Doing it for the country

I have been overwhelmed this week by a deep feeling of inadequacy in appreciating the real value of what Lala Amarnath meant to Indian cricket. I know the usual stories; the century at the Bombay Gymkhana, the return from England in 1936 and his exploits in Australia in 1948; his colourful personality and his legendary ability to call a spade a spade. But not too much more.

Jimmy Amarnath told me some wonderful stories about his father when we were working on his book ten years ago. In those stories, Lalaji was the father; stern and yet loving, strict and yet soft, shrewd and yet tender. It was a fascinating portrait but it was a story told with love and awe. It was more the father than the cricketer and so, at the end I was no closer to understanding what his personality and skill meant to Indian cricket in those evolving times.

On Lalaji’s death, K N Prabhu wrote a piece that was illuminating and I was fascinated that Vijay Hazare, at 85 and himself sick, chose to say “my captain is gone.” Hazare is a legend himself but if in the one sentence he spoke he chose to remember the captain in Lalaji, that tells you what a personality he must have been. What a pity then that Jimmy chose not to publish his book for those anecdotes lie now on yellowing paper.

But this set me thinking about the intellectual content of our cricket, so completely enamoured as it is by the present, indeed by the immediate. To drop out of the playing eleven is a shattering descent and to retire is virtually to be consigned out of the memory. In such an atmosphere, it should come as no surprise that the young men who play for India today don’t quite feel part of a legacy.

A legacy is not much use in the seconds before Wasim Akram or Glenn McGrath come running up to bowl to you but in the build-up to it, in the pride that it bestows, it is invaluable. But we have forgotten the ability to take pride in the achievements of those that came before; partly because of the nature of the times, partly out of complete ignorance but largely because we choose not to know. I saw that a few months ago when the BCCI invited the Indian team to attend a function in honour of Polly Umrigar. Of those still playing, only one turned up. It was a beautiful evening but it was lost on a generation and I asked myself softly, in keeping with the emotion of the evening, whether it would even cross the mind of a young man pulling on an India cap that he was now part of a club that included legends like Polly Umrigar.

But who is to talk to our young men that playing for India is as much a question of pride as it is one of match fees. The income is important, critical, but the pride has to be an inherent aspect of playing for India. I am sure it exists. Rahul Dravid once took issue with me on that and I was delighted that someone cared, but it needs to come up front a lot more. It needs to glisten on the chest. But someone needs to tell them that and I wonder sometimes if that is possible at all. I may not have thought that way if I hadn’t read the vision statement the BCCI put out - - pathetic statement with an alarming poverty of thought in it.

Sadly, around the same time as the vision statement became public ( I actually think it might have helped Indian cricket if it hadn’t, for it wouldn’t then have eroded a little more from that last morsel of hope ) I read of how Steve Waugh spent an hour and a half with the Australian hockey team talking to them about the importance of wearing the baggy green cap. I could have cried. Inside me, I probably did. What is it about our system that prevents fresh new thoughts from coming in? Is 98 crores in fixed deposits all that we want to do?

Sadly, if Indian cricket needs to grow intellectually, then it has to come from outside the present structure. The initiative can only come from a coach and a captain and one of them at the moment has the law rather than a legacy to occupy his mind. Does Sourav Ganguly have it in him to create a movement to instill pride in playing for India, indeed in being Indian itself?

I chose to play the romantic as I thought about it. Ah, romance - - that impossible state of mind that seems to engage those that often need it the least ! If I wanted my team to feel the pride of representing a nation, who would I invite to talk to them? My selection might betray my generation but these are proud men and to me they represent the spirit of what India can achieve. I would send a personal hand-written invitation to Field Marshal Maneckshaw and ask him to tell my team what he felt when the Prime Minister of the country asked him to go and do it for India. There is something about the man. We get to see him so rarely on television but whenever I do, I am transfixed.

And I would call a young commander in the Indian army and a young fighter pilot to tell us of why they choose to do what they do for their country. Is it the income or is it the pride? Thoughts like these do not win matches but they ensure that a team might lose through inadequacy but never through not trying enough. I would speak to Azim Premji and to Leander Paes and I would cajole Tiger Pataudi to make the journey and spend a day with the team. There is a feeling that he is too laidback, too aristocratic and that he doesn’t really care too much anymore. Dispel those thoughts for another like him never led India. Bishan Bedi speaks of how the team acquired an Indianness under him and that is something we could really do with at the moment.

This legacy is critical and so is the pride for Indian cricket is hurt and wounded; more than at any time in its history. India’s supporters, our strongest asset, are leaving us and we are letting them go. We are closing our eyes, we are producing meaningless vision statements and we are letting our legacy flow away. Our community is growing thinner and yet we cling on to our fixed deposits. In a certain mindset, that is a prime legacy to bequeath. It is a very poor culture that thinks that way.

So let us drum up a new beat, let’s open the minds of our young cricketers, let us make them aware of what they represent. Lala Amarnath is dead but Mushtaq Ali is alive; Vijay Hazare is ill but Polly Umrigar is fit and strong; so are Tiger Pataudi, Bishan Bedi and Sunil Gavaskar. K.N.Prabhu still writes with flair and feeling and younger historians like Ramchandra Guha can still bring our history alive. A Kaif and a Kartik need to know that they are the descendants of Manjrekar and Mankad.

Ummm, pride. Now if only we could put a bit of that into the administration of our cricket. Is there the equivalent of a Rahul Dravid to debate that issue on their behalf? If there is one in the BCCI, I hope he wasn’t part of the team that wrote the vision statement !

Harsha Bhogle

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