wife maintains the database of all the statistics. If you can’t believe
it here’s more. Mohan and Valsa between them have watched 97 Test
matches and 322 ODIs; ball for ball in all these years. Yes they have watched
807 days of cricket together, every second and every minute of it and
recorded it as well. They once watched cricket for 25 hours at a stretch
entering data as there were three matches happening simultaneously in New
Zealand, India and West Indies in three different time zones. Imagine, 25
hours of TV at a stretch without fighting for the remote or any argument
about pleasing the other person. In such a relationship the wife asking for
space and time becomes irrelevant as a concept. It would be so awesome,
discussing Duckworth Lewis while grocery shopping, DRS while having
lunch and reverse swing during dinner. What a life! They say marriages are
made in heaven. Well some of them are made in front of a TV screen.

Statistics are like mini-skirts, they reveal more than what they hide.
— Navjot Singh Sidhu

Sidhu once said, “Statistics are like mini-skirts, they reveal more than
what they hide.” Surely he understood the significance of statistics unlike a
lot of us. The only stats I was interested during my cricket playing days was
36-24-36. It may sound funny now but when in college, statistics as a subject
simply seemed to have no significance in our lives, or at least we thought so.
Mean, median and mode actually caused a standard deviation in my
personality. Nobody questioned whether the weighted averages would impact
one’s life in anyway unless it was to do with one’s weight. Not questioning
the reason why we were learning the subject was actually the most common
statistic among all the students.
In all of this the one person who was respected the most among the boys
(besides the guy who dated the hottest girl) was the guy who knew the
statistics of the current Indian team’s performances. There was always this
guy who knew who took how many wickets and who had batted well in
earlier tours. Typically he was himself the most average cricketer in the batch
but he made up for it by memorising cricket stats in order to get some respect
from the boys. But back then, none of us thought that this would someday be
a serious career option. Just like a subject called Geology, which I graduated
with.
I guess Mohan himself had no clue that one day he would be doing just
that. Interestingly the game changing moment for him also was Sachin
Tendulkar! The story is that he was the guy who recorded the statistics for the
Harris Shield game in which Sachin scored 328 runs and Kambli scored 349
runs. It so happened that Sachin’s friend and now sports journalist, Marcus
Couto wanted to document the score as a record and so he called Mohan to
have a look at the scorecard for a recheck.
 Mohan rescored the entire match again and found out that there were two
leg byes which were wrongly attributed to Sachin’s score and therefore he
got it down to 326. Obviously this didn’t go down well with a 13-year-old
Sachin who couldn’t believe that he got 2 runs less and fought with his friend
as to how someone could reduce his score. Mohan says, “I did not budge.
Little did I know that he was going to be the greatest batsman in the world. If
I knew, I would have probably given him two extra runs to be in his good
books. This is the record which actually got me my first dose of fame.”
“It hasn’t been an easy ride,” says Mohan. His father-in-law stopped
talking to him because he couldn’t imagine someone leaving a steady job to
do this. He was embarrassed because he couldn’t tell his friends that his son-
in-law was a cricket statistician. Fortunately for him, his wife Valsa
supported him and later became his partner in the world of statistics.
One of the amazing stories is that just when Mohan was making a mark on
the scene as a statistician, BB Mama, an eminent cricket statistician died in
1995. It so happened that after his death, BB Mama’s daughter asked Mohan
to meet her at the earliest. Mohan did not know what to expect. When he
reached the meeting there was a gentleman sitting besides her who started the
conversation by asking him, “What is the origin of the word “Chinaman” in
cricket?” Without batting an eyelid, Mohan told him about how an English
player had got out to a West Indian of Chinese origin, and who on his way
out blurted, “How ridiculous to get out to a Chinaman!” Since then that kind
of a bowler was refered to as Chinaman.” Mohan started wondering why he
had been summoned and asked these questions. When probed, it was revealed
to him that BB Mama, in his will had left his entire collection of books on
statistics to Mohan and the person who had asked him this question was his
lawyer who was executing the will. This question was purely to test whether
it was the right decision to do so and Mohan passed with flying colours.

The Job Profile

So what does a cricket statistician actually do? He or she documents every
delivery in a cricket game into specially designed computer software. Before
the proliferation of computers, this was done manually.
While in the commentary box, a statistician has to be ready with every
kind of information which could vary from the playing team’s head to head
standings, any approaching milestones, pitch conditions, average runs scored,
who takes more wickets in particular conditions or even which batsman has
scored more runs on his birthday! A statistician’s job can be as interesting as
it can be academic.
According to Mohan, Tony Greig was the most stressful commentator to
work with as he constantly challenged him with a counter view. One always
felt like a first bencher in class, unsure about what question the teacher would
ask next. So Mohan was always on his toes like a slip fielder, ready for an
edge from Tony.
Australia’s Nathan Lyon got the first wicket on his debut match against
Sri Lanka, in Sri Lanka. Tony who was sitting next to Mohan immediately
looked at him and said “Mate, let’s see what you have for us…tell me who
are the other bowlers in the history of the game to do this?” Within seconds
Mohan rattled off a number of names including Intikhab Alam, Nilesh
Kulkarni and others much to the disbelief of Greigy who took time to recover
from the shock. That’s the level of competence required of a statistician
during a live broadcast. One of the key insights for a stats guy is to know the
psyche of the commentator and anticipate the kind of questions that he was
likely to ask and therefore keep the answers ready. In a way it was like
preparing for board exams by reading 21 Question Sets, just that in this case,
the statistician was preparing the likely questions.

A statistician needs to be good natured because everything he

does is actually going to make someone else look good. — Harsha
Bhogle

Sometimes coming up with unexpected shocking statistics gives one

immense pleasure. This happened with him in Ahmedabad when India was
playing Sri Lanka. Murali was bowling to Sachin and the commentator said
“The highest wicket taker in Test cricket is bowling to the highest run getter
in Test cricket.” Suddenly Mohan came up with a clincher and said that the
only time this has happened in the history of cricket was 110 years earlier in
1887 when Englishman Arthur Shrewsbury faced Australia’s Frederick
Spofforth in Sydney. Everybody in the box was in a state of shock and
moments like these were when the statistician was pleased with himself. They
thrive on the challenge.
Good statisticians read a lot, have immense knowledge about the game
and the uncanny ability to correlate things and look at the larger picture just
when it is required. So if you have read about a certain event in Sir Garfield
Sobers’ autobiography, then when you are asked to react about West Indian
cricket in the 70s, you can match that statistic with the moment resulting in
an interesting observation.
I remember Harsha Bhogle telling me once that 25 percent of a
commentator’s success can be attributed to a statistician and he says
Mohandas is special because he is a giver of information. Many a times, he
has worked with statisticians who unless pushed never give any interesting
information. Sharing is a trait a statistician needs to have and it comes from
someone who is good natured because everything he does is actually going to
make someone else look good. His love for the subject has to be total and
unconditional.
Mohan’s place is always next to the commentator and he is actually the
one person commentators rely on the most. He recounts that the commentary
box, especially during a rain affected match becomes quite an entertainment
zone, where ex-cricketers get nostalgic and come up with priceless anecdotes.
One of the funniest incidents that Mohan remembers is that on one such day
Sunny Gavaskar was patiently working on one of his articles in the
commentary box. A bored Danny Morrison was sitting next to him. To kill
time Mohan asked Danny whether he remembered the 100 Sunny scored in
an ODI against New Zealand. Danny in his inimitable style recounted that it
was his debut match and he had got smashed by Sunny and Srikanth. While
all this was happening Sunny suddenly looked up through his glasses and
said to Danny, “By the way do you know that I was out caught behind in the
first over but nobody appealed so I didn’t go.” As soon as Sunny said this, the
blood from Danny’s face drained and he was in a state of shock. I think he
was possibly thinking about how his life would have changed if he had got
the legendary Sunil Gavaskar’s wicket in his debut over. That wicket would
have changed his entire career graph.
 14

Touring Around The World

“Do you have a valid passport?”

had just completed auditioning with Sony Max and little did I know that
I this single line was going to change my life forever.
I couldn’t sleep for two days after that because for some reason I thought
that something really exciting was going to happen. Two days later I was
called to the Sony office where I was told, “We are launching a new show
called Extra Innings for the World Cup in South Africa and we need some
fillers on the show. Unfortunately we don’t have the time to shoot it here so
can you go to South Africa?” By this time my medulla oblongata had reached
my kidneys. The excitement was truly killing me.
A few months later I was entering the Centurion Stadium in South Africa
with an accreditation badge around my neck which said:

All Access | ICC World Cup 2003 |Commentator

Never in my wildest dreams would I have dreamt of this moment.

South African Safari

 My association with the game changed my life and it started taking me to
places which I had often failed to pinpoint on a map in my geography exams.
Till the 2003 World Cup I could only associate South Africa with Nelson
Mandela’s struggles and obviously African elephants in the wild. I was
curious to see Mandela’s land but I was not a great fan of wildlife because I
used to visit Gurgaon every fortnight.
So here I was making my World Cup cricketing debut without having
played even a single match of consequence. Cricketers had to play hundreds
of international matches to be where I was. I just had to watch them on TV
and imitate them. What a waste of my time that I even tried to play the game.
I spent 2½ months in a plush apartment at the Waterfront in Capetown
doing 1-minute spoofs every alternative day with beautiful women like
Mandira Bedi, Maria Goretti, Sandhya Mridul and Mini Mathur on one side
and former greats like Kapil Dev, Ian Bishop, MAK Pataudi, Tony Greig and
Arun Lal on the other. If I were to call any travel company and estimate a
cost to this tour package, they would have probably charged a million dollars
for it.
A typical Indian is more interested in the “Package Tours” philosophy of
travelling to 14 countries in 13 days. These are the people who would rather
tick mark countries off their check list than actually spend time seeing them.
For a Maharashtrian, the highlight of any such tour would be having
puranpoli in Paris rather than understanding the genesis of the French
Revolution. Unfortunately, I subscribed to this philosophy too. I am one of
those people who despite having travelled to hundreds of countries in the last
decade have more or less not really seen anything around these countries. I
truly believe that the view that you get from the hotel room window and the
car drive to the airport are enough to figure-out the cultural history and
economic nuances of that country. But during my long stay in Cape Town I
did manage to explore a few sites purely because of the fear of the people
back home who would have cursed me for wasting a splendid opportunity. I
went to the Table Mountain despite my fear of heights and took some
pictures from the Newlands Cricket Ground which perhaps offers the best
view of the mountain. The view is so beautiful that I don’t blame Indian
batsmen for throwing away their wicket at this venue because it’s really
difficult to concentrate on the ball when there is so much of beauty around
and I’m not even talking about the women. This possibly could be one of the
reasons why Indian batsmen struggle on foreign pitches and have never won
a series in South Africa.
The trip I enjoyed the most was when some of the enthusiastic members
of the Sony team decided to visit Robben Island which was an hour’s ferry
ride from Cape Town. Inspite of my aversion to visit historical places, I
volunteered for this because I had happened to read a few chapters from
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “The Long Walk to Freedom” which blew
my mind. I was just amazed by his intensity and determination to achieve the
cause he stood for. Though I had read about the historical significance, the
only thing that I was really waiting for during this tour of Robben Island was
the room where he stayed for 17 years. When I saw the place I was shocked.
It was a 10 x 10 cell, with barely enough space to lie down and I felt
claustrophobic within 5 minutes and couldn’t imagine how he must have
stayed there for 17 years. Every person in Mumbai who cribs about their 1
BHK apartment being small should visit Robben Island and only then will
you realise that you are wallowing in luxury. The only difference is that
unlike some of us Mumbaikars, Mandela’s thoughts were never imprisoned.
During my many visits to South Africa, there were two goldmines that I
chanced upon. One was the Gold Reef Mine Tour where one could actually
get to see gold slabs deep inside the surface of the earth. This place would
have been a Keralite’s dream come true. Interestingly many of the workers
and tourist guides were actually prison inmates who had been rehabilitated
and the tour was quite fascinating.
The other gold mine which had a bigger impact on me was the house
where Mandela lived in Soweto. Entering this room made me feel like I was
reliving history. The exteriors of this house still have the bullet marks from
the past and as you go inside you see interesting things like Mandela’s shoes
and the World Championship belt that Sugar Ray Leonard presented to him.
All those moments which Mandela’s autobiography mentioned suddenly
came alive as I sat there standing and looking at this cottage. It’s moments
like these which give me far more satisfaction than the gold bars in the mine.
South Africa holds a special place in my heart.
This was a unique tour because, for the first time, outsiders like us were
being experimented with for cricket programming. Until then, commentating
had been a monopoly of ex-cricketers. This was also the debut series of
Mandira Bedi and many other presenters like her and we were all stationed in
Cape Town. It was a big party. Honestly when I was summoned there I had
no idea what I was going to do so I just carried a couple of blazers, a fake
beard and a few turbans in case I was asked to imitate Sidhu at some point of
time.
Touring is generally seen as a lonely experience and being away from
home and its comforts invariably forces people to get closer and form strong
bonds. I not only got a chance to spend a lot of time discussing the game with
legendary cricketers but also explore their individual personalities better. Can
you imagine an evening where you get to discuss the nuances of hunting with
the likes of MAK Pataudi over a glass of wine? I was ecstatic.
Food is an important part of touring and most conversations kick off over
the need to find a good source for Indian food. Even understanding the
current lot of players happened better on tour and made me understand their
mental state during a Test match. This happened one evening when we had
MS Dhoni and Irfan Pathan coming over for dinner to our room during the
first Test match of the 2006 SA tour. Both were craving to have some home
cooked food and as Mr Lele was cooking so they decided to drop in. Trust
me if the hotel guys had found out that he cooked khichdi and sabji in the
hotel room they would have thrown us out. How the fire alarm didn’t go off
that evening was a miracle. We sat on the floor and had a sumptuous meal.
Next day India won the Test. I thought once again the khichdi played a
critical role and was the turning point as prior to this, India had lost all the
ODIs in the series. Well that evening I tried to get a few stories out of MS but
it was in vain and while leaving the room he said, “Yeh hamari story bata ke
paise kamate hein, hum phir apni autobiography mein kya likhenge.” Now
you understand why he is such a street smart captain.
One person who amazed me during the 2003 World Cup was Kris
Srikanth, a pure vegetarian. He had come to terms with the fact that it was
pointless depending on others during a long tour. So he used to cook his own
South Indian meal comprising of rice, yogurt not dahi, Pringles as a
replacement for papad and sauce as a substitute for rasam. Blasphemous as it
may sound, he ate this for all his 3 meals for all 60 days we were there. He
told me that this had been his diet for his entire cricketing life which
surprised me because it defied everything that Australian nutritional experts
had prescribed. Over the years, I was convinced that rasam possibly had built
in anabolic steroid like properties which the World Anti Doping Agency was
never able to detect.

