Millennium's cricketer

I PRESIDED over a panel of four members set up by The Outlook to name 20 men and women who had made an impact on the Indian scene during the current millennium. After much argument, we agreed that two men from the world of sport should be included: Hockey player Dhyan Chand and cricketer Kapil Dev. No other names were suggested for hockey but names of Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar were discussed before we agreed that Kapil Dev was a better all-rounder, had longer innings and had led the Indian eleven to victory during World Cup 1983. Without telling him of The Outlook deliberations, Sadia Dehlavi invited him to be interviewed by me for Talk Back on Doordarshan. A few days earlier he had been selected as the coach for the Indian team. He was delighted to be back on the cricket field which he had been forced to quit in 1994 due to a knee injury. Since then he had taken to golf and in a few years attained a handicap of three which put him in the ranks of top golfers.

I did not know anything of Kapil Dev’s background nor if his aptitude for sports ran in the family. He told me that the family farmed land in a village near Montgomery (New Sahiwal) in present-day Pakistan and are Nikhanj Khatris. On Partition, they migrated to India and later made their home in Chandigarh where they set up business as timber contractors. Kapil was born in Chandigarh and educated in the local DAV school and college where besides cricket, he played hockey and football. In the census held during the rising tide of Sikh demand for recognition of a Punjabi-speaking state, many Punjabi Hindus declared Hindi as their mother tongue. Kapil’s family was among them. So when he had to choose between playing for Punjab or Haryana, he opted for the Hindi-speaking Haryana rather than the Punjabi-speaking Punjab. Kapil vociferously asserts he is a Haryanvi but in fact he is a Punjabi-speaking Punjabi who has acquired a smattering Haryanvi dialect and plays for Haryana.

Kapil shot into fame in the cricket world when he was barely 21 and dominated the Indian scene for the next 15 years once he made it to the Test team, he did not miss a single Test match: he played in a total of 131. In these matches, he took 434 wickets and scored 5,248 runs at an average of 31.05 and won acclaim as the world’s best all-rounder. He made 175 runs against Zimbabwe in 1983 and brought India the World Cup.

There is big money in cricket and Kapil Dev has a fair share of it. He was probably the first to exploit its commercial potential in advertising and commenting on matches for the papers, radio and television. I asked him if it was true that he was a crore-pati. He dodged my question by answering "I am a pati — a husband — but don’t know about the crores". Figures of what cricketers get for Test matchs vary from Rs 15,000 per day to a few lakhs. Since One-Day Internationals came into vogue and T.V. channels made bids to acquire television rights, cricket has become a multimillion dollar business. T.V. Test matches take priority over news, films, politics, songs and dances. Cricketers demand huge fees to advertise cosmetics, hair oils, soups, credit cards, soft drinks, hard drinks, cars, cycles, motor cycles, tyres — you name the merchandise and you can get an ace batsman or bowler to recommend it for a fat fee, higher than that asked for by film stars.

Money has given cricket a bad name. It is no longer the privilege of the gentleman. Match-fixing has further lowered its prestige. The most maligned were Pakistan’s Salim Malik and Wasim Akram. Names of Waugh and Warne of Australia, Morrison of New Zealand have been mentioned. So also of some Indians by Manoj Prabhakar who alleged that bribes up to Rs 25 lakh were offered to individual cricketers to play below par. We never get to know ther truth behind allegations of matches being fixed in advance but when a highly-rated Pakistani side goes down to the lowly-rated Bangladesh team, cricket enthusiasts began to smell a rat. It takes the joy out of matches in which India beats Pakistan. By coincidence all the names of people who are named as bookies happen to be Indian.

How will Kapil Dev stem the rot that has set in? His assignment as a coach will be largely restricted to keeping the team in good physical condition. He has already spoken out against participating in too many matches. As one who knows all the finer points of the game, he will be able to detect the cricketers who are deliberately playing below par and persuade the selectors to drop them from the team.

"How much discipline will you be able to impose on the players?" I asked him. "If you see one drinking liquor at a bar one evening before a match, will you take the glass out of his hand and tell him to go to bed early?" He replied, "That may not be necessary. If he is taking a glass of beer to relax, I will say nothing. If he continues to drink, I will tell him gently that that will affect his performance the next day."

I asked him why India-Pakistan matches assumed dimensions of a war: Jehad on the one side, Dharmyudh on the other. He laughed and replied, "When a family splits up, brothers become enemies."

Another question which brought a broad smile on his face was Bishen Singh Bedi’s charge against Pakistan discriminating against Indians. "When Pakistanis came to play in India, our girls visit them in their hotel rooms on the pretext of getting their autographs. When we go to Pakistan, Pakistani girls come looking for us but their police shoos them away," he had told me. Kapil replied: "You are right. New cricket players have become idols like film stars and are as much sought after as they are."

Service in the name of the Lord

You can be sure I won’t serve any aces. Nor will I serve double faults. I am just going to put in my Ye Bhagwan (Oh Lord!) serve, I said. We all knew that a Ye Bhagwan serve was — a safe spin serve well over the tape into the backhand. And you followed it to the net leaving the rest to God!

Love chase

Soon enough, Arkinstall and I were good friends and doubles partners and spent a lot of time together away from the courts too. Arkinstall had a good sense of humour and I found it easy to unwind in his company. Once, when I asked him what I had to do to improve my tennis, Arkinstall, poker-faced, replied" "Krish, you have to start chasing girls to be able to run faster on the court!!

(Ramanathan Krishnan in A Touch of Tennis — Penguin)

Chinese wisdom

1. Men who run in front of car get tyred.

2. Men who run behind car get exhausted.

3. Men with one chopstick go hungry.

4. War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who’s left.

5. Men who drive like hell, are bound to get there!

6. Men who jump from tall buildings, jump to conclusion.

(Contributed by Amir Tuteja, Washington)