Samir Chopra
Elaborate Fictions: Writing an imaginary Test's report
One way to spell fandom is o-b-s-e-s-s-i-o-n; cricket fans might need that done in uppercase
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
One way to spell fandom is o-b-s-e-s-s-i-o-n; cricket fans might need that done in uppercase. It takes many forms, and leads to too many episodes that may only be recounted, later, in a tone of shy embarrassment, in the right company. So, here I am, armed with a confession: I have attempted to write match reports of imaginary Test matches. This is the first such story, of my bid to write a full description of a never-played West Indies-Australia Test staged somewhere in Australia (I do not remember where I staged this encounter; in my mind was specific enough for me, I suppose).
Why did I attempt to write a lengthy report about a sporting event that never took place? Well, like any serious cricket fan, I was susceptible to relentless daydreaming, constantly conjuring up visions of cricketing heroes performing incredible feats on a variety of stages. I made up stories about glorious rescues, backs-to-the-wall salvage operations, and courage in the face of adversity; the stuff of racy, pulpish adventures, instantaneously transmuted into the narrative forms of Test cricket by the powers of a young boy's imagination. And I liked to write.
So the pieces were in place. I would make my fantasies of cricketing heroes concrete by writing fiction about them. I would imagine a Test match, the best ever, and write a report about it. I had the details down; I divided my report into sessions and painstakingly began describing the action. I had as a model, World Cricket Digest's match reports for the 1978-79 Ashes; these described the action at a granularity that did justice to the gradual unfolding of a Test's action, without getting bogged down in ball-by-ball descriptions.
Full postTrue bravery and faux bravery: A little primer
I have not read Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography, and given the current prioritization of my book-buying budget, it is unlikely I will buy a copy
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
I have not read Shoaib Akhtar's autobiography, and given the current prioritization of my book-buying budget, it is extremely unlikely I will buy a copy (I might borrow a friend's copy for a chuckle or two though). I have, however, heard a great deal about this particular literary production, because some passages in it, and the reaction to them, have served to highlight a very common confusion about the notion of courage.
Unless you were a cricket fan denied any access to media over the past week or so, you know that Akhtar allegedly penned a few lines in which he suggested that Sachin Tendulkar might have been, shall we say, a tad apprehensive when facing Akhtar. You would also know that a fit of outraged reactions to these sacrilegious lines has resulted in book-release events being cancelled and considerable ire (to put it mildly) being sent Akhtar's way.
I have read the offending lines and they seem rather mild to me. But let us suppose that Akhtar had written what his most fervent critics imagined him to have written. Let us, that is, imagine Akhtar had written something along the following lines:
Full postMany people think Sachin Tendulkar is the greatest batsman of all time. But I always thought he was a coward. Whenever he faced fast bowling, he was scared; I could see it in his eyes. His legs were shaking, his eyes were wide with fear; he never, ever liked playing fast bowling.
The Tiger of my youth
We all like making XIs. World XIs, Entertainers' XI, Left-Handed Stonewallers' XI, Englishmen Who Disdain The Royalty XI (okay, scratch the last one)
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
We all like making XIs. World XIs, Entertainers' XI, Left-Handed Stonewallers' XI, Englishmen Who Disdain The Royalty XI (okay, scratch the last one). Here is an XI that is among the most important in my cricket 'career': those cricketers whose presence in some dimly perceived consciousness in my childhood became the basis of a romantic affiliation with the game. I heard and read about them before I saw their images, whether electronic or photographic. Some of them I never saw perform live at a stadium. But they have left a deeper imprint than many I have seen perform hundreds of times on television. In this case, the vivacity of a child's imagination far outstrips the not inconsiderable workings of the modern media machine.
It comprises three players from the West Indies (Andy Roberts, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd), one from England (Tony Greig), three from Australia (Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson) and five from India (Sunil Gavaskar, Bishen Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Gundappa Viswanath, and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi).