In a home series the Indian curry probably claims more victims off
the field than the bowlers on the field.

Well, food is a bigger problem for cricketers from outside the

subcontinent touring India. Thanks to the IPL they have at least been exposed
to a variety of cuisines and many have got a chance to adapt their taste buds
to Indian spices. But generally the players suffer because of the heat and our
nuclear waste like curries which form a deadly combination that can decimate
the most deadly of English and Australian attacks by eroding their intestines.
This is probably the only reason why the BCCI has never bothered about
preparing competitive pitches back home and reaping long-term benefits,
because they knew that most visiting teams would be done in by the food. It’s
surprising that the English still have a problem with curries, considering that
Chicken Tikka Masala is their unofficial national dish. The chefs in India
should get as much credit for home series victories as Indian bowlers because
the Indian curry has probably claimed more victims off the field than the
bowlers on the field. This is also one of the reasons that the Indians roar like
lions at home. Much before the “Liz Hurley Diet”, Shane Warne used to eat
normally. Ian Healy said about Warnie that his idea of a balanced diet was
having a cheese burger in both hands. But during the tours to India, he always
carried baked beans, pizza and a whole lot of other stuff and had the ability to
eat tonnes of food over an evening. Even as a child he used to keep a
sandwich in his trouser pockets while playing. I guess bite off the wicket had
a different meaning for him then. Just like that fat kid who was notorious for
stealing tiffin boxes in school, Warnie was notorious for consuming food
meant for his teammates. That’s one of the reasons that Ricky Ponting used
to give him the last over before lunch to prevent him from reaching the
dressing room before everyone else did because apparently once Warnie got
there first and by the time the rest of the team had reached, the custard was
over.
My favourite story though is of off-spinner Romesh Powar, told to me by
some of the Mumbai cricketers. Apparently once he was caught having 16
chappatis during a lunch interval of a local game. The captain was shocked
and asked him, “How can you eat 16 chapatis?” He replied, “I didn’t have
rice, that’s why.” At a time when most dieticians say “eat rotis, not rice”, this
made a valid justification. Sometimes having a big appetite can help you get
out of trouble and save your life as well. When Mike Gatting was alleged to
have misbehaved with the barmaid in his room, the entire English team
including Ian Botham came to his rescue saying, “Mike could not have
possibly done that because everything that Mike orders in his room after 10,
he eats.”
One of the great things about watching matches in countries like
Australia, England and South Africa is that you can actually step out to have
a cup of tea and still come back to find your seat vacant. One is not fortunate
enough to experience such small pleasures in India. Once you have occupied
your seat and put your sweater or any ownership item on it no one will sit on
it or claim that they had it years back. Very rarely would one reprimand you
or remind you that he was some minister’s son or related to the Prime
Minister and have you thrown into some remote corner of the field. Therefore
the relative lack of stress that accompanies watching a match at SCG makes
the game far more interesting than watching one in India where you are
forever worried about someone displacing you from your seat claiming that
he has a bigger claim because his grandfather was a local MP in 1948. The
other thing that gives you tremendous relief is that you can go to the loo
without the constant fear of standing for the rest of the match. In India people
possibly come with a catheter because they don’t want to take the risk of
losing their seat. I have seen people not leave their seat for hours. Those who
don’t, possibly have the strongest bladders and kidneys in the world thereby
becoming specimens worthy of medical research.
In 2006 I had the opportunity to visit South Africa as a part of the
commentary team for ESPN STAR SPORTS. Yes you are reading it right —
as a part of the commentary team comprising of Ravi Shastri, Sunil
Gavaskar, Wasim Akram, Ian Chappell, Harsha Bhogle and Alan Wilkins.
Obviously my job there was not to do commentary but do a small light
hearted show with Alan Wilkins called ‘Tea Spot’ during the tea interval
every day of the Test match. The best thing about this experience was that I
actually was part of a commentary team consisting of legends of the game,
but when I finished the tour I realised that this was the last time I would ever
be a part of the actual commentary team.
 A commentary team is an ex-cricketer’s fiefdom and if anyone from the
outside tries to infiltrate it, he or she will be treated with utter disdain. Forget
an outsider, even if you have played 20 Test matches less than the previous
commentator you could be in trouble and here I had only played about 20
school cricket matches and was sitting next to Sunil Gavaskar. A few of the
ex-cricketers I have met have behaved in an even more insecure way than a
19-year-old actor trying to bag a film role.
Over the first two Test matches, Sunil Gavaskar made me realise in his
own style that this was not a place I should be seen around. One day while I
was doing an episode where I was to play the role of an Indian cricketer, I
wore the India cap which I had purchased from the Nike outlet which was
then the Official Merchandising Partner appointed by the BCCI. He hauled
me in front of everyone and said in his typical style, “If you have not played
for India why are you wearing this cap?” I tried to explain to him that this
was authorised official merchandise for the fans but he feigned ignorance.
This incident along with a few others is when I decided that I would rather do
live shows and make a decent living, than do live cricket television and take
insults. I dread to even think of what Harsha Bhogle went through to gain
acceptability over the last 20 years. I guess he was good enough, I wasn’t.
The other lesson I learnt was that sometimes it is better not to meet your
heroes in real life.

The English Summer

The second cricketing tour that I ever did was the 2004 Champions
Trophy in England. It was my first trip to the country and my heart used to
pound everytime I approached a stadium like Lord’s, The Oval or even
Trentbridge in Nottingham. This is very similar to what Ekta Kapoor feels
when she enters a Balaji Temple. I used to pinch myself every day to be in
the moment because this was so unreal. Am I really here or is this an
extended dream?
The morning after I landed I had to go to Hampshire for a game. An
English production co-ordinator told me to be in the lobby at 7 am and a
driver would be waiting for me to drive me to the Southampton Rose Bowl
cricket ground where I would be shooting an episode. I was a little tense due
to the excitement but finally managed to sleep a bit. At 7 am sharp, I went
down to the lobby of my hotel in Pimlico. There was no one there who
remotely looked like a driver to me. Sometimes you are a little scared to call
the production controller again because you get a feeling that she might scold
you or shout at you. When I did call, she said that the driver had been waiting
for me for the last 15 minutes. I went back to the lobby again and waited for
2 more minutes when I saw a smart man wearing a jacket, a tie and a lovely
hat shouting “Sote”. It took me a minute to realise he meant “Sathaye”, my
surname. All these days I was used to being called “Sethi” in the north and
“Sathaya” in the south or in Bengal. “Sote” was new and therefore it took
some time to register. The bigger problem was that I wouldn’t have, even in
my wildest dreams guessed that George was a driver. He looked like the
chairman of a mid-sized company. I recalled that I had seen him when I first
stepped into the lobby, but there was no way that I could have guessed he
was my driver. So when he actually led me to the car, unlike India, I went
ahead and sat on the seat beside him. I just couldn’t get myself to sit behind. I
guess the minds of many Indians are still in pre-Independence days. Someone
who has overcome this in a big way is Vijay Mallaya and I kind of like him
for this. Every time one sees him on an international flight, he has a white
bodyguard who lifts his luggage. In a very strange Rajnigandha pan masala
TV commercial way it’s good to watch this. I know it’s a bit weird but when
one sees 70,000 Aussies or 60,000 English give Sachin a 3-minute standing
ovation, there is something very special about it. That’s the beauty of sport, it
crosses all boundaries.
Going to England every summer has become something of a ritual. There
was absolutely no way I would have missed the summer of 2011. What if
Sachin got his 100th century at Lord’s? It did not happen and forget that, we
just went downhill in that series. Right from day one, the Indian team just
didn’t look good enough. Though Sachin was unwell at Lord’s I remember
anyone who was anybody had turned up to see Sachin bat. Every Englishman
who had turned up wanted him to score a 100, but England to win. The
earlier evening I had got passes for his box which was specially reserved for
his friends and family. The next morning as I walked into the hospitality box
and found myself a seat, I was in for a surprise. Seated on my left was Sir
Eric Clapton and Sir Ian Botham. This was truly going to be an interesting
Test match, whatever the result might be. On my right I saw the Deutsche
Bank stand where all the head honchos from the bank were watching the
game with their clients. Amrit Mathur, once the Indian team’s manager, was
sitting there and he immediately gathered his friends and called me to that
box and surprise surprise for the next 10 minutes I was doing a stand-up
show right there during a Test match. But then this is the ability which got
me to Lord’s in Sachin’s box in the first place so I was not complaining.
Sadly Sachin got out and inspite of Clapton being on my side, that night was
not wonderful for any of us.
Watching Test matches on a crisp English summer day is something that
every cricket lover should experience at least once in their lifetime. The
English still have a special place in their hearts for this format of the game
and even today Test match tickets are always sold for the first four days at
regular rates and the last day is a standard £ 20 rate which allows you to sit
anywhere you want.

Down Under
I have had the pleasure of watching two series in Australia and at the cost
of repeating myself this is a different and exciting experience. If you are a
sports lover this is the country for you. These people love champions and for
them you may be the worst species in the world, but if you can play
something well you will be respected. It’s intimidating because even a
potbellied 70-year-old Aussie can run 25 rounds of a ground while you are
trying to burn your curry dinner with a 20-minute stroll around the park. That
is why in this context if you look at the Indian team’s performance you are
kind of satisfied because the sheer average fitness is far superior Down
Under.
If you have to experience the impact of a coliseum, no other cricket
ground can give you that like the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The best part is
the tram ride from the hotel and the walk over a huge bridge which has in-
built speakers playing music. On the right is the Rod Laver Arena and as you
turn left you see the magnificient structure of the MCG.
It’s the largest cricket stadium in the world, with the highest light towers
in a sporting venue. It’s a different issue that when bowlers are bowling at
140 kmph no amount of light is enough. The fastest ball bowled on this
ground was by Shaun Tait at 160.7 kmph against Pakistan. It’s called the
spiritual home of Australian sports, which is visible from the fact that there
are six big bars inside the stadium. Even if you spend an hour at the MCG
there is no chance you can stay sober.
 One of the most amazing things the MCG has perfected is the Portable
Cricket Pitch technology. The pitch is prepared offsite (growing and
nurturing the grass) and is then placed in the centre before the cricket season.
So you can have a cricket game followed by an Australian rule football match
followed by rugby. I think Indian grounds should adopt this technology
because our grounds, apart from cricket are multi-purpose and are used for
political rallies, weddings, funerals and music concerts.
It’s not that only the international grounds are well equipped. A quick
drive around Sydney organised by cricket coach Dean Gilchrist who also
happens to be Adam Gilchrist’s brother actually was an eye-opening
experience for me. He showed me the different school sports grounds around
the city and trust me even they had super drainage systems and seemed fit to
host international games. I think it’s to do with the culture. Sports comes
first.
Sachin was again close to getting a hundred on the Boxing Day Test at the
MCG in 2011 and we were about to wind up for the day with the thought that
we would see him get that much-awaited hundred the next day. I was
watching the game with his wife Anjali who rarely comes to any of his
matches. Whilst we were all having tea, suddenly there was a huge roar of the
crowd and we realised Siddle had castled him. Oh no! Sachin was so close
but yet so far from the magical figure of hundred 100s. There was silence and
we left. Absolutely nothing to say. I walked down all the way to the press
conference zone where the head of the MCG was walking towards the
defined zone and as he passed by he mentioned to Mr Lele and a few
journalists, “Your friend Sachin has destroyed me today.” When I asked what
happened, he said, “My ticket sales goes down by 50 percent tomorrow, no
food sales and therefore loss for the stalls and the bars. The government
suffers as no one uses transport and no allowances for many. Why couldn’t
he have got out tomorrow morning?” No one had an answer, not even Sachin.
From there onwards, we lost that Test match. Something we should have won
and then the series would have changed. I had never seen Sachin work so
hard, success just eluded him. He toiled for hours in the nets, sometimes
alone, yet could not get to the magic figure.

