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Where were you when India won the 1983 World Cup?
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I was 9 years old then, assembled with my family at the home of my uncle Babu Mama in
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House Kass in New Delhi.
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I didn't follow cricket in those days, but I also got caught up in the drama.
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How could you not when all the adults around you were going mad?
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And the madness reached its peak when Michael Holden was out to Mohinder Amanat and celebrations
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erupted in the living room.
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I was even then the voice of reason, and I tried to calm everyone down saying that hey
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the match isn't over, there's still one West Indies batsman left.
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As I said, I didn't follow cricket then.
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Of course, that changed as I grew up, and cricket became a big part of my life, and
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indeed that of so many of my fellow Indians.
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We can remember where we were when big sporting moments happened, when Mian Dad hit that six
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of my fellow Chandigarhi and Chetan Sharma, when Ravi Shastri won that Audi, when Jadeja
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Ajay Jadeja, not Ravindra, blasted Wakaar Yunus in the 1996 World Cup, when Laxman and
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Dravid did that thing they did, when Kumle bowled with a broken jaw, when Dhoni gave
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the ball to Joginder Sharma, when Virat Kohli lifted Sachin Tendulkar on his shoulders at
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the Wankhede Stadium in 2011.
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And it's not just cricket, we remember moments in other sports as well, and the other heroes
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we celebrated, from Abhinav Bindra to Leander Pace to Sena Nehwal to my favourite Vishayanand.
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Football was part of the emotional journey we made getting here, and it also reflected
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the journey our nation made, with all its flaws and aspirations and assertions.
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It's a hell of a story, and when it's told by a hell of a writer, it can reach a place
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within us that nothing else can.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is Sharda Ogra, who should need no introduction, but hey, I might as well
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Over three decades, Sharda has written about practically every sport in the country and
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built a body of work that is inspiring, moving and enlightening.
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She started at midday, went on to the Hindu and India today, and then spent a few years
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at ESB and Crickenfow, though after my time, so I can't quite call her a colleague.
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I've loved her writing ever since I first read her, and I was delighted to get her on
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the show for a conversation about sports journalism and the state of Indian sport.
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Sharda combines two qualities that are hard to find in most writers.
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She is both clear-eyed and empathetic, and I love the way she can find the human stories
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in sport while also shedding light on the bigger picture, the larger context.
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I won't say more about her because I try to avoid hyperbole, but I'll simply say that
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she is my favourite sports writer in the whole world.
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Now despite being a cricket journalist myself for a few years, I don't actually remember
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hanging out with her at any point or even having a conversation, so this was much awaited.
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And it will remain much awaited for you for another 90 seconds or so, because before we
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get to the conversation, we will take a quick commercial break.
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Among the many articles Sharda Ogra has written in her career, many deal with the extreme
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measures sports people take to up their performance, but learning how to optimize performance isn't
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something that only athletes can benefit from.
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All of us can be the Virat Kohli of our own lives.
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Allow me to recommend an online course that will help you find the best version of yourself.
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Head on over to the sponsors of this episode, The Great Courses Plus, at thegreatcoursesplus.com,
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In 24 online lectures, Dr. O'Connor will take you through sport and performance psychology,
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Hi, Sharada, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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Thank you so much for having me, Amit.
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You know, we've kind of known each other for the longest time, or rather, I've known you
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for the longest time as this remarkable kind of sports journalist whose work I've loved
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And you know, one of the things that really sets you apart in my eyes is that you don't
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just follow cricket, which is the glamour sport in India, you pretty much write about
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everything and care about everything, and there's some great work there.
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And the other, you know, aspect of what I like about your work is that they're all human
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So it's not just about, you know, sport as in what is happening in a cricket field, but
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But we'll leave all of that for later.
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And I don't also want to embarrass you with too much praise.
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Let's start talking a little bit about your early life.
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Like how did you, like I know that, you know, you grew up in Bhandup and you were an aspiring,
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I think a middle order hard hitting batter, as it were.
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And a useless, a superb fielder, but an absolutely useless, unaccomplished, untrained, uncoached
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lower order batsman that you can batter, but that you can just chuck out at any point in
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But you know, like the boys needed people, their team to be built.
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So that's what I was there for.
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Thanks, thanks so much for all the great things that you have said.
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But yeah, that was my life.
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You know, I grew up living in Bhandup, which was when I went to St. Xavier's College,
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all my friends who lived in other parts used to say, do you need a visa to go to Bhandup?
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And it was that kind of sort of Bombay snobbery that exists with all our suburbanites.
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So I grew up in a very non-Bombay surroundings because it had space.
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It had, you know, what are now the gated communities of the modern age.
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It's like we grew up in the seventies with that.
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We had, it was just all the employees of Geskin Williams where my father worked.