I have often wondered where I first heard of Pataudi (I never thought of him as Mansur Ali Khan, just Pataudi, or Tiger, or Nawab). Perhaps my uncle was unhappy about his dropping for the 1971 season, and vented in front of a four-year-old; perhaps my father rejoiced at his return for the 1974-75 series against West Indies and let his son know in no uncertain terms that justice had finally been served. No matter. For this Tiger burned bright in my imagination once his legend had taken hold firmly, once and for all.
Full postLong-lost treasures
I managed to carry out my usual quasi-archaeological digs through those old belongings of mine at my brother's residence in Delhi
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
This past June, thanks to the generosity of a soon-to-be-threatened frequent flyers' program, I managed to indulge in the uncommon luxury of making a second trip in a year's time to India. Besides being fortunate enough to travel through Ladakh's spectacular high-altitude lunar landscapes, I managed to carry out my usual quasi-archaeological digs through those old belongings of mine that still take up space at my brother's residence in Delhi.
I came up trumps, netting a tiny catch, part of a much larger collection of cricket books and magazines: old copies of the World Cricket Digest and Sportsweek's World of Cricket, Dennis Lillee's The Art of Fast Bowling, Conrad Hunte's Playing to Win, and Sunil Gavaskar's Sunny Days. I hadn't laid eyes on them for close to 24 years. They had been buried away at the bottom of an old trunk stored in a garage, waiting patiently for retrieval, for their chance to accompany me on a long flight back to New York. Miraculously, they were all in good shape, their pages slightly yellowing but still readable.
And each one of them carried with it memories of the times I had bought and read them, sometimes with hard-earned allowances, sometimes with a generous dispensation sent my way by my long-suffering mother, condemned to watch her young son whiling away his time memorising cricket statistics and scorecards, dreaming of absent lands and cricketers, rather than trying to improve his school exam scores.
Full postFortuitous coincidence: It happened during a Test
ESPNcricinfo's match archive serves many salutary functions by enabling the inspection, in great detail, of every single Test match ever played
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
ESPNcricinfo's match archive serves many salutary functions by enabling the inspection, in great detail, of every single Test match ever played. It settles debates over statistical details, facilitates nostalgia, and makes possible the endless disputes over the possible decline of Test match and player quality over the years.
It does all of these because it functions as an external aid to our memory; we need commit little to the innards of our craniums because the archive is there, a few keystrokes away.
I want to note briefly today its ability to remind me of the precise date on which a particular incident in my life occurred, because, well, it happened on the same day as a dramatic development in a Test match.
In 1981, I left my boarding school in Darjeeling and moved back to Delhi for good. On the last day of school, I left Darjeeling with some friends, traveling by jeep and car, heading for Siliguri to catch the night-time Tinsukia Express. I didn't know it then, but it was the last time I would ever see some of those lads again.
Full postCrucial 'little beginnings'
In an earlier post, I noted how Test matches were up made of passages of play, the sessions, each one requiring a fresh start from the players
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
In a post on The Pitch a little while ago, I noted how Test matches were up made of passages of play, the sessions, each one requiring a fresh start from the players. Within those sessions, of course, lurk other little spells of cricket, often crucial in deciding outcomes: a mini-collapse, a predetermined assault on a bowler that destroys his confidence, a period of defensiveness that allows a bowler to regain confidence, and so on.
Some opening passages of play are well-established as mood-setting tropes: the opening batsmen's encounter with the new ball on the first day, the commencement of the fourth-innings chase, or the second innings response to a large first-innings total.
Among these kinds of openings of an innings is a classic period of play: the little beginning, late in the day, when opening batsmen come out to play out a few overs before shutting up shop again for the day after. At that moment, the batting side has everything to lose, the bowling side has everything to gain (the list of small, but dramatic collapses late in the day, achieved within a few overs, is quite long). The fast bowlers can go flat out, the fielders are keen and haring about, the light is starting to get dodgy. The batting side's fans hang on tight, hoping to make it through unscathed.
Full postThe fair and the unfair: the mystery of the toss
One thing recent and current debates about the future of cricket have done is force its fans to reckon with the game's crucial differences from the rest of the sporting world
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
One thing recent and current debates about the future of cricket have done is force its fans to reckon with the game's crucial differences from the rest of the sporting world. And one way in which that can be done is to inspect a little closely our notions of the ordinary or the excellent in the game. Their differences from traditional sporting standards can be revelatory. Here is one of my personal favourites.
