Samir Chopra
Why statistics don't fascinate me anymore
Even though today's batting and bowling records are more unbreakable than they have ever been, the corresponding feeling of awe is missing
Samir Chopra
15-Aug-2013
Here are some numbers: 8032, 309, 29, 114. They should be familiar, even though they have lost their currency. For a generation of cricket fans, these represented peaks of cricketing achievement, almost impossibly inaccessible; now, they have fallen by the wayside, trampled by a rush of dazzling statistics that have made them yesterday's news.
Twenty-two batsmen have scored more runs than Garry Sobers; ten batsmen have scored more centuries than Don Bradman; 24 bowlers have taken more wickets than Lance Gibbs; 30 Test cricketers have played more Tests than Colin Cowdrey.
The awe-inspiring career aggregate records of those who top cricket's premier lists now - Sachin Tendulkar's career runs, centuries, and Tests, and Muralitharan's career wicket aggregates - are, for a variety of reasons, almost certainly guaranteed to be unbreakable for all time.
Full postWhen heroes fall
Why do once-great players insist on tarnishing our image of them by going into the commentary box?
Samir Chopra
31-Jul-2013
In the summer of 1979, I fell in love with David Gower. It must have been love; what else would explain the trembling anticipation of a glimpse of his seemingly perpetually sunny countenance, his lissome strokeplay, and his electric fielding? What else could ground the sick fear I felt that he would be dismissed all too prematurely, that a crude umpiring mistake would brutally smear the canvas of his artistry? Did it matter that he was "the enemy"? I was ready to betray all - friends, family and country - for this man.
Nowadays I still see Gower on occasion. He has aged, rather gracefully. I've finally become familiar with his cultured, private-school intonations. (Back in the summer of 1979, I could only impute dulcet tones to his imagined voice.) He commentates, analyses and ruminates; on television. He asks questions, follows-up (not on), and offers expert opinion. Gower is now a member of the media, of that contingent of ex-cricketers who make a living by talking about cricket.
I don't think I love him anymore. I don't dislike him either, but there is no mystique about him. Gower has become mundane, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, just another groomed, suited, well-rehearsed frontman. He does his job competently, and that's about it. From hero to humdrum in the course of a few easy steps.
Full postThe best cricket periodical ever
From 1978 to 1983, the World Cricket Digest, published out of Sydney, offered fans of cricket and cricket writing an invaluable service
Samir Chopra
25-Jul-2013
Two years ago, I made a short trip to India to sample the pleasures of hiking in the Ladakh Himalayas. Besides subjecting myself to the lung-bursting exertions of climbing high-altitude passes, I found time, on my return to Delhi's steaming cauldron, to dig through boxes of my old possessions, stashed away in my brother's garage. And while rummaging through those reminders of a life left behind, I stumbled on a true treasure: one of my four copies of the "best damn cricket periodical ever" - the World Cricket Digest. (I am not alone in this appreciation of the Digest; Gideon Haigh agreed with this assessment during a conversation in Melbourne a few years ago.)
The World Cricket Digest was published as a quarterly (out of Sydney) from the summer of 1978 onwards. It was edited by Jack Egan (an author and long-time ABC employee and producer of cricket documentaries, including one on Bradman); its editorial included David Moeller, Brian Bavin and Peter MacKinnon. It temporarily ceased publication while the hubbub surrounding World Series Cricket swamped Australian cricket and seemingly made any kind of normal cricketing business impossible. It then resumed publication in November 1982, and finally, sadly, came to a grinding halt in October 1983. Its issues now survive as collectors' items on ebay and other internet used-books stores.
In that brief period, it ensured for itself a standing not likely to be equalled by any other compendium of cricket writing and images. Every single issue of the World Cricket Digest featured a top-class collection of cricket writing, some original, some reproduced from elsewhere, which struck a fine balance between match reports of current series, historical recollections and analyses of the game, commentary on changes in the world of cricket, and some of the most stunning cricket photographs ever.
Full postWhen Mushtaq's Pakistan nearly matched the mighty Windies
As Pakistan and West Indies played out a classic series in 1976-77, a schoolboy in India tracked the scores
Samir Chopra
18-Jul-2013
In a couple of previous posts here, I described tours of India by teams depleted by Kerry Packer's World Series: Alvin Kallicharran's West Indies and Kim Hughes' Australians. Today's post is about a series that took place in the same period, but it does not involve India.