The fastest ball bowled on the MCG was by Shaun Tait at 160.7
 kmph against Pakistan.

When the Test finished, I sent a text to Anjali asking her if they were free
the next day to go to visit the beautiful Yarra Valley Vineyard near
Melbourne. It so happened that they agreed as they also needed that break.
Our dear friend Harsha Sheorey and his lovely wife Krushnaa arranged for
two cars and we started our journey. Sachin’s son Arjun sat next to me. He is
a cricket maniac and asked me and Harsha Bhogle around 100 questions on
cricket during the entire journey. The last question floored me. “Who do you
think is faster, Shoaib or Lee?” It was funny because the best answer to that
question could come only from his father. As soon as we reached the
vineyard we converted that into a cricket field and guess what, we played
cricket there which kind of surprised the staff a lot. The greatest batsman in
the world playing cricket with his son and his friends in a vineyard in
Melbourne itself was a spectacle. When Arjun dropped a high catch because
of the glaring sun, Sachin walked up to him and told him how it’s important
to figure out a mechanism to catch the ball especially when the sun is directly
coming into your eyes. I just couldn’t believe this, but then there are a lot of
things that we still don’t know about the master. That’s why his
autobiography becomes extremely crucial to demystify the man.
I would still say that the most distinct memory from all my Australia trips
has been the Sydneygate incident where Anil Kumble made a chilling
statement saying “Only one team played in the spirit of the game.” It was a
cracker of a Test match with so many highs and lows. Sachin’s 150 was
world class and the photograph pointing at the Grand Stand is permanently
etched in my mind and I still have that Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in
my room. Sadly, the umpiring was the worst I had ever seen in my life and
this also fueled the frustration of players from both teams. The Harbhajan-
Symonds feud seemed normal to me, something that the Australians should
have been used to as they do it all the time to others. Ponting’s complaining
to the match referee seemed bizarre. It’s like Arnab Goswami complaining
that Renuka Chaudhary talks too much.
I couldn’t figure out who to blame for this mess. I too was inclined to
blaming Ponting and his team for their bad behaviour. The late Peter
Roebuck also wrote a scathing piece on the Australian captain the next day,
proving that there was a general resentment against the Aussie skipper. The
only thing which was troubling me and my conscience was that the match
tickets to this game were given to me and my buddy Sundeep Gulrajani by
Ricky Ponting himself.
 15

Sledging

ou are too old, forget it, you need to go,” said a petulant Michael
“Y Clarke to Sachin.
The master had been out of the field with a minor injury and when
he came in to bat, Michael Clarke went after him continuously.
This however irritated Sehwag, who walked up to him and asked, “How
old are you?”
Michael: “Mate 23.”
Sehwag: “Do you know he has more hundreds than your age! If you want
to abuse someone, see that he is at least of your age and experience.”
This however didn’t stop Michael and it was only Viru’s clincher that
finally shut him up.
Viru asked, “Your teammates call you pup, right?”
Clarke replied, “Ya Mate.”
Viru retorted, “Which breed?”
For the rest of the Test, Michael Clarke was subdued and I’m sure every
time he hears his nickname, he’s reminded of this episode.
When I recently reminded Sehwag about this incident, he said: “In the
initial years it was alright because my English was not so good and I never
understood the opponent’s accent, so it didn’t matter. But then when I started
understanding the language I started getting a little affected so when someone
said anything I used to go and give it back to him. But sometimes I preferred
to just walk up to the third umpire and chat with him while the bowler
continued with his verbal barrage.”
Sometimes constant chatter by the Australian bowlers can get irritating
even for the people watching. I once saw Mitchell Johnson continuously
sledge Sehwag and try to disturb his momentum. It went on for a full over
and while I was getting irritated with his behaviour, Viru seemed completely
unperturbed. He was probably thinking about why his cook had put less
butter on his parathas that morning. At one point I wanted to walk up to
Mitchell Johnson and tell him, “You should stop it for your own good. There
is no point in sledging Viru as the decision to hit a 6 over third man had been
taken a week before and it had nothing to do with your bowling skills or his
mental state which you are trying to disturb.”
The term sledging means to verbally insult and intimidate your opposition.
Well I can proudly say that I was a witness to one of the greatest sledging
incidents during the “Monkeygate” affair in Sydney in 2007. As live
spectators we had absolutely no idea what was happening on the ground. For
us Indians, the concept of calling someone a “monkey” was never considered
racist and addressing someone maaki was an act of endearment. In fact, while
growing up in India, calling someone a “monkey” or a “donkey” as a kid was
a sign that the person came from a cultured family and his parents would take
great pride that their child did not use any foul language. I’m sure even PETA
would have appreciated this behaviour. So we couldn’t understand why the
Australians who sledge for a living made such a hue and cry about it. The
controversy simmered for a long time and the media went ballistic over how
tensions exist between players and nations. All I can say is that it launched
the alternate careers of all the people involved. Mathew Hayden is now the
official cook of various restaurants in India, Symonds bagged a spot on Bigg
Boss and Harbhajan Singh got the courage after this incident to not only slap
Sreesanth, but also lift up Nita Ambani on the cricket field which must have
been the bravest act perpetrated in India since Bhagat Singh’s mutiny against
the British.

There is no point in sledging Viru as the decision to hit a 6 over third

 man has been taken a week before and it has nothing to do with the
bowler.

The objective of sledging is to cause mental disintegration of the person

who it is aimed at. In cricket however, the reward is in the form of a wicket
or a bad ball from the bowler. The effects of sledging can be severe which is
evident from what happened to Jonathan Trott and Graeme Swann during the
Ashes recently. One left the tour because of depression while the other retired
mid tour. The only person who remained calm amidst all this disintegration
was Monty Panesar who stayed cool and tried to convince American girls to
visit him in his room. It was his way of de-stressing. This ability to not get
affected by the tensions around, I think is a true sign of a champion.
The epicentre of sledging is the wicketkeeper supported by the slip
fielders because of the proximity to the batsmen. In one-day cricket he does it
all alone because of the lack of close in fielders. Moin Khan, the Pakistani
wicketkeeper could get so irritating that even the viewer felt that he was
being sledged at times. I’m sure that even in his sleep, Moin must be
shouting, “Cmon Saqi, shabhash, aage se daal, no problem Saqi.”
Kumara Sangakarra is supposed to be the loudest and in the batsmen’s ear
all the time. For all those who don’t know, Sangakarra is a law student and
carries his books on cricket tours. Well, come to think of it there is lot of
similarity between a lawyer and a wicketkeeper, as they spend most of their
lives appealing, usually for the wrong reasons. The only difference being that
one takes off the bail while the other one applies for it.
A funny incident happened in India’s 2010 tour of England between two
wicketkeepers. Matt Prior was chatting a lot especially when Dhoni came to
bat at the crease. As the story goes, when Prior’s chattering got a bit too
much, Dhoni walked up to him and said, “Matt you are wasting your breath.
We get sledged by a billion people everyday back home, you think a few
shouts from you will make any difference to me?” This just reinforced his
captain cool image.
One of the best sledges came from ex-Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More.
Jimmy Adams from the West Indies was at the crease. Jimmy must have
mastered at least 400 different methods to pad the ball to the extent that we
had started calling him “Jimmy Padams”. During one such innings his bat
chipped and he signalled towards the dressing room for a new one. Kiran
More jumped from behind and said, “If you haven’t used one for so many
years, why do you want to use one now?”
Sometimes the most humiliating sledges come from the crowd instead of
the opposition team. Mathew Hayden’s love for cooking is well known and
documented. In one of the games he played after the launch of his cookbook,
he got out cheaply and on his way back to the pavilion, he got sledged by a
guy in the stands who said, “Forget your batting mate, even your chicken
stew sucks.”
Graeme Smith was going through a miserable time in 2006 during India’s
tour of South Africa and had got out thrice to Zaheer Khan. At that time he
was dating this beautiful South African model called Mink. I remember
entering the Kingsmead ground in Durban where there was a big banner
which read, “FORGET ZAHEER KHAN, HOPE YOU AT LEAST
SCORED WITH MINK.” I thought it was mean but that’s what crowds could
do to you.

The similarity between a lawyer and a wicketkeeper is that they

spend most of their lives appealing, usually for the wrong reasons.

It’s not just cricketers who get sledged. As a stand-up comic I get heckled
once in a while by someone in the audience who thinks he’s smarter or is in
some way trying to get his frustration out after he is a few drinks down. The
challenge is not to get rattled but to give it back with an intelligent repartee.
Even as a school kid I remember being sledged by my mates and that had
a deep impact on my life. In addition to this there were endless taunts from
my family members for being an average student. So when I dig deep inside,
I realise that becoming a comic came from the need to give it back to
society’s barbs by being perceived as cool and intelligent. It’s probably the
Sidhu effect.
The moral of the story is that wherever and whatever you do, you could
get heckled. This phenomenon has been seen in every aspect of life since
time immemorial. The mother-in-law, daughter-in-law relationship
highlighted by prime time soaps are perfect examples of the art of sledging. It
is something which is intrinsic to every aspect of human life whether it is
Parliament, a corporate boardroom or your co-operative society meeting. My
observation is that all those who have been heckled in the early part of their
life have two options. Either they get motivated to perform better or they get
affected and leave the race. I don’t blame either of them but ideally one
would like to be in the former situation.
Coming back to cricket, the modern player has to take a lot of heckling
from the crowds and sometimes it becomes unbearable, which is what
happened with Virat Kohli in Australia in 2011 which led to the middle
finger incident. The good part was that it fired him up and made him perform
better. I am sure BCCI will insure the middle fingers of all the players in the
next tour to Australia.
Many people feel that Virat’s aggressive behaviour is detrimental to his
game. This is a very middle-class, God-fearing point of view which my
generation suffered from. It came from a point of view that if you behaved
badly, God would punish you and you would lose in life. Times have
changed and things work differently for this generation. Aggression is a part
of their life and unlike us they don’t get affected by it. Rahul Dravid and Anil
Kumble came from a generation that believed in keeping their mouth shut
and letting their performance speak for themselves, but this generation of
players does it differently. It’s important to understand that nobody is right or
wrong as long as it’s in the spirit of the game.
If you thought Indians are docile, timid and complete puritans when it
comes to sledging, you are mistaken. They just do it subtly. I once sat in the
commentary box and heard an entire over on the stump microphone. We are
the types who have mastered the art to such an extent that we can do it with
no expression on our face and the Indian slip cordon would give even a
seasoned ventriloquist a run for his money.
A typical over of Anil Kumble would begin with a shout from
wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik, “C’mon Anil bhai,” then Sachin would say,
“Shabash ladko shor machao Kallis aaya hein.” Dinesh was the find in South
Africa when it came to chatting behind the stumps. Once Shaun Pollock had
a verbal altercation with Kumble and the atmosphere was tense because the
crowd support for Pollock in South Africa was extremely high. Everybody
was silent…one saw Kumble visibly disturbed walking back to the mark…
and suddenly there is a voice saying, “C’mon Anil bhai this is the chance to
get Pollock, he’s upset, I have never seen Pollock upset before… this is the
chance.” Once Sachin started turning the ball, he started shouting, “C’mon
Warnie … that’s the way.” He didn’t even spare Graeme Smith. When
Sreesanth was bowling to him he said “C’mon Zaheer.” This is the extent to
which Indian cricket has changed.
Greater exposure usually leads to one’s horizons expanding and that’s
precisely what’s happened with the IPL, which is a cultural melting pot,
bringing together sportsmen from different cricket playing nations who in
turn introduce each other to their unique way of sledging in different
languages. This is a welcome change from the earlier days when most
international cricketers coming to India would learn BC and MC immediately
after Namaste. The last time I spoke to one of the international players at the
IPL, he told me that at the IPL, he gets sledged in 22 different languages
which made him understand the diversity of Indian culture as well as the
ethos of “Unity in diversity”.
Sledging before the IPL was only between two nations because the only
cricket that was played was international cricket. In this scenario Indians
suffered because being an English speaking country we understood what was
being said and got affected by it. Whereas the visitors rarely understood
anything and if ever an Indian tried to sledge in English it didn’t have the
desired impact. Now the Indians have even learnt to sledge in international
languages like Afrikaans and Sinhalese. If we had players from the UAE and
Afghanistan, then maybe they would have learnt to sledge in Arabic and
Pashtu too.
Research has shown that learning new languages helps one remain alert
and reduces the possibility of getting Alzheimer’s or other memory related
diseases. So the IPL has ensured that the players will significantly reduce
their chances of suffering from Alzheimer’s later in life.
For some reason, Indians derive a perverse pleasure out of two things
when interacting with foreigners. One is to teach them the choicest of swear
words under the guise of teaching them Hindi, and the other is to ask them to
say a few words in Hindi when interacting with them at a public platform.
This is a phenomenon I have never understood. During my IPL tours, I
have seen a lot of Australian and South African cricketers go ballistic with
their Hindi. Every press conference I host, I am petrified when journalists ask
foreign players to say a few words in Hindi because I am not sure of the
authenticity of the education imparted to them by the domestic players.

