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Magazine
Five Indian heroes
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
Saurav Ganguly _ non-parochial.
IN June 1991, when P.V. Narasimha Rao took office as Prime Minister, much was made of his being the first South Indian to occupy a post thought to be reserved for politicians from the Indo-Gangetic Plain. A friend of mine from Madras put the matter in perspective. The real breakthrough, he said, occurred in the summer of 1975, when Srinivas Venkatraghavan was appointed cricket captain of India. Sixteen years before Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister, a South Indian had already led the country where it mattered.
I suppose Bengalis nowadays must console themselves in like fashion. Through the 20th Century they have faced a series of blows to their self-esteem. First, in 1911, the capital of British India moved from Calcutta to Delhi. Then, Mahatma Gandhi arrived to wrest the leadership of the national movement away from them. For the next 30 years the Bengali challenge — in the form of Chittaranjan Das, Subhas Chandra Bose, and others — was successfully thwarted by the Mahatma and his cohorts. Then came Independence, and further discrimination. The Centre was determined to destroy the State's industrial pre-eminence. Prestigious projects scarcely ever got sited in West Bengal, a neglect made more manifest when governments in the State were led by parties opposed to those that ruled at the Centre.
No Bengali has yet become prime minister, but Saurav Ganguly is the most successful cricket captain India has had. And there is more to be said. Bhadralok Bengalis have a not entirely unmerited reputation for turning their backs on the rest of the country. But Ganguly is probably the most non-parochial cricketer to have led India. His only challenger in this regard is Tiger Pataudi, who, of course, was also connected (by marriage) to Bengal. Other captains have assiduously promoted cricketers from their own cities and states. But not Tiger, and not Saurav. Both have shown a welcome capacity to spot and nurture talented players regardless of their place of origin. For this, one will forgive the Behala boy anything — his arrogance, his displays of temper, his lackadaisical fielding, his tendency to throw away his wicket when well set.
In a list of modern Bengali icons, Saurav Ganguly would probably tie for third place, with Satyajit Ray. Tagore and Bose would be above them, and Amartya Sen slightly below. Statistical confirmation of this hypothesis might be found in the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths in Calcutta, in the number of babies registered in the name of "Saurav" within the past five years.
Justice would be served if at least some of the male babies born recently in Bengal are named "Rahul". Dravid and Ganguly made their international debuts at the same time, in the English summer of 1996. They have since formed a wonderful partnership, whether batting together in the middle order in Test cricket, or as captain and vice captain of the Test and one-day sides. As a batsman, Rahul is out of the top drawer. The 148 he scored in the Headlingley Test of 2002 was perhaps the best innings ever played by an Indian. On a wicked and seaming track he knew which balls to play and which to leave alone. In a nine-hour vigil at the crease he was beaten less than half-a-dozen times.
As a human being, Dravid is also out of the top drawer. When powerful men in the Cricket Board were scheming to make him captain in place of Ganguly, he made it clear that he wanted none of it. His loyalty to his leader has never been less than one hundred per cent. He is a gentleman in other respects too. He has never sworn at an opponent, or questioned an umpire, or talked down to the press. Much the same could be said of his fellow townsmen, Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble.
As bowlers, both Kumble and Srinath defy conventional stereotypes. Bangalore was known to produce good slow bowlers — but these, like Prasanna and Chandrasekhar, were feared for their prodigious power of spin. Kumble rarely turns the ball more than two inches. The South was never known to be a nursery of fast bowlers — these came from the North, or from Calcutta and Bombay. Srinath is a South Indian, rice-eating vegetarian — and withal, a world-class fast bowler. On overseas pitches he has at times been the only Indian likely to get any wickets at all. At home he has bowled well too, on the slow and dusty wickets on which his friend Kumble is such a holy terror.
Rahul Dravid ... loyal gentleman.
Bowlers are verily the game's subalterns, batsmen the game's elite. A century always commands more column inches than a five wicket haul. Regardless of intellectual ability or length of service, batsmen are preferred to bowlers when it comes to being appointed captain of a cricket team: be it a school team, a state team, or a national team. Commercial sponsors have a strong prejudice in favour of batsmen.
The ads with Ganguly or Dravid would comfortably outnumber those with Srinath or Kumble by 10 to one. Yet, over the past decade, the latter pair have meant almost as much to Indian cricket as the former.
I have been so bold as to rank the Bengali icons of the past hundred years. Let me now offer another, and perhaps less contentious listing — of the five finest Indian cricketers of the past decade. Here too Saurav is joint third, above Srinath and alongside Kumble. Dravid shall be placed just above this duo. Well above them all, commanding the kind of pre-eminence in the cricket world that Tagore enjoys in the world of culture, is the son of a Sanskrit professor who learnt little in the classrooms that he himself frequented.
Asked to contribute to a symposium during the Gandhi centenary, the historian A.L. Basham remarked: "It is not easy to say anything new about Mahatma Gandhi, for few men of the 20th Century have had so much written about them". Now Sachin Tendulkar is the Mahatma Gandhi of Indian cricket — what can one say about him that has not been said before? Perhaps this — that the man who belongs to the world is still quintessentially a child of his city. His discipline, his utter and complete focus on the craft of batsmanship, his supreme tactical sense — these mark him out as a cricketer of, by, from (and sometimes for) Bombay. Consider thus the aspect of his game that to me seems most characteristic. This is not the straight drive or back-foot force, but the glide past square leg which has him saying, as he plays it, "two, two, two!". That call, meant to alert laggards like Ganguly and Laxman, bears that mark of his origins. Like all Bombay batsmen, he knows how many runs there are as soon as the ball goes off the bat: besides, he wants to keep the strike.
The Bombay School of Batsmanship was inaugurated by Vijay Merchant. After Merchant came Polly Umrigar and Rusi Modi, after them Vijay Manjrekar and Dilip Sardesai. The tradition was then continued by Sunil Gavaskar, whose own successors have included Dilip Vengsarkar and Ravi Shastri. Shastri batted with Sachin Tendulkar in the latter's debut Test, much as Sardesai batted with Gavaskar when he made his first appearance for India, and Gavaskar with Vengsarkar when he was blooded in the international arena. The tragedy, for all of India, is that there seems no one on the horizon for Sachin to pass on the baton to. Tendulkar is the greatest of Bombay batsman — greater than Merchant, greater even than Gavaskar. Will he also be the last?
It is, most times, harder playing cricket for India than running a Union Ministry or State Government. The expectations are ferocious. One is continually under the blinding gaze of public scrutiny. Unlike the politicians, cricketers cannot take refuge in parliamentary privilege or the Official Secrets Act. To fail is to be dumped on by half a billion cricket crazy fans. (Admittedly, to succeed is to be felicitated like Rama on his return from Lanka.) In these conditions, to do one's job honestly and do it well: that has been the fate, and the achievement, of the five Indians celebrated in this column. Join me in saluting them.
Ramachandra Guha is a writer and historian based in Bangalore.
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