Cricket and the Clash of Cymbals

Ms. Gucci arrived, flashing her gold trophy -- a thick Cartier bracelet. Loud ‘whoas’ and ‘shiiiiit mans’ rent the air. But we could not feel the air. We were seated in the member’s enclosure, the one sealed with glass on three sides, at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. The talk among our august group, and I am sure of those in the private little cubicles flanking us, was about office, the party in the evening or the latest gossip about the other Ms. Gucci and Mr. Hugo Boss. Yet, when the umpire flayed his hands about indicating a boundary, these cats would meow a little prayer and figurines and taweezes would appear from nowhere to make life easier for Indians. I had stepped outside for a feel of the real action and there was more lust here than that room with a view could ever manage. Our ‘boys’ were the toy boys AND totems not because they were necessarily better than whoever they were playing against, but because every bead of sweat, open mouth and heartbeat was paying obeisance to them.

If you think that cricket is all about a bunch of men flourishing a phallic symbol and toying with a ball, then you are mistaken. It is serious business, even a clash of civilisations, I am told. The way we looked at the Hanse Cronje and Kapil Dev crying episodes underlines this glaring difference. One did it in the best Judeo-Christian tradition of a Confession, appealing before the priesthood (cricket’s hall of fame) and the other wept unashamedly before a live television audience, the Krishna tugging at every Yashodha Ma’s heartstrings.

Therefore, Sachin can do no wrong. Not because he is always right, but in a land where cricket is religion, he is the Lord Rama. The point is not about whether he can clean the ball without the umpire’s permission or whether he tampered with it. Days after the controversy has died down, we will still remember the injustice that was meted out to our Maryada Purshottam.

And this is where I find the divide between India and Pakistan. Imran Khan confesses to ball-tampering and not only do his countrymen forgive him, he is even feted for his honesty. But we refuse to ‘believe’ that anything can go wrong with our good fella.

Which is why we should use the uniform racist accusation judiciously. It is as pathetic of us to try and give it back to the Whites at their own game as it is for them to find flaws in us playing their game. The latter clearly reveals their insecurity. But why do we have to excel on their turf? Are we not then succumbing to their diktats? This thing that has come to be coined the ‘Lagaan factor’ makes no sense to me. The film was seen as a brilliant metaphor for fighting the colonialists with their own whip. But it was done with the assistance (or rather connivance) of an Englishwoman – the subtle insinuation being that a bunch of villagers who can flash their biceps need a female/civilising touch to ‘masculinise’ them.

All rules were pushed aside to make room for the need of the hour, which on the surface was exemption of taxes, but at a deeper level spoke about the izzat of the village, the community and the country, and the best way to ensure it was not just playing the game, but praying. All the clichés, including that of religious harmony, were used, and the players invoked the name of their respective gods before doing their jobs. So, while the ‘Lagaan’ team may have stood up against the might of the British Empire in its own humble way, it took away our ability to rise in indigenous games. We overthrew British rule but became colonised in certain areas. And, strangely, the divide-and-rule policy persists because Indo-Pak matches are veritable battles fought with nothing less than religious fervour.

When the maps were drawn for an independent nation, the cartographer, Cyril Radcliffe, who spent just five weeks in India, wrote to his stepson about how the Union Jack would be brought down to be replaced with something that “has a spinning wheel or a spider’s web in the middle…there will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will begin looking for me. I do not want them to find me. I have worked and travelled and sweated – oh I have sweated the whole time.”

And we are feeling so sorry for the poor dears that the internalised guilt of 150 years now manifests itself as shameless sucking up. We have won paper freedom, but continue to wallow in intellectual slavery. Even our attempts at assertion look for Western approval. From curry to Kargil, we need their goodwill. One can learn from them, but there is the danger of a snobbery that makes everybody less obliged appear like ordinary masses. A Tagore or Gandhi or a Nehru used the West but not as judiciously as we think. Nehru felt the need to change India’s “outlook and appearance and give her the garb of modernity”.

It would be a worthy enough way of looking at issues, but the mores have altered considerably. Today, an Indian at the helm of a multinational firm, who gets transferred to the head office in America, is elevated to demi-god status and his wife becomes a society goddess, posing for the newspapers before that great colonial relic – the Gateway of India. Westerners from music channels are treated like high-level ambassadors of their countries, when what they are really doing is looking for local chicks who are ready to slip every time a drop of drool falls near their glass slippers. Is a certificate from the ‘developed’ world all we need?

No wonder the West has always worked on us in the best ‘taming of the shrew’ tradition. A lot has been written about how our wagging and shouting on the field are different from theirs. Unfortunately, this has spilled over into our ethos and we our using the same yardsticks with our own version of apartheid. It is there in Sri Lankan cricket, it is there in Pakistani cricket and it is evident in Indian cricket, where regional biases prevail, as does the high-caste attitude. And while in the early days an Eknath Solkar (a gardener’s son) could get away with a little pity, in the days of commercialism someone like Vinod Kambli has the stakes heavily against him. Our very own Eklavya, upto a point.

He came from what is referred to as the backward class, lived in a chawl with his parents and six siblings, studied upto matriculation, and became a prodigy on the field. He scored almost 800 runs in his first seven tests. He was clearly on the make. His double century came much before Sachin Tendulkar’s, but the latter is the respectable face of Indian cricket. Kambli is the eternal rebel, seemingly with no roots and therefore no possibility of flowering into anything of consequence. I have brought him into the discussion simply because I know that had this Mike Denness incident happened in his case, there would not have been such a hue-and-cry.

A lot has been said about the Sachin-Vinod friendship; many have even attributed Kambli’s inclusion in matches due to this factor. It is commendable that they can share such a relationship at all in a cut-throat world. But while Sachin will be seen as a magnanimous gentleman and a loyal friend, Kambli will have to live under this shadow of generosity.

He and Javed Miandad (in his time) are like clowns in the circus. They know that people are there to watch the acrobats and the animals display their skills, while their job is to be funny and flamboyant. This often makes them social and professional outcasts. Taking risks has, therefore, become a ‘nothing to lose’ gamble.

Tendulkar stands for stability; we can rely on him and show him off. Kambli is the boy who needs to be given a chance; he is our lottery ticket. We can also feel superior for encouraging a wayward person get back on the right track. He is cricket’s own combination of tragedy king and jerk. He is the Indian psyche, a sort of street urchin playing in the rain and dreaming of making it big. With the help of the local imperialists within our own fold. Some of who have learned their lessons well. Sunil Khilnani, in ‘The Idea of India’, observed, “Even in their most intimate self-perceptions, Indians over the past century have come to see themselves in mirrors created by the inquisitive energies of the West.”

Like religion, imperialism's appeal, if it can be called so, lay in it being imposed. However, like all faiths, its identity got more leverage with expansion. Those who were nobodies back home appeared in the guise of prophets and seers in the East. The imperialists were convinced that since God had made them the superior race it was their business to work for the welfare of those inferior to them. So, when they come to our humble lands to play, covering themselves with sunscreen lotion and looking like bleached monkeys, they are looking for divine justice and they get it by shouting foul against our boys getting unduly emotional. We are the tribal societies with animalistic passions.

Which is why we can never be them, even if we try. Nasser Hussain, the English captain, may be proud of leading his team, but the undercurrent is: “It is my father’s greatest ambition to see me lead England in the country of his birth.” Again, the note of giving it back to those ones. And those ones may well respect him but there are several people who beneath the garb of broadmindedness are as likely to quip, as George Orwell did: “I am struck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part, I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny... With another part, I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts.”

Howzatt??