Sledging For Impact

Sledging for the sake of sledging never works. Ideally there should be a
surprise element. In one of the corporate shows I asked Sachin whether he
ever did it. He said he didn’t think sledging was a great strategy all the time
but if it was done once in a blue moon it made a huge impact. He recounted
an incident when India was playing Australia on a very difficult wicket in
Nairobi. Glen McGrath was bowling beautifully and India had lost their
openers early. Sachin told Sourav, who was at the other end, that they need to
rattle the Aussie bowlers a bit and get a little aggressive or they would
quickly take a few more wickets and India would be in trouble. Saurav was
not convinced, though Sachin knew it was the only way out. In the next over
he decided to do it himself and walked up to McGrath and said, “Which part
of the ground do you want me to hit you?” It was a bolt out of the blue for
McGrath who was shocked and surprised. This was enough, McGrath strayed
and sprayed the next over which allowed Sachin to hit him for 2 boundaries.
It was a matter of one bad over because of which the tide changed, helping
the Indians find their rhythm.

Anti-Sledging
Steve Waugh and his Australian team loved to chat with the Indians when
they were batting and expected that from all the opposition as that’s how they
were brought up in their playing days. How one reacts to sledging is a
cultural thing. The Australians have played their cricket in a certain way and
they are used to the fact that someone is chatting around them all the time.
Once during an India-Australia game, Rahul Dravid recounts that there was
lot of verbal volleying going on when they were batting and Steve Waugh
took special interest in this activity and was prepared for the same when they
came in to bat. The Indian team in the dressing room took a conscious
decision that they would not only stay quiet but also ignore Steve when he
comes in to bat. They knew that the Australians actually thrived when you
took them on and they knew that in the past whenever Steve Waugh was
rubbed the wrong way, he would get motivated enough to go for a big score.
For 5 overs, there was absolute silence. The Indian players didn’t even look
at Steve Waugh even when crossing him between overs. This actually rattled
Steve to the extent that he walked up to the wicketkeeper in the next over and
said, “Mate, are you going to say something or not?” This is a great example
of how not saying anything can sometimes be more impactful than saying
something. The erstwhile West Indian pace attack of Garner, Holding,
Roberts, Marshall and even Walsh and Ambrose later, never sledged. At the
most, they’d just stare and let their bowling do the talking.
MS Dhoni once mentioned to a friend that after a Test victory in
Australia, the Indian team purposely didn’t celebrate much because they
wanted to pass a message to the Australian dressing room that beating
Australia was no big deal for them. Also it was important not to fire up the
Aussies as they would then come back stronger as a team, a good
psychological ploy, I must say. In his last domestic game, Sachin Tendulkar
played against Ajay Jadeja who was the Haryana captain. Yes, you heard
right, at the time of writing this book, Ajay Jadeja is still playing domestic
cricket. Sachin knew that Ajay was the kind of guy who liked to relieve his
stress by chatting with the opposition team members and the more relaxed he
got, the better he played. Sachin told all his team members to ensure that
when Ajay came in to bat, they were not to respond or chat with him. The
instructions were to ignore him and bore him into throwing his wicket.
Sachin said, “He even walked up to me to say a few words. I looked through
him and walked away.” He was out the next over. This in a way is similar to
what happens in the corporate world. When the boss ignores you, you know
you’re on your way out.
One piece of advice, however, never try this strategy with your wife at
home, because if you do, then facing your mother-in-law at the maika, is far
more stressful than facing McGrath at the MCG.
 16

The DNA Of The Indian Fan

Was Cricket A Colonial Strategy To Rule India?

he English figured out that India was a complex country with a large
T population with a thousand different aspirations. To rule over such a
large number of people and keep them engaged over a period of time was
always going to prove a challenge.
So they gave us this wonderful game of Test cricket, a sport which was
then played over six days without the possibility of a result. This suited the
Hindu philosophy of eternity where the journey was more important than the
goal. Test cricket kept the population completely engaged over a long period
of time making it easier to govern the masses. What a masterstroke! How else
was it possible to rule over a country like India for 200 years? It was like a
nation drugged.
The English knew that Indians by nature loved lengthy discussions that
didn’t necessarily result in any action and therefore this was the perfect game
where even if a match rained out, one could have a 2-hour session discussing
the possible implications of the rain on the game, applying a complex
permutation model created by two Englishmen by the names of Duckworth
and Lewis. This just suited Indians perfectly.
Like many British institutions, post Independence India also inherited the
institution of cricket. Subsequent Indian governments realised the power of
cricket and have in turn turned a blind eye to the disadvantages and supported
the BCCI irrespective of which party they belonged to. They came to
understand that the combined negative PR generated by all the scams could
be wiped out by one Sachin Tendulkar century. Clearly, the new Indian
masters understood well the age-old English strategy. Most of India was
more concerned about Sachin’s achievements than the government’s under
achievements.
For many Indians, cricket is like a drug that refuses to get out of the blood
stream. Even if you are a part of the brain drain generation that left the
country in the early 70s for the US or England you would probably still be
romanticising the achievements of Indian cricketers. It’s strange that even
today, when I perform at a cricket show in the Middle East there are loads of
Indian millionaires in their sixties still reminiscing about Sandeep Patil’s 174
against Australia which I think even Sandeep Patil has forgotten about.
Cricket has impacted the DNA of Indian men across generations and
geographies and one sees the manifestation of this in one’s travels across the
world.

The Way To An Indian Cricketer’s Heart Is Also

Through His Stomach
Fans can go to any extent to express their love for their favourite
cricketers. Indians typically express their love through food and that’s why I
believe that over all these years of feeding each other sweets, we have now
turned our country into the diabetic capital of the world. That’s exactly what
happens when the Indian cricket team tours a foreign country for a series. As
soon as an Indian tour to Australia, England or South Africa is announced, all
the local Indians get into action mode because they know that an entire Indian
cricketing contingent will be visiting their shores. Indians being Indians are
constantly scouting for local Indian food options and that gives them a
chance to not only offer their services but in the process get an opportunity to
interact with their favourite cricketers.
For NRIs, their only connect to India is either through cricket or
Bollywood. So when a cricket team arrives at their shores, it’s a golden
opportunity for them to relive their nostalgia by offering their culinary
services. Thanks to 24x7 media which has dissected every aspect of modern
day personalities, these fans are aware of the likes and dislikes of their
favourite cricketers. So just because Sachin likes Bombay Duck and fish,
there are at least 500 Mahrashtrian Australian families at any given point of
time that have geared themselves to cook his favourite recipe the moment an
Australian tour is announced. The same applies to Bengalis and Sourav
Ganguly or South Indians and Anil Kumble. All the Maharashtrians believed
that if Sachin consumed their fish preparation, it would change his fortunes
and give him the ability to take on both Brett Lee and Glen McGrath far more
effortlessly than he would do so otherwise and if he had rejected their
invitation it was purely his loss. This complimentary facility is a big boon for
the South Indians and vegetarians in the team because they suffer the most
during a tour. Anil Kumble apparently used to tell Srinath to field at third
man and befriend local Indians in the last few overs so that they could do
some meal fixing. Another example of “fielding lagana”. Cricketers often tell
me that their relationships with Indian fans abroad started only because they
offered them food to start with.

The NRI Effect

I believe Indians living abroad are far more passionate about the Indian
team than those in India. There is a reason for this. If you are an Indian living
and working in an Australian company, for years the typical topics of
conversation you have apart from work related matters are sports, movies and
popular culture. Stuff like, India is growing at 8 percent and we have the Taj
Mahal or a population of 1.2 billion people can only be a topic of discussion
for so long. Chatting about movies is tough because Dabangg or Ready is not
something that the Aussies would relate to. So the only potential area of
discussion left was sports! Only team sports get people nationalistic,
triggering drunken debates and discussions. The only team sport we do
reasonably well is cricket and so all Indians pride themselves during the year
on the successes of the Indian cricket team. This also gives them an equal
footing against the local Australians who love sports and judge nationalities
purely on their sporting abilities. Their potential moment of glory comes
when the Indian team visits Australia because they know that if India beats
Australia their next 4 years in office will be filled with pride and glory
resulting in better pay and quality of life. But that rarely happens and when
India loses badly you have to see their plight. I have had locals come to me
and tell me, “Please tell Sachin to score a century,” or “Please tell the team to
win because if they don’t we won’t be able to go to office and the Aussies
will sledge us to death. Our lives will be miserable. Please do something.”
Only then does one realise that it’s not just the players who suffer at the
hands of the Aussies, it’s also the fans and one feels for them in this journey.

The Indian fan abroad is so optimistic that even if India is 45 for 8

you’ll still find people shouting, “Jeetega bhai jeetega, India
jeetega”.

However, it’s the Indian fans who make touring extremely interesting. It’s
amazing how they descend in hordes on the cricket ground to support their
team. Wherever you are in the world you’ll hear chants of “Ganpati Bappa
Morya” and therefore Hindus for logistical reasons should declare Ganpati
Bappa as a brand ambassador of its millions of Gods so the foreigners don’t
get confused. The Indian fan abroad is so optimistic that even if India is 45
for 8 you’ll still find people shouting, “Jeetega bhai jeetega, India jeetega.”
One of the biggest nightmares for the hotel that hosts the Indian team is
that for that week the hotel lobby seems like a NRI reunion or a Pravasi
Bhartiya Divas. Anyone who is anybody will try and do their best to hang out
in the lobby waiting to catch a glimpse of their cricket stars. The hotel
security try to do their best, but these Indian fans for those seven days don’t
give a hoot about anyone. The security guards don’t understand why these
Indians behave in such an obsessive manner as they don’t undrstand the
gravity of what this means to them. One can see that Dalbir Singh who left
his village and came with his family to England 40 years back wants to shake
hands with Yuvraj Singh because that gives him a connection to Punjab and
his mitti and if Yuvraj hits a six clearly Dalbir’s happiness far exceeds Yuvi’s
because for him it means that his Punjabiyat has won. That is the kind of
connect I am talking about.
Cricket tourism has become an integral part of many Indians’ travel
schedule. The Bharat Army modelled on the Barmy Army has been a group
of dedicated Indian fans from England who have been travelling with the
Indian team across the world since 2002. The greatest fan who takes the cake
though is Sudhir Kumar who even postponed his marriage to watch cricket
matches across the country. Sachin himself was very particular that Sudhir
was always well taken care of on tours. The Barmy Army founded in 94-95
by David Peacock and Paul Burnham follows the best model which is based
on the principle of work and fun. This group of fans travels with the English
cricket team wherever they go and earns money while on tour. It’s primarily a
group of electricians and plumbers, who find work and watch cricket while
on tour. Some of them also work on construction sites and repair lifts. I think
during tours of India they should be given contracts to repair and build roads
in Mumbai as we know that whatever the British had built in India has lasted
more than what we did in our own country. There are also artists in the group
and a certain Richard Curtis who is a painter is a big hit in South Africa with
his paintings. I am sure watching cricket itself has potential as an economic
model which unfortunately hasn’t yet been explored in India either by the
BCCI or the Government of India. Thank God I have.
The impact of cricket on the Indian male is such that many life milestones
and key moments in their lives are linked to cricketing events. So after doing
a psychographic and demographic analysis of the cricket fan I have managed
to put them into my own version of the periodic table with the last category
being the jingoistic fan who is like the inert gas element…always excited.

The Time Warp: “In Our Times It Was…”

This is the 60 plus fan who believes that everything during his time was
better than what is happening today, moral values and cricket included. So if
Sehwag gets a century against Australia in Melbourne he will compare it with
Vishwanath’s 112 at Port of Spain against the West Indies and argue that,
that century was better than this one. When one counters their argument, they
feel hurt as if someone’s doubting their personal integrity. And if by chance
they aren’t able to defend themselves, they will say that those days batsmen
batted without a helmet and they played for the country, today’s cricketers
play for the money and with all the protection. This statement is used all the
time by ex-cricketers themselves too.

