On a few General Cricketing Matters.

1.      According to me the 3 greats of modern cricket are Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, Viv Richards and Imran Khan. They apart from playing the game to the best of their ability, have also left an indelible imprint on the game: they snatched the imagination and aesthetics of the game from the colonizer’s universe to the ghettos of the colonized and not only that, they had taken head-on the machinations of their respective national cricketing power-centers during the peak of their careers without ever caring for their own future [and in doing so changed the course of the game completely in their own countries]. My words are euphemistic to an extent, I agree, but they are true in spirit. When I was growing up I witnessed these tigers prowling on the cricket field [most of the times conjuring great battles in my soul listening to radio commentary – extremely evocative in those days] and feel very strange [almost convulsing] and implicitly life-changing sensations and emotions akin to what I undergo when I read the greatest of the novels. Mr. Gavaskar has had the greatest impact on me. I have rarely idolized anybody except this man. In many critical situations of my life I have asked myself silently: What would Mr. Gavaskar have done in such a situation; how would he have responded to the impending ambiguity that I face? Nowadays I feel sad when I find him, incipiently and tacitly, furthering the interests of the cricket establishment without cautioning the death of the game in the seductive hands of the T20 format. In that sense Imran and Viv have been very vocal; in fact, in India Bishen Singh Bedi has been very vocal too. Imran has traveled to a greater stage; I hope [I more or less believe] there is a part in his soul that genuinely bleeds for the sordid situation Pakistan is in at present and he is not just creating a crescendo to get a slice of the cake in the power corridors of Pakistan. I do not know much what Viv does nowadays. I was delighted to find him expert-commentating on TV during the recently concluded World Cup. He has mellowed, no doubt [collateral damage of being sired], but one can occasionally trace that familiar strain of the ‘King’s’ irreverence in his tone and body language.

2.      I must confess I am a great admirer of Sourav Ganguly, of his batting style as well as his leadership flair. However I believe Greg Chappel’s quotes [based on the extracts I have read in the media] about Sourav to be essentially true. In his struggle to remain captain of the Indian cricket team he jeopardized his own game. He became a prisoner of the ever-powerful-syndrome; I suspect this has something to do with his privileged upbringing. When somebody becomes more anxious to remain the captain instead of improving his own performance and aspires to manipulate the system to achieve so, it speaks equally of the system that generates such individuals as much as it speaks about the individuals. The fact is the sensation of being powerful has defocused many a great in the course of history. Yet there was something in Sourav’s cricketing personality and style of playing the game which had lent a very appealing, attractive, edgy and restless quality - very similar what a rock-star does to a song. He had the natural flair of leading greater players than him, he could bring out the best in the minions, and his instincts on the sinusoidal course of a game were brilliant.

Most Recent Observations

1. Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam by commenting on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has clarified where he belongs. It is perverse to note that while supporting the Nuclear Power Plant he does not put forth any scientific argument of credibility or merit and in fact, he has dished out a grand rehabilitation package thereby creating more room for attendant businesses. He makes a show off of this package and justifies the Plant, retrospectively, in the light of this package. He does not address the fundamental questions relating to long-term emission / radiation hazards and dumping of nuclear waste [among many], especially, the fears and anxieties arising out of and in the backdrop of the Fukushima incident and a few significant European companies exiting this business. The resistance of the local people and the environmental activists has been traced to the ‘foreign hand’ – that is what he alleges. But my view in this case is: the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is the ‘foreign hand’; he does not represent the concerns of the people of Kudankulam; he is the high profile representative [comprador] of big corporations.

2. The mainstream media in India does not update us on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Is this a deliberate move? One will doubt considering the space and airtime it gives to the Team Anna and Mr. Advani’s bogus yatra. Well one can argue its [Occupy Wall Street’s] relevance to India. I think ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in more ways than one is critically significant because of its nature: it is a political movement at its core without an aspirational and conventional political leadership – it is trying to hit at the classical motive of all big corporations in the world, which is, unhindered moneymaking by subjugating the natural resources comprehensively to its whims and fancy, by converting political systems all across the globe to its business development and marketing teams thereby ruining the planet in the short term – unrelenting economic recession and food crisis – and in the long term – ecological devastation and climate change. If the mainstream media in India can cover endlessly [at times exceedingly and using jingoistic jargon] skirmishes / infiltrations on the Indo-Pak, Indo-Chinese and Indo-Bangladesh borders [without for a moment understanding the underlying economic, territorial and long pending political disputes] why cannot it cover this movement round-the-clock and from all across the globe? Because the media [mostly] beyond a point does not want to paint a destructive image of big corporations [of which it is a part]; it plays out either its developmental image in the times of good business or its victimhood in the times of recession. The media covers the cotton theme in the Lakme Fashion Week with aplomb, but fails to tell us the story of suicide-deaths of cotton weavers with equal intensity. Will ‘Occupy Wall Street’ be a winning movement? The answer is simple – of course, not. My answer is – human greed is all pervasive and million-times more cunning than melodramatic.

3. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shamelessly [without any visible shade of remorse] reacted to the surging food inflation. He says – food prices are increasing because there is an unprecedented rise in demand; which means, we are eating more because we can afford to eat more. This is far from true. It is an insult to the people when its leader endorses falsehood thereby erasing all hopes of economic corrections that could be made in the future to ease the burden of the people.

4. Ms. Mamata Banerjee is a specialist of somersaults, this time she did it in the name of withdrawing her support from the UPA Government at the Centre on the issue of rise in petrol prices. She is bargaining a special economic package for the state of West Bengal; the idea is noble. The package in one form or the other is on its way. But West Bengal should not rejoice which despite, all the mandatory caveats and cautions, it will. A sizeable section of the money will be siphoned out in the due process of executing capital projects to make TMC guys among the wealthiest politicians in the country [well, owner’s pride neighbour’s envy!]. Once the Left is out after 34 years what has come to light in its entirety is the holistic extent to which the Left had depraved West Bengal in this time-span – especially, in the health and education sectors. However, TMC’s response to the recent child deaths and only concentrating on the Presidency College / University to make it a clone of the Oxford University is terribly depressing to say the least.