I did not have access to radio commentary or television broadcasts for Pakistan's 1976-77 tour of the West Indies and could only follow scores via my newspaper's sports pages. And even those came late; because of the time differences involved, Indian newspapers only carried the tea-time scores from the previous day. The next day's newspaper would then carry the updated score along with the next (partial) score.
To date, I have not seen any live action from this series, and am not sure if it was even telecast. I had to satisfy myself with the few photographs and match reports that were published in Indian sports magazines. And yet, somehow, because I followed the series so obsessively, tracking every score update, the events seem especially vivid. To this day.
Full postBlood and guts
Watching people sustain impact injuries on a cricket field can be a haunting experience
Samir Chopra
09-Jul-2013
Like most long-term cricket fans, I've seen many injuries on television: the full-blooded bouncer-blow to the head, the smash-mouth ball to the face, the cut lip, the broken fingers, the broken toe, the shower of teeth, the bruised thighs. The list goes on.
The glorious game is also the gory game. And like many folks who have watched the game up and close and even played it a little, the cricket injuries I've witnessed in person were even worse, the stuff of nightmares, ensuring a set of resilient images always stalked me whenever I was on or close to a cricket field, whether as player or spectator.
The first serious cricketing injury I witnessed in person was in middle school. I was in the seventh grade, and had sauntered over close to my school's cricket field, where, rumour had it, the school cricket team was practising. This was a chance to see the big boys in action. The action was all it promised to be: burly fast bowlers bustled in to bowl thunderbolts; wily spinners tweaked and twirled; and impossibly stylish batsmen stroked and defended with panache. The nets the team was practising in seemed to hold all this tremendously dynamic display of cricketing skill in a tight enclosure. Till disaster struck.
Full postThe grand online cricket library
We're privileged to be living at a time when there is such a wealth of cricket writing online
Samir Chopra
02-Jul-2013
In my last post, I wrote of a kind of closure achieved on my return to India on reconnecting with the precious cricket magazines I had not had access to in the US. The gratifying nature of that journey back to the familiar found its roots in a very particular denial I had experienced in my first extended stint away from a land that played host to cricket and its players. Among the elements of that deprivation was the lack of access to a library with cricket books on its shelves.
Libraries in the US do, of course, carry books on cricket. But those libraries are rare and the books rarer still. Indeed, even to this day, even in the immigrant enclaves where one might expect to find a cricket magazine or two tucked away between the glossies that detail the latest escapades of Bollywood starlets, cricket books retain the status of the snow leopard: rarely sighted.
Matters were different back "home". There, I had possessed access to reasonably good collections of cricket books in a diverse assemblage of libraries: those at school, college, and larger ones open for membership to the general populace. Among these bibliotheques, two stood out: the British Council library, housed in the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society building in Lutyens' Delhi, and the library run by a boarding school that I attended for my ninth and tenth grades.
Full postReturning home to the cricket magazine
Coming back to India from the USA was incomplete without a visit to the local news stand
Samir Chopra
18-Jun-2013
In December 1989, I returned to India after two and a half years spent in the US; it would be my first vacation at "home" after commencing graduate school. Irritatingly enough, my flight to Delhi was unable to land thanks to the city's perennially obnoxious winter pea-soupers, and was diverted to Bombay. After a long break for refuelling and breakfast, we took off again and landed in Delhi, eight hours after the scheduled arrival.
My family met me at the arrivals gate and drove me to my grandmother's home for my first home-cooked meal - parathas included - in what seemed like, and had been, a very long time. Later, feeling the urge to really let the desi in me hang all out, I strolled over to a local paan shop, stuffed my mouth with one of its betel-infused offerings, lit up a Gold Flake Kings off the smouldering bit of rope the paanwallah had strung up outside his stall, and contentedly puffed away. I was back "home".
But not quite. For one thing, I wasn't in my old 'hood just yet. That would come later in the evening when my mother, brother and I drove back across over the great East of Kailash-Greater Kailash divide, back to my mother's then current residence, right next to the local market that had been my favoured haunt in my rather indolent college days.