The Purist
He is an extension of category 1 but focuses more on the rights and
wrongs of cricket. He is open enough to like modern cricketers but doesn’t
appreciate anything except Test cricket. He thinks that ODI was degradation
and T20 is the breakdown of society. He believes character can be tested only
over five days and T20 cricket is like a one night stand so there is no question
of any character. He can give you sermons of how batting has suffered
because of the shorter format and there are no spinners left in the game. He
switches off the telly even if he sees his favourite players in coloured clothes.
He detests Kerry Packer and even the sound of the word Lalit Modi generates
more anger than the combined anger Chidambaram and Srinivasan have for
him. He is also an armchair expert who knows everything that Rohit Sharma
needs to do but is not doing and makes profound statements like, “Talent is
not everything, hardwork is what makes a batsman world class.”

The Pessimist
He loves the game but he wants India to win all the time. He comes to
watch the match not for the team and for the love of the sport but for Sachin,
Sehwag or one of his favourite cricketers. He is a representative of those
millions who switched off their TV set after Sachin’s dismissal. He is
extremely enthusiastic about the game, but if India is 78-4 his brain gets
rewired into the most negative zone we can ever imagine. He immediately
starts calling the team useless, overpaid and good for nothing even though he
was idolising them just 2 hours earlier. He can’t handle defeat whichever way
it comes. The day India plays badly, his family has had it and the local booze
shop’s turnover doubles that evening.

King Of Cynics
When he sees anyone talking or watching cricket he says, “Why are you
watching? Everything is fixed.”

The Touchy-Feely Fan

This category of fan is so enamoured by the cricketer that whenever he
sees one up close and personal he just can’t seem to keep his hands off him,
wanting to touch, shake hands or click photographs with him. I have seen this
kind of behaviour from people across the board at the numerous events I’ve
performed at.
During these events, which are usually a meet and greet with cricketers,
everyone from the organisers’ mistresses to their office assistant wants to
shake hands and click a picture with them. As these events are planned well
in advance, every member present in the room has assured their near and dear
ones that they will manage at least a photograph or two with the cricketer. So
when D-Day arrives you can see the pressure and anxiety to meet their
favourite cricketer. The moment they spot a window of opportunity, you will
see hordes of fans trying to squeeze in for a click. These photosessions can be
extremely exhausting for the players.
You must be wondering what could possibly be so exhausting about a few
photographs. Well let me explain how this process works. Typically, a fan
comes and stands next to the cricketer and hands over his camera to a friend.
While deciding on his pose for the picture, he invariably ends up pushing the
player and then puts his arm around his waist or shoulder depending on his
own height. He doesn’t care whether the player likes it or not. His friend
won’t know how to use that particular mobile phone so he ends up getting it
wrong and following a detailed tutorial, the whole process is repeated all over
again. The same process is then repeated with the friend who clicked the
photograph. While this is happening people from other corners with their
cameras have already stood next to the cricketer in various trajectories and
clicked their photos with whichever body part of the cricketer that enters the
frame. Now imagine this happening with at least a hundred fans at the event.
A million cameras would have been exchanged causing light flashes of
different intensity on the cricketer’s face further causing distress at a different
level altogether. I haven’t even mentioned the millions of autographs signed
simultaneously during the process.
During all of this the cricketer maintains his composure and keeps smiling
despite the serious trauma to his nervous system. But there are times when
the trauma reaches a break point and the cricketer suddenly reacts by saying,
“No more photos.”
Suddenly everyone will start saying, “What attitude, we have made them
stars, without us they are nothing. Money and success have gone to their
head. We came all the way from the suburbs and this is what we get. Who
wants their autograph? Pompous fellows!” Such is the life of a cricketer. The
interesting part is all of this content generated over the hours of photography
and videography eventually ends up on Facebook and YouTube. That is why
I am convinced at the end of the day all of us are working for these two
companies.

The Egoistic Fan

A fan category that intrigus me the most is the one who can’t directly
express his love for the cricketer. This character is the typical emotionally
untrained Indian male who can’t express his love even to his wife. So when
he approaches the cricketer he will say things like “Kapil paaji, my daughter
is a big fan of yours, need a photograph of yours for her.” Why on Earth
would a 10-year-old girl be a fan of Kapil Dev is something we would not
know but then it’s his way of getting his idol’s autograph without letting his
position down and looking like a fan.
Over the years I have gone on to be recognised as the funny guy who
hangs out with cricketers. So by chance if the fans don’t get their photos and
signatures they come to me and ask for help to get it for them from the
players. Some of them even reconcile to their kids taking pictures and
autographs from me which I reluctantly sign. I know they never came for me,
the worst is after they have taken my autograph and photos they will ask
innocently, “Uncle, what is your name?”

The Lucky Fan

These are the fans who happen to stumble on a gold mine in the least
expected of situations.
The luckiest fan is always the good looking female fan. Somehow the
younger cricketers have an amazing ability to locate one even from a crowd
of more than a hundred. She always gets priority and to be the brother or
family member of a beautiful girl is a great thing because then you could
even get a chance to learn a few strokes from the cricketers.

The Jingoistic Fan

This is a fan category that thinks cricket is a substitute for war and there is
no way India can lose and if they lose he will destroy the Indian cricketers.
So when you see players’ houses destroyed you know what kind of person
did that. He thinks that an India vs Pakistan game is a revenge for Partition. I
am personally very worried for this person because he is the kind of person
who is detrimental to the cricketing world. I agree with some that sports
cannot be separated from politics but if our objective is world peace then it is
also a great tool to start the process.
However, one of the most interesting fan moments I recollect was when
we had surprised our friends from Melbourne, Harsha Sheorey and his wife
Krushnna and a few friends. They were to pick us up from our hotel in
Melbourne for a day trip. When they arrived at the hotel they got the surprise
of a lifetime when Sachin and Anjali Tendulkar joined us in their car for the
day trip. The expressions on their faces were priceless. Interestingly,
Krushnaa had decided to buy a new car but after this episode Harsha decided
he was never going to sell this car.
 17

The IPL Circus

he advent of the IPL, pioneered by Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar, had far
T more impact on a cricketer than the liberalisation of the Indian economy
by PV Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh. There was a time when
every mother dreaded that her son would waste a considerable amount of
time during his studying years playing what she called “the wretched game of
cricket”. She cursed the British not for ruling India for 200 years but for
inventing and introducing this game that would destroy her family’s
economic future for the next 5 generations.
How times have changed! Even engineers are leaving their profession to
successfully pursue cricket instead. The trend was started by Anil Kumble
and Javagal Srinath, the latest victim being R. Ashwin. Every mother now
wants her son to become a cricketer and not even appear for the engineering
exams because she knows that one IPL contract can not only get them out of
their modest lifestyle but also make her a kitty party queen.
Cricket is now an industry by itself. The total money generated in the last
World Cup alone was estimated to be about $US 1.5 billion which could
possibly be the annual budget of some countries. This would also give you an
idea about the kind of employment cricket is generating. According to
estimates just the official broadcasting crew and associates took close to
20,000 domestic and 350 international flights and occupied 13,000 room
nights in hotels. Despite the average revenue growth in the TV industry being
close to 12 percent, the TV ad rates during the World cup grew by 50 percent.
At Rs 4,50,000 for 10 seconds, you had the option to buy 100 seconds of
advertising or a 1,300 sq ft flat in a decent area in Pune. The official
broadcaster syndicated this to 200 territories which meant that there would
have been a total TV audience of more than a billion people across the world.
There were 27 cameras shooting this in HD format and with 3G mobile
streaming resulting in tremendous quality for viewers. Rs 400 crore worth of
tickets sold during the World Cup and each association getting Rs 3.3 crore
per match for the World Cup games.
The prize money for the 1983 World Cup was £42,000 with the winners
taking £20,000. The 2011 World Cup was worth $10 million with the
winners taking $3 million. I’m sure the same 1983 World Cup winners are
making more money from commentary today than what they made by
winning the World Cup back then.
Now we even have the IPL. This is a different financial eco-system by
itself, where the economics is such that the money made by Robin Uthapa
and Irfan Pathan during 74 days of the IPL is twice the World Cup final team
prize money. Irfan Pathan made Rs 8.74 crore in the IPL 4 auction while
Gautam Gambhir made Rs 11.04 crore. The highest a foreign player made
was Rs 6.9 crore by Sri Lanka’s Mahela Jayawardene then. So now you
understand why mothers prefer that their sons join a cricket academy instead
of an entrance coaching academy.
I guess Glen Maxwell’s parents would have never imagined in their
wildest dreams that their son would play league cricket in India and make a
fortune. At this rate they’d want him to settle down in India.
During Lalit Modi’s time, there was a different vibe around the IPL.
While all the franchises were happy with him, the people who did not get a
deal with the IPL felt that he had an attitude problem. He used to roam
around like a “King of the Jungle” and that’s why his defiance of
Chidambaram was the turning point in his life. Cricket versus politics was as
exciting as any battle could get.
For me, the IPL was a superb experience from a commercial and an
observational point of view. The dynamics of each of the franchisees was
unique based on the owner’s personality.
Kolkata Knight Riders
I have been performing for Kolkata Knight Riders every year since the
IPL began. To me this has been the toughest event to host during the
tournament because it usually starts only at 2 am after the players come back
to the hotel after the match. My job is to do a stand-up act followed by
interactions with the players on stage at that unearthly hour. If by chance they
have lost the game, then the mood of the players and the team owner Shah
Rukh Khan is low which means I know the show is going down and how. As
my luck would have it, this was almost always the case. But I know that if
Shah Rukh was triggered in the right manner, things would look up. He is the
wittiest person I have interviewed in my life and it is always a challenge for
me to throw questions laced with humour at him. He never lets the audience
down. Once Shah Rukh sets the tempo, the other players carry forward the
momentum and even reluctant speakers like Yusuf Pathan can throw gems
making you chuckle every now and then.
The highlight of this event though is the after party that starts at the ITC
Hotel at around 3am and can go on till the wee hours. Shah Rukh takes the
moral responsibility of entertaining everyone and at any point of time is
dancing some place or the other with his 7 foot tall bodyguards surrounding
him and people trying to get through them to at least try and shake a leg with
him. At that time one sees team members from other franchisees also joining
in the party which now has turned into a complete zoo where every member
is trying to impress the other with their dancing skills.
One of my biggest observations about the IPL was that it showed me the
impact of wealth on different kinds of people and what happens when young
innocent cricketers actually interact with a world that is not theirs.
It’s interesting to watch these young small town boys at these parties. For
them, just the thought of being close to Priyanka Chopra for a few moments
and a hug from her can trigger a volcano of emotions inside their brains and
coupled by a hormonal rush of an uncontrollable nature. When you overhear
some of their conversations, you realise how these young boys are affected
by the glamour quotient and how difficult it is for them to maintain their
sanity in these situations.
Here’s an example which will give you an idea about why players get
greedy and then succumb to the bookies hanging out in the lobbies of team
hotels.

Player
Boss ye Priyanka aur Kareena kya mast hein, chal baat karein?
1:
Player
Pagal hein! Ye badi society ke log hein, apne jaise ki bas ki nahi!
2:
Player
Arre chhod, hum bhi IPL player hein.
1:
Player Arre ye tere Honda City mein thodi na baithegi, ise Range Rover
2: chahiye.
Player Kya baat kar raha hein? Dekh ek din saala Range Rover le ke
1: aoonga.
This kid who is 19 and was struggling to make both ends meet a few
months back, suddenly got an IPL deal and celebrated it by buying a Honda
City and now within 15 days of doing so wants to buy a Rs 1 crore car. What
happens if by chance he has had a few drinks and then meets someone in the
lobby who gives him an iPhone and calls him to his room offering him a deal
to bowl a no-ball in the next match? Now you know how vulnerable the
situation is and that is why having a psychologist and a counsellor I believe is
very crucial to keep the sanity amongst these younger players. This sudden
change in lifestyle is the greatest challenge for many of these younger
players.

Kings XI Punjab
Kings XI Punjab is another glamour driven franchise. The players of this
franchise always played second fiddle because no matter what they did on the
field, the camera would only capture Preity Zinta’s reactions. Thanks to the
IPL we got to see her emote many more expressions than she did in her films
as unlike life, Bollywood films provide very little opportunity to act. It took
her time to understand what this game was all about and now she is far more
mature than before. It was difficult for anyone to control her excitement after
a win. She would invade the ground to hug Yuvraj or Sangakarra. As a team
owner she didn’t realise that this caused a sense of inequality amongst the
other players. Many times I wanted to tell her that as a management principle
she needs to love all her employees equally. Yuvi and Sanga are popular
among the girls, she needs to focus on the others. It was Piyush Chawla who
needed the hugs back then. This was an important HR lesson which she
missed out on in the initial years of her IPL career. Piyush, by the way,
played better for KKR recently when they won the IPL in 2014.
The IPL events and parties were an economy by themselves. In the first
few years, companies and brands bid to sponsor IPL parties. These parties
had a strange mix of players and models who walked the ramp and wannabe
actresses, cheerleaders and nouveau rich businessmen from across India who
tried to make an impression. At that time, ticket packages were such that you
could watch the game and then come to the party at a hefty price. So no
matter how and where you made your money from, whether it was by selling
leather goods in Ludhiana or textile in Tiruchirapalli, you could come to this
party if you had the cash to spend. As part of their contracts, players had to
come and hang out at these parties for some time. Small businessmen would
mingle with the players asking them the stupidest questions but then the
players had no other option, they were paid to listen.
The main parties happened after this in the private enclosures of team
owners where senior corporates hung out with the real celebs and senior
cricketers. This was the exclusive group where big discussions happened.
One of the key reasons that I thought the IPL worked was that it was a great
way for corporates to entertain their customers and guests. Every time one
went to the President’s box during a game, it felt like a CII summit where
business heads got together to decide on the economy over a drink and
cricket. Each one thought that they knew the game better than the other.

