Between bat and ball . . .
Syed Badrul Ahsan enjoys a game
The Picador Book of Cricket
Ed. Ramachandra Guha
Picador
Ramachandra Guha gives you here, not the details of cricket matches in history but the personalities who left indelible impressions on the game. You have here a collage of essays straddling various periods of time, articles that throw up images of a bright past. The surprise is that those who may not understand the nuances of the game, indeed may not have demonstrated much attention to it (include this reviewer in that group of the ignorant) will nevertheless end up admiring the write-ups here. Did it ever occur to you that Hanif Mohammad, the original Little Master, went to a madrasa in Pakistan after his family had migrated from India in the aftermath of Partition? Those of us who went to school in the 1960s recall the splendour he brought to cricket with his quiet handling of the bat. Ah, those were the days of Hanif, Mushtaq, Kardar and so many others. Remember the Ceylonese (today's Sri Lankan) named Michael Tissera, whose batting so impressed the girls in Karachi in 1967 that they all crowed in unison, 'Tissera, Tissera, we want a century'?
In this unputdownable work, you will recall the great player that Victor Trumper was until his death on 28 June 1915 at the age of thirty eight. His bier was borne by eleven Australian cricketers to his grave in Sydney. In distant London, caught up in the First World War, news of his demise made headlines. They reported thus: 'Death of a Great Cricketer.' W.J. O'Reilly speaks of the young Don Bradman, while J.H. Singleton celebrates him in his article, 'Brightly Fades the Don.' In this work, there are the forgotten names in cricket as also in cricket journalism that you will happily stumble into. Neville Cardus, C.L.R. James, Ray Robinson, Mathhew Engel share the stands with the likes of Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Ranji, Botham, Sobers and a whole line-up of others. And note that V.S. Naipaul and J.B. Priestley too have something to say about cricket.
Guha happily registers the place of cricket in the soul. As sport and spectacle, he notes, cricket is now 'vastly more important in the erstwhile colonies than in the Mother Country' (which of course is England). He goes on, 'Indeed, an obscure town in the Arabian Gulf, Sharjah, hosts matches viewed by millions more people than would view an Ashes Test at Lord's.'
And that is all the more reason why you must commandeer this work, from wherever.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Editor, Current Affairs, The Daily Star. He also edits Star Books Review.
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