It is accepted wisdom in Test cricket that a good pitch is one that wears with time; that a good cricket encounter will favour pace first, and then spin later; that batting will get progressively more difficult as a game progresses; that batting in the last innings will be the ultimate challenge for a batsman; that fourth-innings targets will always be difficult, and so on. All of these notions roughly add up to the claim that a good cricket match is skewed towards a side batting first and indeed should be so. And yet, how is that advantage - seemingly decisive if the statistics of the game are consulted - to be awarded?
Not on the field of play, not by initiatives seized and lost, but the toss of a coin. A fair one, but a coin nevertheless. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, our notions of cricket quality are tied up with pure chance. Our very understanding of what constitutes a good contest is one in which the contest is tilted, thanks to the fortuitous twists of fate, toward one opponent. None of this is news to a cricket fan and that's perhaps the most astounding thing of all.
Full postA metaphysical hangover: Coping with a heavy loss
England's fans might suffer a hangover, but it is unlikely they will be feeling sorry for India anytime soon
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
After the Battle of Waterloo, as the Duke of Wellington surveyed the carnage on the battlefield, he famously remarked, "The saddest thing after a battle lost is a battle gained" (or words to that effect). Well, I hope England suffer a bit too after their great victory at Edgbaston. Perhaps from what Kingsley Amis termed the metaphysical depression of an acute hangover, perhaps from the empathy they might experience for Indian fans, confronted with the loss of the No.1 ranking, and left licking their wounds after one of the worst thrashings of all time in their Test history.
Well, let's be realistic. England might suffer a hangover, but I doubt they'll be feeling sorry for Indian fans anytime soon. They might perhaps say, "Now you know what we felt like" but that's about it.
I'll be honest. When I was a schoolboy (and a graduate student, and a post-doctoral fellow, and sometimes even after that), I often dreamed of India handing out such comprehensive defeats in Test cricket to Pakistan, England, Australia, our most implacable foes (all away, of course).
Full postTest match sessions: Passages of renewal
The first 2000 Tests have already provided us many, many lessons, all worth imbibing as we head toward a period of great ferment in the world of cricket
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
Many of the excellent articles written to commemorate the occasion of the 2000th Test match have noted the relationship between Test matches and time, and, in particular, the various passages of play that make up the five-day, fifteen-session, thirty-hour block of cricket termed a "Test".
And this is as it should be, for these fifteen distinct segments are what make Test cricket distinctive. Each provides an opportunity for initiatives to be seized and lost, for momentum to shift, for decisive advantages to be gained, and for the Test to undergo yet another slight, or dramatic, transformation in its evolution toward a final conclusion.
It is these minor, or major, transitions that render the Test match a singularity in the world of sport, and they are what make possible the rich storehouse of imaginative possibilities associated with the format.
Full postSpirit of the game, or was Dhoni a sucker?
On the second day at Trent Bridge, Ian Bell was out according to the rules of the game. He forgot them and he paid for it
Samir Chopra
25-Feb-2013
One of the reasons Aristotle is among my favourite philosophers - besides his suggestion that the lowly are not to be disdained in our intellectual study of the world around us - is that he beautifully explicates the notion of the golden mean. This thought is most perspicuously developed in the Nichomachean Ethics, Book 2. A read of that chapter might have been useful at Trent Bridge during the Ian Bell drama for everyone - umpires, cricketers, fans, commentators - especially when it comes to Aristotle's notion of generosity.
In an academic paper on the morality of cricketing practices, my good friend David Coady and I, while discussing the ethics of Mankading, and in particular Courtney Walsh's decision not to Mankad Saleem Jaffar during the 1987 World Cup, wrote:
For Aristotle, generosity, like all the moral virtues, is a mean between two vices, one of deficiency and one of excess. The modern parlance for the vice of excessive generosity is being a sucker. A sucker is not being truly generous, because he gives where there is neither need nor desert.
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