Chennai Super Kings

One man who treats his boys equally is the Chennai Super Kings captain
MS Dhoni. This team swears by their captain. It is fun doing an event with
the boys at CSK because one gets a feeling that it’s a household function you
are hosting. Mahi has that charm of a tribal leader who not only gets respect
but also manages to get the best out of his teammates. If you go to Mahi’s
room you will see at least 4-5 CSK players hanging out, watching TV or
playing games while the leader is lying on the sofa or sprawled out on the
bed. One gets a sense that his entire team, including the international
cricketers would die for him.
 There are very few leaders who have been able to command the kind of
awe and respect that Mahi does. Besides a strong sense of camaraderie, the
other thing that stands out with this team is that they are all a little media shy.
During an interview each one hides behind the other and then pushes the
other one to go first and finally as a group they manage to push Dwayne
Bravo. Invariably the Caribbean flavour comes into play leading to a dance
routine that can give all item numbers a run for their money.

Mumbai Indians
The boys from Mumbai Indians are relatively low profile. Well when Nita
bhabhi is your owner, you’ll never be high profile enough, unless you’re
Sachin Tendulkar. I’m sure even Pollard feels intimidated in front of her. For
most of the earlier matches she used to sit in the dug-out with a headmistress
like look which by default put the young players under tremendous pressure
to perform. I must say though that on the other hand when you are doing any
stuff for the MI team, the owners treat guests with utmost dignity and respect.
My strategy while performing at a Mumbai Indians event was to first break
the ice with Sachin because I know if that happens well then the entire team
would fall in line making every moment of the evening special.

Royal Challengers Bangalore

Royal Challengers Bangalore is all about Chris Gayle, period! He is a
unique character. When I first interviewed him I thought he would have a Viv
Richards like attitude. The moment I asked him a funny question about him
getting massaged by four girls, he started giggling like a little girl in her
teens. The media present at the event was stunned by the infectious girly
giggle as everyone had expected an Amrish Puri kind of demonic laughter. I
call him the most expressionless cricketer in the world, dispassionate and
emotionless, who will not cry even if you get him to watch Titanic 40 times.
When he walks to the crease with a black bandana he resembles a Black Cat
commando whose only mission is to break the leather ball into two halves. I
remember when Dhoni was asked about his strategy against Gayle at an India
v/s West Indies pre-match press conference, he said, “We had a strategy but
we can’t use it because the ICC doesn’t allow fielders to be placed outside the
boundary line.” Chris Gayle apparently has had a heart problem since his
childhood. It would be interesting to find out how many opposition captains
have heart conditions because of him despite it not being a contagious
disease. What are these West Indians and Australians made of? No matter
how tired they may be they will still end up at the bar much before anyone
gets there.
There have been a lot of discussions and debates around the partying and
betting during the IPL. I think what people need to understand is that these
people are grown up men and you can’t force do’s and don’ts on them. There
was such of a hue and cry regarding cheerleaders which saddened me
because I think they have had a huge contribution towards the game.

99 percent of betting and spot fixing happens on bowlers. After all

this, one wonders why we still call it a batsman’s game.

India must be the only country in the world which wanted them to wear
clothes. I feel bad for the girls because despite not having anything to do with
big money, auctions, teams or FERA violations they were the ones who
suffered the most! They just came here to be cheerleaders. This was one of
the only industries where India was hiring foreigners instead of exporting our
workforce. It was a matter of pride. The courts however didn’t like
cheerleaders and the BCCI was asked to justify their presence.
The cheerleaders helped players in more ways than one by distracting the
crowds and taking the pressure away from the players. There were times in
the IPL where a player had dropped a catch and no one even noticed it
because the crowd was busy ogling at the cheerleaders.
While match fixing has been a constant menace that needs to be dealt with
strictly, one also needs to seriously consider the option of legalising betting at
least during the IPL.
Since the IPL is all about entertainment, the BCCI should legalise betting
during the event and take it one notch higher with innovations like mic-
linking the fielders directly to the bookies instead of the commentators. It
would be so much fun. Actually commentators should be replaced by
bookies.
 “Agli gaind, rate 5:1, accha shot, abhi rate 50:40.” Would be far more
entertaining than some of the old school commentators. We always
complained about subjects in school not having any practical application. I
think the study of probability was one of the best examples of applied
mathematics and our teachers who taught us that subject were the original
bookies. Besides bookies, the only other people who made a career out of
probability were those working at the MET department. Bookies should be
actually given awards for taking math to a new level. A hard working math
teacher would only make about Rs 10,000 per month, but a bookie…any
guesses?
I’m not surprised that betting is rampant. We have speculated on
everything in life. For God’s sake even our education system was based on
21 Probable Question Sets for board exams. If we can speculate in education
why can’t we speculate in sport?
It’s interesting that 99 percent of betting and spot fixing happens on
bowlers. After all this, one wonders why we still call it a batsman’s game.
 18

Are Women Responsible For The Sporting

State Of Our Country?

ustralia was playing Sri Lanka in the summer of 1999. A Lankan

A batsmen went the aerial route. Steve Waugh ran towards the ball and so
did Jason Gillespie. A few seconds later there was a collision between the
two. Everyone ran towards them to see what happened. Blood oozed out of
Waugh’s face and he was holding his nose with pain. The story goes that the
moment Ponting reached there, Steve Waugh told him, “Cover my face mate,
I don’t want my wife to see me in this state on TV because if she does she
may not allow me to play again.”
See the link between a man’s sporting career and his partner’s attitude? If
you ever chat about cricket on a date, the chances of the girl wanting to meet
you again for another date are next to nothing. And God alone can save you if
your passion is Greeko Roman wrestling. Girls! You need to understand this.
Guys will do anything to be able to spend more time with you. So, if you
don’t discuss sports with men, then how would Indian men be motivated to
become champions?
Once, ten of my college friends joined a French class because it had all the
pretty girls. They had nothing whatsoever to do with Napoleon and they
didn’t even eat croissants or foie gras back then. So you have to understand
that if you want to encourage men to take up sports, you need to start giving
more bhav to young sportsmen and maybe take up a sport yourself.
Everybody says India doesn’t have a sporting culture. I am a firm believer
that only women can change this sad state of affairs and the least they can do
is to take sportsmen seriously.
So college going girls, for heaven’s sake please don’t fall for those sweet
talking guys on expensive bikes with funky hairdos because then we’ll end
up creating a nation of losers. If the hottest girl in college starts dating a Kho
Kho player, no matter how “verny” he is considered, trust me, the biggest
sporting league in this country will be the Indian Kho Kho League.
The next time a guy gives you an expensive gift, flip it back on his face,
and tell him that if he really wants to date you he needs to do a minimum
discuss throw of 62.5 metres else he disqualifies himself. Needless to add that
if boys channelise their energies in sports, it would keep them away from
eve-teasing, spitting competitions and random chest thumping.
Take the bold and the beautiful women in the eras gone by, say Goddess
Sita. She made Purshottam Ram not only lift one of the heaviest bows, but
also shoot arrows accurately if he wanted to win her hand in the swayamvar.
This means that she not only wanted to test him in archery but also in weight-
lifting. These are the kind of benchmarks present-day women need to set for
men.
Draupadi, another spunky woman, made Lord Arjuna not only shoot
arrows but also do it by looking at the reflection below in the water. Parents
of girls shouldn’t hesitate to ask potential grooms to run 100 metres in under
11 seconds along with having their Engineering-MBA degrees and jobs in the
US.
Only when you have women who raise the bar will you produce a Lord
Ram or a Lord Arjuna or a good high jumper. Unfortunately whenever you
ask any actress or model about the kind of man she fancies, her typical
answer will be, “He has to be this prince, who’ll make me feel special and
give me surprises.” Imagine if Sita would have told Lord Ram, “I’ll marry
you if you give me surprises everyday!” Women should shout out loud and
say, “I will feel special only when he beats Serge Bubka’s 53rd World
Record.” Set standards like these and there will be a change like never before.
If men can go to war over women, then trust me pole vaulting is nothing.
Another benefit of building an interest in sports is that you can easily
manipulate your man and make him do things that you want. So if you get up
in the morning and tell your husband that Virat Kohli is great to watch,
especially “off his legs” he will start pressing your legs that very moment. At
a time when divorce rates have shot up drastically due to incompatibility and
disagreements between couples, a survey report on divorces in India says that
watching cricket features amongst the least of the problems. Counsellors are
of the opinion that often the only thing that couples agreed on was that
Sachin is the greatest batsman in the world. A well-informed woman will
ensure that her priority list of demands will directly coincide with moments
of the Indian team’s success because those are the few moments when you
can predict your man’s mood.
Though many women still complain that their husbands are forever
watching cricket, there is a deeper philosophy here that you need to
understand. Men need a high to survive. They were hunters and killed
animals to satisfy that high. Killing animals is illegal now and going to
Godrej Nature’s basket and buying methi and flax seeds doesn’t give us that
high. Till recently, the urge was satisfied because there were so many wars
and skirmishes. Now the only battle we fight is with our wives and we can’t
win those in the interest of maintaining peace. So the testosterone urge
remains unsatisfied which men try to address by watching high intensity sport
because after a certain age sex is not an option. So by supporting India in
cricket or cheering their favourite IPL team, we try to achieve this through
surrogate means.
Women also need to understand that retired men are prone to losing the
plot. They have an intrinsic need to advise and if left unsupervised, they
would want to apply management theories to even your menstrual cycle.
Therefore I advise women, that it is in your interest that your husband is busy
watching cricket than trying something embarrassing. The moral of the story
is that if you don’t want your husband to play games with you, allow him to
watch a game.
The best option of course, would be for all women to take up sports
themselves. This would also change the benchmarks for the entire family.
India being a patriarchal society, the man of the house always wants to
dominate. So if his wife runs 100 metres in 11 seconds, he will want to better
that just to prove his superiority. Now imagine 500 million men wanting to
do this, wouldn’t we create at least one Usain Bolt and a couple of P.T.
Ushas?
There are a lot of advantages of having women actively involved in sports.
Imagine having Mary Kom as your mother. Besides the level of security,
taking her to a PTA meetings would be a different experience altogether.
Imagine a teacher saying, “Mrs Kom, your son is useless, he doesn’t study at
all,” and Boom!!! One would never be scared of small things like “he gets
3/100 in Maths”. I’m not saying Mary Kom would behave that way, but the
possibility was entertaining for someone like me who dreaded accompanying
my mom to these meetings.

Stop Dowry And Indian Men Will Start Winning

Gold Medals
One of the worst advices trotted out in Hindu homes is that winning is not
important, participating is. As a result, no one wants to achieve anything in
sport, they just want to participate. For years India has just been a
participating nation in many international events, rarely winning a medals.
No wonder then that most of the Olympic contingents from India have had
more administrators than sportsmen.

I wish my mother was Mary Kom, then I would never be worried

about attending PTA meetings.

One of the drawbacks is the lack of excitement Indians have for that small
piece of yellow metal. India imports almost 50 percent of its gold in the form
of jewellery. We buy gold for everything from celebrating the birth of a child
to when we have extra cash lying around. We even have a festival called
Dhanteras which is considered auspicious for buying gold. For years dirty
Indian men have been accepting tonnes of free gold in the form of dowry
from their wives and in-laws. Do you think any Indian man would work hard
for 4 years to win a gold plated medal at the Olympic Games? Especially
since the gold medals awarded consist of 80 percent silver. It just doesn’t
make sense for Indians.
Most sportsmen do not get much respect in Indian society. Imagine you
go to a wedding and you are standing next to a doctor and suddenly there is
an introduction parade. The host will say, “Meet Mr Ranade, he is an
orthopedic surgeon and meet Mr Sathaye, he plays some game, what is your
game? Ya ya malkhamb, Ya. He won the bronze medal in the Bangladesh
Malkhamb Asian Cup.” Do you think anyone would even nod in
appreciation?
Unfortunately we cannot convince the IOC to change the chemical
composition of medals at the Olympics just to motivate Indian sportsmen.
The only other solution is for the government to enforce stronger anti–dowry
measures thereby limiting the easy supply of gold and creating a genuine
need to work hard for it.