Full postPatrick Eagar: cricket's visual poet
For fans who grew up before cricket was available ubiquitously through television, the photographer's work holds special meaning
Samir Chopra
11-Jun-2013
Adulthood is accurately described as that period of your life when you find out most of your dreams will not come true: you will not find the perfect partner, the perfect job, or the secret to everlasting happiness. It's when most people will find out that their life is pretty humdrum and ordinary, marked by the absence of anything truly exceptional. (Old age is when you reconcile yourself to these disappointments.)
Notice I said "most" and not "all", for adult life is also that period when we discover, much to our unbridled glee, if our attitude is right, that we have lived through some experiences that in our childhood would have seemed like unrestrained fantasies.
I write these words because a few years ago, thanks to the marvels of the internet and the used-books clearing houses that may be found on it, I now own eight book-sized collections of Patrick Eagar's work, each bursting to the seams with gorgeous black-and-white and colour photographs, each picture capturing in Eagar's trademark style, a moment of cricketing excellence, wretchedness, despair, or triumph. (The books cover the 1981, 1982-83, 1985, 1989 and 2005 Ashes; the 1982 and 1988 English summers, with India and Pakistan and West Indies as tourists; one is devoted to Ian Botham.)
Full postRemembering Kallicharran's West Indies
A depleted West Indies lost the series in India in 1978-79 but went home with their heads held high
Samir Chopra
06-Jun-2013
The Packer years saw two depleted sides tour India: the Australians led by Kim Hughes, in the 1979-80 season, and West Indians, led by Alvin Kallicharran, the previous year.
Like most Indian fans that winter, I was disappointed to read the West Indian line-up. I did not recognise most of the names in Kallicharran's party. The captain, Vanburn Holder, and Raphick Jumadeen were certainly familiar enough, but who were Norbert Phillip, David Murray, Sylvester Clarke, Malcolm Marshall, Larry Gomes et al? There was a Greenidge in there too, but he wasn't the right one. Still, Tests were Tests, and paying attention to Test cricket in the winter was the only sensible thing to do. There were no live telecasts that year, except from Delhi, so radio commentary would have to do.
The West Indians set the template for the Australians, who would follow a year later. Like them the West Indians proved to be no pushovers; they lost 0-1 in a six-Test series, one admittedly affected by poor weather and the usual slow Indian pitches (and in one case, in Bangalore, political unrest!). Interestingly enough, the only result of the series came at the fastest pitch in India then, at Chepauk.
Full postWhat I despise most about fixing
That it distracts me from the real thing and tells me that I am wasting my time, that I'd do better to find other ways to while away the hours
Samir Chopra
28-May-2013
At 9.30am or so on Sunday morning, with the IPL final due to begin at 10.30am, and with babysitting finally arranged, I tried to organise an IPL final-viewing party. I sent out three invitations, by email, text message, Twitter and Facebook. All three were politely declined; one friend was out of town, the other two rightly found my Sunday morning invitations a little too late. What a drag. I wasn't upset about watching cricket alone; I've been doing just that for over 25 years now. What I really wanted was a chance to talk about fixing, to vent a bit, to spin out a few conspiracy theories, to tell a few morality tales, to imagine possible futures involving lifetime suspensions, jail terms, resignations, whistle-blowing, independent commissions of investigation and so on.
But even if my little IPL-fixing gossip extravaganza had worked out, what would have transpired would have been unfortunate. A game of cricket would have been on, and three serious fans - all cricket bloggers and writers - would have been talking about anything but. In short, that most wretched of situations for a sports fan would have been allowed to transpire: the happenings on the ground would have been overshadowed by what happened off it, so much so that the actual sporting action would seem to be a mere epiphenomenon of the truly important substrate. The IPL final did seem very much like a diversion; it was supposed to have been the main event, but instead it had become a sideshow.
As a sports fan who likes to think of himself as a member of the "serious" class of that demographic, I enjoy embedding sport in its broader social, cultural, economic and political contexts; indeed, it is these contexts that elevate sport above mere coordinated physical exertion and give it its most resonant and rich meanings. Such a placement in context does a great deal to enhance and make richer my appreciation of the on-field endeavours of those who play the game; I track my growth in maturity as a fan as correlating quite closely with the increasing attention I paid to cricket's history, economics and culture. Taking one's eyes off the on-field action to look behind and around is thus a crucial aspect of understanding it better.
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