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And all of us lived in the same place.
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We had a swimming pool.
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We had a cricket ground sized sort of ground.
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I mean, in my childhood memory, that's what I remember.
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A pitch that looked the size, it was a football pitch almost, you know, so you had, I mean,
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of course, again, they must be much smaller, but I remember seeing it.
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And it was just, I think it was a kilometers chakkar to go around the whole compound or
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the property or whatever it's called, the colony, we used to call it.
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You can't use the word colony now without all kinds of other allusions to it.
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But that's how I grew up.
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So I grew up with space and with companions and in a safe sort of an environment where
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you could play sport, you know, older boys would be borrowing books, I would be buying
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magazines, buying books, I'd borrow it from them.
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So it was a very sheltered childhood, definitely, in a way that gave me access to sport.
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At the same time, I wasn't formally coached.
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So I went to a normal kind of a school.
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I went to the Holy Cross Convent High School, K.Villa Thane, which was a state SSC school,
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So it was, again, a lot of space there to play.
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All the teachers wanted me to play basketball because I was tall, discus because I'm sort
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of discus through a tie.
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I didn't like it too much, I sort of I was okay or whatever, you know, I wasn't good
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I didn't take to the discipline of it maybe.
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I just like playing badminton and there was a court there at home in the compound where
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we stayed, colony where we stayed, there was a badminton court there, so you played badminton
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and I liked playing cricket because I loved cricket and I played football every time there
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So I grew up surrounded by having access to sport and playing sport, girls and boys together.
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It was not a big deal at all, you know, and this is the 1970s, mid 1970s, because there
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are no other children, those are the children that are there, that's whom you play with.
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It's like, you know, building friends like you have in Bombay, so that they were like
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my various buildings and various friends.
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So I grew up in all that kind of an atmosphere and my father was an athlete in his college
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days, like proper serious athlete, he played a lot of sport and so it was very much part
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of our reading, watching, talking, you know, that kind of a thing.
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I have a younger brother who's four and a half years younger than me and he has zero
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interest in sport, zero meaning zero.
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He's a banker, he works for the Exim Bank, but he's a very smart sort of a very different
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person to me and he's my political advisor.
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If I have any doubt about any political issue or question, I ask him and he has a very clear
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mind and he just sorts it out in his head immediately.
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And his politics are not banker politics, if you know what I'm saying.
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So you know, one of the things when you're like, when I look back on my childhood and
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I was an 80s kid, though I think for, you know, from this vantage point where we are
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today, 80s kids, 70s kids, same thing, no internet, nothing, this.
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And one of the things that kind of strikes me was how unformed I was in the sense that
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if you think about like how do we form our image of ourselves, like who am I, what do
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I want to be, all of those things.
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And what kind of strikes me when I look back on the young me is that I was completely unformed
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and it could have been no other way because you didn't have the whole world available
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to you through the internet and all of that.
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Your influences were limited, they were arbitrary, they'd be a cliched bunch of books we'd read
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as kids, it'd be the same standard music we'd kind of listen to when we went to college
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and so it almost seems that people of my generation, we have almost been formed twice, like first
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of course you're formed in the normal way, you're a kid, you're a teenager, you grow
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up, you come into the world and then you're sort of formed again later on when the whole
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world is kind of opened out to you.
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So you know, what was your self-image of yourself back in those days like and this is also interesting,
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you know, in the context of sport, for example, that today if you love sport, there's so many
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24x7 sports channels, right, you can follow any sport you want, you can see everything,
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everything is intimate and it's close up and face up and at the same time it's larger
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than life and all of that but back in the day there were people who loved cricket intensely
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without having seen a single day of, you know, a test match or whatever, they're using their
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imagination to form all those pictures in their heads, you know, Ram Guha spoke movingly
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of this when he was on my show recently that, you know, how much it meant to actually be
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at the ground and watch a test match and today we kind of take all of it for granted.
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Describe your world to me a little bit, I mean, I know it must seem very banal to you
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because for you it's like your everyday memories and all of that but I'm kind of interested
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that, you know, when you're growing up as a kid, what is your world, what is your self-image,
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what is the sport you're taking in, what does a young Sharda want?
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It's interesting what you say and sort of our normal reaction is to not talk about ourselves,
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you know, is that, listen, I'm not that important, it doesn't matter, you know, it's the other,
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it's a journalist's standard response, Bhai, I am not the story, you know, so…
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Today you're the story.