Why Is Sports Not A Major Part Of The Education

System?
When most developed and developing countries have a systematic sports
talent spotting programme, we are still debating whether sports should be part
of the school curriculum. I think educationists need to understand that apart
from teaching Trigonometry and Tropic of Capricorn, the most important
quality to inculcate in students is how to become a good human being which
can only happen when they know the values of integrity, teamwork and
leadership. A team sport is one of the best ways to teach these values in an
interesting manner. This is the best case study method of teaching students
the core values of life and that too without any pressure. Organisations spend
lakhs of rupees to invite eminent sportsmen to speak to their senior
management about lessons in sport but schools are still trying to figure out if
sports makes any sense.
Every now and then there is a diktat from some education board that grace
marks for sports in school will be cancelled. For those of you who don’t
know, students in school get 25 marks if they have represented their state in
any sport. I am not sure that this is the best idea to encourage sports in
school. Would they say, “I am going to score 100 runs today because I’ll then
use my grace marks to pass my geography exams.” A better option would
have been if they allowed the kids to skip Geography because that would
probably encourage them to score 3 centuries in a row! For some strange
reason the system believed that all sportsmen get 31 percent marks and they
need 4 percent to get through.
The worst thing is that it is called grace marks!
“By the Grace of God, I bestow upon you 25 marks for your progress.”
The term “Grace” means “Favour” and sportsmen are made to feel like
they have been granted a favour! That’s what sums up the state of sports and
its importance in Indian schools. The other students therefore look upon the
guy as someone who is good for nothing and has only managed to get
through because of some charity granted to him in the form of marks! Only
when the system starts referring to these marks as “Achievement Marks” will
India produce a regular stream of badminton champions.
I remember the sheer disrespect one had for sports in school. None of my
teachers had ever visited a gymnasium. The PT teacher was someone who
was the lowest in the value chain in terms of qualification, pay as well as
physical stature. He or she was selected more out of PITY, than any
knowledge of PT. The most significant thing they did was to check whether
our white shoes were white or not. One would never want to emulate them.
The reason most people want to look fit today is because they are inspired by
celebrities like Salman and Hrithik. Now try remembering your PT teacher
and see if you ever aspired to be like him.

Why Breaking Window Panes Is Important To Be

A Better Batsman
For years we took pride that Gavaskar could play the straight drive well
because in the bylanes of Girgaum there was no other place he could hit the
ball. Really? Should we be proud of this? If he had adequate access to
infrastructure wouldn’t he have played more strokes and maybe made 20,000
runs instead?
It is not at all easy to play cricket or any other sport especially in a city
like Mumbai where most of us live in apartment complexes the size of
matchboxes or where schools and colleges have play areas the size of play
schools. Some of us found our way to cricket grounds even if they were way
too far away from where we lived but the rest of us tried to create a sporting
venue wherever we were and these included lobbies, drawing rooms,
corridors and adjoining balconies.
 The point was that everyone in India wanted to play cricket and in the
absence of any decent facilities managed do with whatever place we could
find. Looking at the infrastructural situation and the builder lobby, I doubt
whether we will ever produce any sportsmen from the cities anymore. Where
one would see a cricket ground, a builder would see a colony of skyscraper
buildings with super built up area and an FSI of 3. Our vision is also
restricted to not more than 5 yards because of the number of buildings around
us and therefore there is no batsmen coming out from cities like Mumbai
because if you have never seen beyond 5 yards how will you see a ball
coming from 22 yards at 140 kmph?
Unfortunately playing within building compounds is the single reason that
we did not have big hitters for the longest time in the Indian cricket team.
Indian batsmen couldn’t hit freely because if they did, 3 months of their dads’
salary would go in repairing broken window glasses in the vicinity.
Once someone had broken a glass in the building, playing cricket would
automatically stop for around 2 weeks because every kid would be scared of
the sports hating uncle who would come down and create a scene because
invariably it was either his bedroom window or the mirror of his motorcycle
that broke. But yes, every time such an incident occurred, the game suffered.
It was similar to the shradh period after the death of an elder. Once this
period was over things were back to normal.
Unlike Sunny, Sehwag played the way he did because he lived in
Najafgarh and there was no concept of repaying the cost of breaking
anyone’s window glass in the vicinity. If some kid had broken your window,
so be it. That was the law of the land and resulted in Sehwag being fearless
and smashing a ball to midwicket even if it was an outswing delivery meant
to be nicked towards second slip.
Today’s city kids have dumped the play ground for the Playstation and if
the child is truly adventurous and ambitious it would be Bowling or Pool. But
years back when there was limited access to gaming technology there was a
genius who realised that staying away from cricket for an entire 13 days was
like really testing a cricket lover’s patience and this is where he smelt a
business opportunity. To fill this gap of “How to play cricket at home without
breaking anything” at a time that there was no Brian Lara’s Cricket or
Playstations and one wanted to evolve beyond book cricket, he devised a
game aptly called “Table Cricket”.
 What a work of art it was. It had to be the work of a lazy Indian who
didn’t like to run or sweat, but it was truly effective. One of the most amazing
things about this game was the “cloth ground”. The same kids who got
punished at school for wearing un-ironed uniforms, very meticulously ironed
this piece of cloth to ensure a suitable wicket. Unfortunately the maker of the
game had not figured a foolproof mechanism for folding this cricket ground
because most of the time the crease would be in the centre of the pitch due to
which after the game was about 2-month-old, it became a turning wicket,
making batting very difficult. Interestingly, fast bowlers got more turn out of
such pitches than the spinners. After months one could see the ball drifting
away towards 4th slip and that’s the time we knew the game was up. The
marketers were a sharp lot and they never sold the loose cloth grounds
separately, you had to buy the whole set again.
The cricket balls used in table cricket were ball bearings and there was
never a shortage in those days as most kids had cycles and these were easily
sourced from local cycle shops. You could simulate an entire India vs
Pakistan series in Table cricket without worrying about diplomatic issues.
The only problem was that everybody wanted to be India and therefore once
you solved who would play as India, things would go on smoothly. The
fielders were the best because they caught the ball between their legs. So
essentially unlike conventional cricket in those days when a batsmen would
get out if he tried playing lofted strokes, in this format he would get out only
when he played ground strokes. We however never complained about things
like these because we knew there wasn’t a better option.
The best stroke was the 6 which one would hit through the sea-saw like
bowling device which went straight out of the ground. This stroke sometimes
had the potential to end the game as in case the bat got stuck in the pitch, all
the fielders would collapse as if the ground had been hit by an earthquake
that measured 9.8 on the Richter scale.
The superb thing about this game was that one could bowl and bat at the
same time. This was the biggest equaliser in the game of cricket because one
could be happy and sad at the same time.
 19

The Stand-Up Experiences

“Why don’t you imitate me?”

he legendary GR Vishwanath once walked up to me and said this. I

T couldn’t have got a better compliment!
One of the biggest challenges I face as a comedian is to perform in front
of those who are the subject of my material.
This causes anxiety at two levels. One is if they will laugh and the second
is if they don’t like it they will start hating me. This mattered to me a great
deal because for some reason, I wanted cricketers to respect me for my
cricketing knowledge which I believed I had like every Indian. The best
compliment I felt was always when a cricketer discussed the game with me.
So when Brian Lara once asked me what I thought of his off-side play against
Warnie, I knew I had arrived. This was the same feeling I got when Hariharan
and Shankar Mahadevan praised me for my singing abilities. Yes I am
pompous!
Fortunately for me, this generation of cricketers gave me a little respect
because they realised that apart from laughing at the idiosyncrasies of the
cricketing world, I still possessed a good understanding of the game. I have
always believed that a failed cricketer understands the game better as he
knows what hasn’t worked for him.
 One of the lessons you learn as a comic is that everyone loves laughing at
someone else’s expense but not at their own. So if you are cracking jokes
about a certain cricketer in front of other cricketers, they will always laugh. It
took me at least 6-7 years before the fraternity accepted me as someone who
they could be fine with. It’s strange but every cricketer or wannabe cricketer
started his love for cricket by imitating the mannerisms of their icons. I also
realised that cricketers like Bhajji and Irfan themselves are a pretty talented
lot when it comes to mimicking their colleagues. In fact, there have been
times when I’ve picked up a few nuances from them. Surprisingly it was one
of the senior most cricketers, Arjuna Ranatunga, who taught me the peculiar
butt movements of Hashan Tillakaratne and Sanath Jayasuriya.
Sometimes Indian audiences are sensitive when it comes to their heroes
and icons. There have been occasions when members of the audience have
come up to me and told me that they liked my show but I should have not
immitated Tendulkar or Dravid. You have to keep your mouth shut and take
the feedback. I once got scolded by a bunch of South African Indians for
doing a joke on Vajpayee and Kumble. I can understand why this happens.
When one is away from their homeland you associate the positivity of your
home with certain figures and if someone says something about them you get
offended as you have mentally invested in them. I guess it’s pretty similar to
religion and religious figures.
Even corporate organisers of cricketing events are sensitive about their
guest cricketers. An invitation to perform often comes with a list of riders. A
typical brief at such events would be, “I want you to be funny. The audience
should laugh but please don’t touch religion, sex, politicians and most
importantly, no cricketer should be offended.” This is like saying, “I want
you to score a hundred at Lord’s against Mitchell Johnson, but make sure you
do it without your bat and your abdomen guard.” If by any chance, you offer
counter arguments, the organisers will finally plead by saying, “Please don’t
do anything dangerous as I will lose my job.” One cannot but sympathise
with their dilemma.
As a comedian, over the years I’ve come across a bunch of different types
of audiences, some of which I’ve listed below:

I Can Laugh At Anything Or Anyone

 This species is the comedian’s best friend. For them it doesn’t matter what
you say, they just laugh at everything. I am amused by them because either
they live really boring and troubled lives or the part of the brain from where
laughter emanates is too big in size and susceptible to any stimuli. Actually
these are nice people and I love having them around as it does a lot to boost
your ego. The only problem is that their perpetual laughter throws you off in
an event because you’re not sure if it was your premise that was funnier or
your punch line? Sometimes it makes you believe that your joke was good
only to realise in another event that it was not that great.

Who Are You To Make Me Laugh

At the other extreme to the above mentioned species is the most
dangerous audience to have. During an entire 45-minute performance, you
won’t see even a single cell on their face twitch. They come from a school of
thought where showing any form of emotion is seen as a sign of weakness.
For some strange reason they think that if someone makes them laugh or
smile then it’s like accepting defeat in some kind of battle. I feel for their
spouses who must be living terrible lives. For these people everything in life
has to do with victory and defeat. They are extreme victims of middle-class
conditioning where everything was about coming first in class and if you
laughed at a scene from an Amol Palekar film, then you were un-intellectual
and frivolous sort, not fit to be a statesman. Sometimes I feel like tickling
them because I know their arteries are getting clogged on a daily basis
because of their serious lives and if I don’t do anything about it they will
collapse any moment. I have also learnt that clapping and laughing are
inversely proportional to a person’s net worth. Sometimes the more
successful one gets the more egoistic one becomes. These people project that
they are unaffected by lowly comedians and that they will only laugh if
Amitabh Bachchan tickles them personally.

I have also learnt that clapping and laughing are inversely

proportional to a person’s net worth.
North Indians Are The Best
Delhi events are of two types. The first is the dealer audience that is not
interested in any non-adult humour and unless one cracks risqué stuff, no
joke is good enough. They are the aggressive Punjabis who are happy even if
you mention Sunny Leone or Malika Sherawat. When God distributed
testosterone he started from the North of India and as he went down South,
his stock kept decreasing. These audiences are not interested in jokes.
Whether it is global marketing summit or a scientific seminar, their idea of
enjoyment is item numbers. Over the years, whenever I have performed in
Punjab, Delhi or Haryana, I have ensured that I was always slotted
somewhere between item numbers so that the onus on entertaining them was
not fully on me. Many event managers used to hire either an actress or a local
dancer based on their budgets. I remember once a sponsor came to an event
manager and said, “Apne toh kaha that koi TV star actress nachegi, ye kaun
hein?” The event manager immediately without hestitation said, “Sirji yeh
dupahar ke serial mein aati hein, apko kahan time dekhene ka.” The sponsor
was happy because after four drinks it didn’t matter who she was, as long as
she came on TV. But the good part is that if they like what you do you will be
loved like nobody’s business. You will be hugged to death by everyone in the
audience and by chance they decide to invite you for paratha breakfast at
their homes, refusing them is not an option.

