On being a fan

I once sat next to Rahul Dravid. Now, if this was being written by one of the illustrious group of cricketers, former cricketers, cricket writers and journalists who contribute to this site, that opening sentence would be followed by an interesting story or tidbit: ‘I once sat next to Rahul Dravid in the Lord’s dressing room, and he seemed …’; or ‘I once sat next to Rahul Dravid on the flight home from the Australia tour, and he said …’, and so on. But in my case, that first line pretty much says it all. I once sat next to Rahul Dravid. Or rather, I sat behind him, with my back to his.

It was 2010, in a London restaurant where I had dropped in to visit the owner, an old friend. Dravid was there with people who knew people I knew, and so it should have been the easiest thing in the world to get an introduction and have a brief chat, maybe even get a photograph. Instead, flustered and tongue-tied, I sat down at the table behind his and ordered a drink. What could I possibly say to Rahul Dravid? A gushing ‘Oh God I’m so thrilled to meet you!’? A confident handshake, a casual ‘Hi Rahul. Big fan.’?

And so I said nothing, and later on that evening someone else took that celebrity photograph. They posted it online; you can’t see me, I’m out of the frame on the right. I can’t help secretly wishing that I had snuck into it somehow.

As you’ve probably guessed, Dravid is my favourite cricketer. My only other brush with cricketing royalty was as a small boy, when I was introduced to Lala Amarnath in a tailor’s shop in Connaught Place. I didn’t know anything about cricket at the time, and I didn’t know who this bespectacled old man was. But twenty years of cricket-obsession later, the sight of Dravid up close, in flesh, had produced in me the physiological symptoms one usually associates with schoolgirls meeting rock stars. In fact, I almost wished I was a schoolgirl, so that I would have license to behave like one.

Being a fan of a sport or of a sportsman is a state of mind that’s hard to communicate to someone who isn’t. Among people who spend their time browsing Cricinfo, who rhapsodize about straight drives, who stay up at odd hours to watch Test matches in which their country isn’t even playing - that communication isn’t needed. Most of us here, I imagine, are cricket-obsessed, cricket-lovers, cricket fans, call it what you will.

The complicated mix of emotions involved in this obsession, this fandom, is implicitly shared. I’m sure I’m not the only Indian one who, when he or she hears ‘1998’, thinks first not of anything from their own lives but of Sachin at Sharjah. That was the year I gave my Class 10 Board exams and went on my first trip abroad, but my most vivid memory is that straight six off Kasprowicz. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who still gets the chills watching and re-watching those twin hundreds, somehow getting excited even though I know exactly what’s going to happen next.

But try explaining this to someone who isn’t really a cricket fan and who isn’t a fan of any other sport. Try explaining why the failure to chase 120-odd in Barbados in 1997 still hurts if you were an India fan at the time. It doesn’t just ‘rankle’ or ‘disappoint’; it hurts. I don’t remember much else about 1997, but I remember the details of that innings, the umpiring error, the airy shots. It is a painful memory of a deeply painful experience.

Or, to the newest generation, try explaining why Sydney 2008 was so traumatic. Or why Perth was so cathartic. Try explaining, actually putting into words, what exactly was so special about Sachin scoring the winning runs to bring up his match-winning, fourth-innings big-score-chasing century in Chennai in 2008. But your non-sports-loving audience, no matter how intelligent, open-minded and sensitive they are, no matter how well-read in other fields, just won’t get it. Oh they’ll ‘understand’, they’ll explain, they’ll rationalise, contextualise … but they won’t really get it, feel it. They won’t be able to comprehend, to truly grasp how events in the field can have such a profound and lasting effect on your emotions.

And this gets even worse when one tries to explain being a fan of individual sportsmen, especially in a team sport. When facts and figures, lists and averages don’t work, you’ll find yourself coming back to the adjectives you started with, and desperately seeking new ones – stupendous, magnificent, satisfying, gratifying, fantastic, incredible. You’ll add accents and emphasis. If you’re writing, you’ll italicise.

And this is hardly a surprise. There are many things, emotions, experiences that are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived them. It’s not easy to describe why a certain song, painting or film is so profoundly moving. Not to mention more fundamental emotions; think of what falling in love is like – try explaining that to someone who hasn’t felt it.

Of course, people far more insightful and eloquent than I have written reams about sport and sports-men and -women, how they embody our strengths and our frailties, how and why we can live their victories and defeats, their triumphs and disasters. And many have written about individuals, about Dravid for instance, extolling his many virtues, evoking why he is a uniquely human – as opposed to superhuman – hero, why he personifies all the best qualities not just of sportsmen but of his sport itself.

But I suspect these writers are most (best?) appreciated by those who know these feelings, who recognise them within themselves. Just as one can divide the world into people who know what falling in love feels like and those who don’t, I suspect one can divide the world into those who know what it means to idolise a sportsman, and those who don’t. In fact the schism is even more profound, because one can always be surprised by falling in love for the first time, while sport is either written into one’s DNA or it isn’t.

And so, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve embarked on one long digression from what I really wanted to try to write about. I wanted to describe exactly what I felt that London afternoon, with the sunlight on that Soho street outside and the cool drink in my hand, as I strained to hear the conversation at the next table. That trip to England was a memorable one for me for many reasons that would be easy to explain - personal reasons, professional reasons. But what I remember most vividly, with both pleasure and regret – poor inadequate words - is how fast my heart was beating, and how I could not bring myself to say hello to this man, this man I worshipped so, sitting just a few inches away from me.