The summer of '96

From Neeraj Narayanan, India

I do not know why I don’t like the IPL. Maybe it is the sheer obscene display of money, maybe it is the cheerleaders. Maybe I like to believe that even in 2011, cricket does not come under the purview of entertainment, instead it still should be treated like a gentleman’s game. Just like how I feel sad seeing empty parks and blame it on Facebook. Maybe I am just not ready to accept change.

And so, when Set Max’s live telecast of the player auction began, I switched off the box and sat down beside my bookshelf, cross-legged and, might I add, adorable. At the end of my endeavours, a rather disheveled scrap book found its way into my callused palms. A shoddily cut picture of Tendulkar, with a few yellow dal stains on his cheek formed the cover of the dog eared book titled, ‘Nero - the summer of ‘96’.

Nineteen-ninety six was indeed a memorable year. It was the year I evolved into a teenager, and the year I first fell in love. Seated two rows across, I would look at her and wonder if even the Taj Mahal could be so pretty, and if it was necessary that we hug or kiss (blech!) when we got married. It was also the year my voice broke and I croaked like a frog and why we never eventually got married. It was the year when Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid first played for India.

The 90s was the decade when cable television tiptoed stealthily into Indian households. The sudden plethora of channels amazed us, and we were shocked to know that news channels were allowed to hire pretty women, a fact that Doordarshan, our national channel, always hid from us. When electricity failed on us, which it did with clockwork regularity, we would run to the neighbourhood paan shop. You see we did not have Cricinfo then. Once there, we would stand hunched along with fifteen others, with perky ears, submerging as one big family into agony or ecstasy with the lows and the highs of the team’s fortunes.

Back then, none of the Indian players had fancy hair styles. All of Azhar’s ‘boys’ as he repeatedly called them at every match conference, were absolute mama’s boys – be it Sachin, Rahul, Kumble or Srinath. It almost seemed like flamboyance was not allowed to be part of that Indian team character. There was no dude at all in the team, no Kohli, no Yuvraj. No one sledged, no one stared, it appeared as if they were standing in a temple, instead of a ground. Even Sourav was a quiet little fellow till he became captain in 2000. Unlike 2010, when we have been tagged No.1 in Test cricket, we were archaic in those days, even medieval, in our play. Our batting rose and fell with Sachin, our fast bowlers ticked rasam and sambar as their favourite daily diet, and our best fielder was a 35-year old man called Robin Singh. It was inexplicable - the team totally refused to dive on the ground, and Anil and Sri became models for a Moov ad every time they had to bend their knees to stop a ball. I would scream at them and call them ‘women’ and my sister would glare at me malevolently.

In that entire decade, we never won a Test outside the subcontinent. But isn’t that why we became obsessed with the team. There is a feeling that comes with being part of an underdog, that impassioned aggressive desire to punch and knock out a better opponent, that one can never understand being part of a champion side. It is heady, it is intoxicating. Ask Hayden or Gilchrist if they feel as bad about a loss as a young Bangladesh side would feel about a win. Watch how players react when they beat Roger Federer and you will have an idea. It is only because David beat Goliath, did the story become romantic. And it was the same with India. With our team, we felt crushed a million times, and ecstatic a few other times, but with that grew our loyalty and misplaced patriotism. It was also why we made Sachin into a demi-god.

But now, everything has changed. Twenty20, IPL , businessmen, cheerleaders, Mandira Bedis have now become an integral part of modern day cricket lexicon. The Indian team is at its best. Today, Afghanistan have done all but enter the cricket fold, Zimbabwe are all but extinct. England are thrashing Australia in the Ashes, in ways they were themselves slapped around for over a century. There is no Wasim and no Waqar, thank heavens for Steyn. Everything has changed, except maybe Sachin Tendulkar. As always, he remains our hero across all ages, across all time, across all hairstyles. Our one constant.

P.S - That scrap book, it had its first page dedicated to a code of conduct. As captain, my first rule did not allow any members of the Sector 55 Noida team to use any expletives while playing. I guess, once upon a time, I was a relatively better person. As I flipped through the pages, an assorted mix of match scores and statistics appeared scribbled in pencil, that most innocent of communication facilitators. My laptop lay across the room, proud and superior.