Death of a cricket fan

Circa 1983. A bunch of high school girls sat twiddling their thumbs during the last lesson of their school days. India was in the semi-final of the World Cup. The match must have been underway; so what on earth were they doing in a drab trigonometry class? Although there was no television in those times, they had the radio commentary that was as good as any live telecast, and it would transport them to distant England to view their sports heroes in action in their mind’s eye.

They went nearly hysterical when in the end India took the trophy home, their loud rejoicing making them curious fanatics in the eyes of their classmates. It wasn’t common for girls of their age then to discuss cricket and cricketers. But they cared a fig. The 80s was an extraordinary period of obsession for those girls. It was the time when posters crept up the walls, the names of their heroes were carved on their school and college desks as testimony to their intense love and unstinted support for the men. It was the time when reports of their idols’ off-field liaisons would upset them, when for days on end they lamented a last-ball sixer at Sharjah and cursed the man who had given it away. Cricket to them was a cult that characterised their teenage and the men who played it were sporting warriors singing newly scripted victory anthems. They would scurry to their classmate’s home two compounds away during recess to learn the score, or wait for an equally enthusiastic teacher who had been home for lunch to bring in the latest news.

One among them had cricketers in her family who played in the Ranji Trophy and the fact made her additionally familiar with the nuances of the game. ‘Gully’ and ‘silly point’ were precisely understood field positions, the graceful square drives of Sunil Gavaskar and the fluid flicks off Mohammad Azharuddin’s wrists were shots that were amply admired, and at one point, she could even rattle off a few statistics. She also penned poems in praise of the Prudential men and the Audi man that were published in her school and college magazines. Those were the times, as old men would say.

A lot of muck and moolah have flowed down the cricket grounds since then. From the game that once enthralled and made people fake illness to take a day off, cricket has now become a travesty of uncouth proportions. Like in everything else, money and politics have become intrinsic to cricket, robbing it of the innocent delight it once provided its ardent followers. Heroes have crashed from pedestals to go under the hammer with nauseating price tags. The girl who once loved her heroes for the inimitable sporting joy they gave her doesn’t even care to know who is in the national team now. Her love of the game has wilted with the shady plots and masquerades, and it now lies in a heap, with no hope of being resurrected.

She is disappointed when a 10-year-old she knows pronounces that his dream is to play in the Indian Premier League and buy a BMW with the money he makes from it. Should he make it to that tourney, the money he would earn in a year could buy him half a dozen BMWs but they will have none of the sheen the Audi 100 that a hero of her times drove around in 1985 had. The vestiges of that vicarious thrill lie archived in a poem in some old academic magazine back home. Some day, the girl who once adored the sport will go and look for it, to savour the undiluted cricketing pleasure of that gentlemanly era.

Asha Iyer Kumar is a freelance journalist based in Dubai