I Like You But Can’t Give A Compliment

Over the years of middle-class male conditioning, one has learnt to neither
take nor give any compliments. It is very difficult for most Indian men to say
even a single line of appreciation about anyone else. Telling someone that
they are good gives them an inferiority complex. Unlike North Indians who
express their love overtly, South Indians are very conservative in their social
dealings. There are so many times at events in Chennai where people have
come to me, smiled and moved their head like a pendulum which is a sort of
acknowledgement but nothing more. They will be speechlessly staring at you.
So finally out of embarrassment, I have to ask them, “Did you like the
show?”, and then the words emerge, “Nice, very nice”, to mine and their
relief! Indian males probably have the most unsuccessful marital
relationships only because they have not learnt the art of voicing appreciation
towards their partners. This single act on their checklist would ensure that
they never have any issues with their spouses. I feel this kind of training has
to happen at a school level. Men need to be told that it’s ok to say to your
wife that her tendli sabji has turned out nice. It doesn’t in any way mean that
she is superior and you are weak.
One of the perils of being a comedian is to try and meet people’s
expectations about you. A stand-up comic and a doctor are always working,
wherever they go. I have rarely been fatigued by my stage shows, but the
hour-long audience interactions, post-show kills you. The act is still on
because not only do you still have to constantly make them laugh but also
listen to their jokes. When it comes to cricket everyone has an incident to
share and therefore for the next few hours one has to appreciate stories about
how they saw a particular match with their friends and how India won
because he did not get up from his seat for 8 hours. One of the perils of
consuming alcohol at this time is that the cricketing enthusiasm gets fuelled
into the argumentative Indian where one has to listen to sermons that range
from how Madan Lal didn’t get his due recognition to why Rahul Dravid is
better than Sachin in the second innings of a Test Match. The power of
alcohol is such that I have seen people feeling bad for Mohammed Kaif more
than he did for himself. Such is the level of involvement of cricket fans. This
is the time you know you have to leave the party which is not appreciated by
all as I have not heard their entire 70 years of cricketing analysis. Can you
imagine what cricketers must be going through?
One of the downsides of being a humourist is that after you have seriously
taken it up as a profession, you can’t lead a normal life. You look for humour
and observations everywhere. Even at a funeral you spend more time
observing idiosyncrasies of the people there than mourning. Everything
around you becomes potential material. For me it was a matter of survival as
failure would send me back to the world of Powerpoint and Excel which was
unacceptable.
It took me years to accept the fact that it was ok to pursue this career I had
chosen. Back in my time, it was unheard of for someone with an MBA and a
fairly successful career to leave it all behind and pursue stand-up comedy.
My grandparents still don’t know what I do. It’s a different story that even I
don’t know what I do. I just know that whatever I do is working and because
of that the world of cricket which I wanted to be a part of happened to me. I
sometimes feel guilty that I have not done anything significant to help the
world in the last ten years. Somehow making people laugh doesn’t seem to be
a tangible profession. I feel incomplete when I read stories about IT grads
making life changing applications and my contemporaries running million
dollar corporate companies. Somehow my middle-class mentality doesn’t
allow me to believe that the profession of a comedian adds any value to
society and God will not forgive me for wasting my time on the planet.
For someone who was fortunate enough to get things relatively easily, I
try to give back to society by contributing in whatever way I can to overcome
that guilt. So be it setting up a charity foundation to support youngsters or
helping the underprivileged. Over the years I am proud to say that me and my
friend Sunandan have, with the help of a few cricketers in a small way,
touched the lives of many people. One of the experiences that is etched in my
memory is when Sachin met 50 visually impaired children at a function we
organised. That’s when I realised in the true sense what Sachin meant to
people from all walks of life. The children in the room had no clue why they
had gathered there. Before Sachin got there, their teacher asked me to do any
one imitation. I randomly did a quick Tony Greig imitation and within no
time the entire bunch shouted, “Tony Greig!” I was shocked by the ability of
these 12 year olds to identify Tony Greig within 5 seconds. Their teacher
walked up to me and said, “Vikram their ears and nose are their eyes and they
never forget sounds.” I had tears in my eyes. These kids were just superb.
After a few minutes Sunandan asked the kids, “Cricket ka badshah kaun?”
They all shouted Sachin! “Acha toh apko milne aj Sachin aaya hein”. When
he mentioned this there was a sudden silence in the room and the facial
expressions of the kids were simply priceless. This is the time the teacher
sprayed perfume around the room to signify to the kids that this was a special
moment. The kids suddenly burst out screaming “Sachin, Sachin.” This was
one moment that I’d never forget. Once Sachin took over, the kids listened
patiently. They asked him all sorts of questions and he replied to each one of
them with a touch of humour. I think even he felt liberated in their presence.
It was true love that he was experiencing from the fans who loved him. Then
he individually went and touched every kid’s hands making them all feel very
special. The kids were so inspired by his visit that we later came to know that
they released an audio book on Sachin and now want to start a channel on the
web dedicated to cricket. Cricket has the power to affect people in many
ways.
 I realised that day what genuine love was and what impact it can have on
people. Even when I tell this story to anyone I still get teary eyed. I realised
as an entertainer that these were the kind of events that healed the soul and
made you feel worthwhile. One of the other shows I do regularly was for the
spinal cord injury patients. These are patients who are mostly wheelchair
bound and are either paraplegic or quadriplegic depending on the nature of
the injury they have suffered. When I did it for the first time I almost started
crying on stage looking at 300 injured patients in front of me. I somehow
gathered courage and went on to do one of the most amazing shows ever. I
spent time with each of them and heard their amazing stories of how they
recovered from their troubles. Stories that were truly inspiring…people
climbing mountains on wheelchairs, making art with their legs and many
more. After hearing these I realised that many of us despite having all our
organs in place are far more disabled than they are.
We once visited the Army hospital and centre where jawans who were
injured in insurgency operations were getting treated. A lot of them were on
wheelchairs as they had their legs blown off during demining operations.
They played a game of basketball amongst themselves with Sachin watching
the game. It was the most amazing example of the human spirit I had seen.
When you see that kind of spirit you know that the nation is in safe hands.
Sachin and this world of cricket gave me the opportunity to live the game
that I love, travel the world and be part of stories that maybe would have
been difficult if I had taken up any other profession. I just know that I got
lucky with my timing in life just as in comedy and the next phase of my life
will probably be to touch as many people and make their lives a little better.
But for all that you gave us and Indian cricket…THANK YOU SACHIN.
Published by Harsha Bhatkal
for Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd.
301, Mahalaxmi Chambers
22, Bhulabhai Desai Road
Mumbai 400026
www.popularprakashan.com

© 2014 Vikram Sathaye

First Published 2014

WORLD RIGHTS RESERVED.

The contents are original and copyrighted. No portion of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the written permission of the author and the publisher.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions in this book are solely those of the author.
Popular Prakashan Pvt. Ltd. assumes no responibility for the content.

(4412)
ISBN 978-81-7991-853-1

Cover Design: Karthikeyan Ramachandran

Back Cover Photograph: Tamagna Ghosh
Front Cover Sachin’s Photograph: Suman Chattopadyay

Printed by
Saurabh Printers Pvt. Ltd.,
A-16, Sector-IV,
Noida 201301
 About the Author

Vikram Sathaye has the distinction of being the first English Stand-up
Comedian in India and has performed in more than 1,200 corporate events
across the world over the last 11 years.
An MBA in Marketing from the Symbiosis Institute of Business
Management, Vikram worked for 7 years with companies like MTV and
PMG. While at MTV he had been performing stand-up sketches along with
the MTV VJ’s since 1998. In 2003, he got the opportunity to be part of Extra
Innings on SET MAX as a cricket humourist. On his return he was offered to
perform a sketch at the 2003-2004 CEAT Cricket Awards. Encouraged by the
overwhelming response from the audiences Vikram then launched himself as
a professional stand-up comedian.
His television stints include being a presenter on SET MAX during the
World Cup in 2003 and Champions Trophy 2004, India’s Tour of South
Africa on ESPN Star Sports in 2006 and the ICC World Cup 2011 on IBN
Lokmat.
His stand-up repertoire includes everything from sports, politics, current
affairs, Bollywood, to popular culture and solutions for marital disputes.
As an entrepreneur, Vikram is the Director of a sports and entertainment
company called White Copper Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. He is also one of the
founding member of “Bawraas” - an initiative along with Bollywood
musicians Swanand Kirkire and Shantanu Moitra, to support young
promising Indians who have taken up unconventional careers. Another
interesting activity he is involved in is “Think Cricket” - a platform started
along with leading cricket expert Harsha Bhogle and Anita Bhogle aimed at
senior corporate executives, to discuss all matters cricket.

@vikramsathaye /vikramsathaye
/vikramsathaye www.justvikram.com
 Dedication

To my mom and dad from whom I inherited my humour and cricket gene
 Author’s Note

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be writing a book, so

please don’t judge me on my writing abilities. I would like to emphasize that
many of the references are meant purely in good humour and I do not mean
to hurt sentiments of any individual, community, religion referred to in this
book.
I am just one of those MBA types from the 90s who got lucky and
accidentally became a stand-up comedian and cricket humourist and got to
live the fan boy dream of being up close with the Indian cricket team for
more than a decade.
As an outsider one has always wondered what the cricketers must be
eating, what they were chatting about and one loved to hear their stories all
the time. I never thought one day I would get to hear all of this from the
players themselves and get to explore this wonderful world of cricket from
the inside. What dawned on me in this journey was the fact that international
sport is not only about entertainment but also the best education one can ever
get in one’s life .
I think as one of the few cricket crazy Indians who was granted this wish
of living the cricket dream by the Almighty, it is my duty to share some of
these anecdotes, insights and fun moments that I got to experience with my
fellow cricket lovers. I know how much this sport means to the fans so I do
hope I have done some justice to your expectations and my objectives.
The fact that Ajinkya Rahane calls me “SIR” is the added benefit of living
this dream.
Vikram Sathaye
23rd September 2014
 Acknowledgements

This book represents the sum of the observations and experiences

gathered over a decade as a cricket fan and a humourist travelling with the
Indian team. This would not have been possible without the help and input of
many people.
My love for humour came from my mother and her family and my love
for cricket from my dad. I fondly remember how when I was a child, he used
to make cricket pads for me out of cardboard boxes and ensured I had all the
required material to imitate Zaheer Abbas or Kapil Dev. There has been
endless support from my sister Manasi, brother-in-law Nachiket and my 6-
year-old nephew Dimitri who has now taken over the mantle of being the
humourist in the family. A very chilled out, no pressure family helped
immensely in pursuing a career like mine, especially after being an MBA
type.
I decided to start writing this book about two years ago, fully knowing
that discipline was not my forte. I would like to thank my dear friend and
colleague Suhail Bagdadi who has been instrumental in putting this book
together. Without him there was no chance this book would have seen the
light of day. He ensured the transformation of my disorganised thoughts onto
paper.
One of my closest friends and cricket tour companions is the multi-faceted
journalist Sunandan Lele who I can’t thank enough for teaching me all the
skills required to survive on a cricket tour and how to develop long lasting
relationships with the cricketing fraternity. Thanks to him, I remembered a
few things from past tours which are sprinkled throughout the book.
 Special thanks to another dear friend Amit Varma, who gave me some of
the most valuable inputs on what a good book should be.
My friends Roshan Abbas, Gaurav Kapur, Ankur Tewari, Nilesh Kulkarni
and Sameer Joshi for putting pressure on me to get this book out, as they
knew that if left unsupervised, I wouldn’t even write the first page.
Hemant Kenkre and Sameer Dighe for re-introducing me to the world of
cricket after my MBA. Special thanks to Sunil Phatak for helping me get
through my MBA in the first place. Thank you Ashish Patil, Jiggy George
and the marketing team at MTV for discovering my humour.
A special thanks to Sneha and Parshu for giving me my first TV break on
Sony Extra Innings, the members of the ESPN team who made me a part of
the commentary team in 2006 and to all the 1000 plus event agencies and
corporate clients who trusted me to perform at their events at a time when
English stand-up comedy did not even exist in India.
I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the protagonist Sachin
Tendulkar for not only being the inspiration of this book but also sharing
thoughts on so many aspects of the game. Trust me, every session was a
satsang.
The cricketing fraternity has always been there to answer my silly
questions and share with me, stories and insights on the game. I would like to
thank them for their contribution in no particular order: Rahul Dravid,
Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan,
Muttiah Muralitharan, Dinesh Karthik, Murali Karthik, Ricky Ponting, Brian
Lara, Wasim Akram, Paras Mhambrey, Nilesh Kulkarni, Angad Bedi, Ajit
Tendulkar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Kapil Dev, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Ian Chappell,
Harsha Bhogle, Mandira Bedi, Clayton Murzello, Harini Rana, Devendra
Pandey, Ayaz Memon, Akshay Sawai, Mane kaka, Mohandas Menon, Vinod
Naidu, Amit Bhangar and many other cricketers from across the world,
administrators, support staff and people associated with the game. Kudos to
Karthikeyan Ramachandran for the funky cover design. Thanks to Harsha
Bhatkal, Swapna Shinde and the team at Popular Prakashan for publishing
this book.
Finally, thank you to all my friends, family and well-wishers who were
there with me on this remarkable journey.