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So, what you're saying is interesting, if I look back again, what I had at home, like
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I said, there was an environment and a conversation around sport and we played or did something,
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we all learned to swim, we all learned to cycle because it was all there and now I laugh
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at people when they talk about gated communities because I said you have no idea what a real
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gated community is like, because we grew up in that and it was our little sort of cocoon,
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we had people from all parts of the country that were staying there, different backgrounds,
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you know, the real, almost India in a capsule in that little space of various, so the biggest
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officers lived in the biggest bungalows and you know, you had that sense of, and I remember
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one thing, at that time also, so sort of eastern, north-east of Bombay, north-east near Thane
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around that side, even in Thane district at that time, the big thing used to be in which
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colony was the film shooting, who had shot a film or, and our colony was so boring, nobody
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shot anything in it and I was just so, I remember just feeling a sense of, you know, being missing
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out from this big glamour thing of having a movie shot in your, where you lived and
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now when I look back at it, I'm thinking, you know, how absurd is that, even wanting
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something like that, you know, how ridiculous it is.
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So I grew up with, what I always was, which is what I get most probably from my mother,
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is that there were two bunches of kids, right, so the boys were slightly older, they would
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have been, say, in senior school and we all were like in junior school almost, and there
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were no girls of that age who were playing sport, there was just me and a couple of my
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other sort of female friends, we were the new female entrance into the thing.
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What I always was, that I could stand up and fight with the boys, if they're taking,
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anyone else's trip, I would stand up and fight and say, you fight with me, don't come and
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fight with these other, like the littler children than I am.
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So my advantage of being taller and bigger than most other kids in the, this thing also
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helped and I have, I hear stories that I was a bit of a wild kind of this thing, I was
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sort of, I had a sense of adventure, I tried to climb out of a second floor balcony once
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because someone had climbed out of a ground floor balcony, it is the most normal thing
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to do, climbing on a balcony, so that's the thing, stories I was told about myself and
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that compared to my brother, I was a really hyperactive and a very troublesome sort of,
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I mean not troublesome, as in like sort of destructive kind of a thing, I used to like,
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I remember I went to some, so I had all these stories of myself that I was kind of going
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off in my own tangent, so I remember, this is a completely different conversation from
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growing up, I remember I was travelling, when I did the story about football in the northeast,
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I was in a taxi, me, my colleagues, couple of colleagues, Nikhil, Madhu, the photographer
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and the guy was travelling, this was in Dimapur, Nagaland, he turned around and he asked us,
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So what he meant to say is, what is your tribe?
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You know, which is a normal conversation, what are you?
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So I said, I am difficult, so that was my response, I am difficult.
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So my sense of self to sport, there was another thing that used to happen, every year the
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factory, so Geskin Williams had various divisions, they had Sankis, cruise and fasteners, whatever,
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they had annual sports meet and we would all go to watch it and it would have athletics
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and it would have, at the end of it, all the managers would come and do tug of war and
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aunties would do leg and spoon race and maybe children also went, I don't remember competing,
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but you had this sports event that was very much part of the whole life of that colony
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because what else will you do in Bhandop in 1970s, you know, there was one cinema hall,
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so you made your own entertainment and my reference points for sport would come not
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from television, I seem to have a memory, only in the 80s, I remember seeing Bog and
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McEnroe playing together, you know, playing that final at Wimbledon, so 79, I remember
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watching India versus Pakistan, India had gone to Pakistan, Kapil Dev's debut series,
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so that I remember seeing very much on television, massive amounts of Illustrated Weekly, Sports
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Week at the beginning, Illustrated Weekly, Sports Week, consume it like in a crazy way
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and they would have these cricket specials and you would read it and you read Raju Bharathan,
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so when you met Raju Bharathan, it was, oh my God, Raju Bharathan, you know, this is
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the guy whose bylines we've read and so I remember reading a lot of that, consuming
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a lot of that, I remember listening to commentary on the radio, cricket with Vijay Merchant
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at 2pm and Vijay Merchant in his strict strident sort of, I am telling you to behave yourself,
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everybody was, ticking of Gavaskar was like the big thing that he did at one point, you
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know, God knows what he ticked him over, I have forgotten and Gavaskar was like a God
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for us, of course, the central focus of our cricketing life at that point was Sunil Gavaskar
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and who he was, what he represented, so you had all these memories and sort of flickering
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images and you built, again it's like you built your own universe of sport around it,
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you know, of these nobility on your side and the other guys or whoever they were, we don't
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know, you know, and they had this contest and this is what it was and this was the game
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and this is what it meant to play, to be a good player on the back foot, you saw Gundappa
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Vishwanath playing, so you had all these little patchwork of memories and images that came
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and sort of filled themselves at that point.
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From the very beginning, I was an obsessive reader, voracious to the crazy degree, I would
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read anything, so that was also a thing, so the same, this colony which is now looking
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like some empire by itself, in 1979, it was the international year of the child, so I
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would have been UNICEF international year of the child and they came out with a, they
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had a contest in this Gaskin Williams in Calcutta and Bombay and wherever else they had factories
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and they sent out, you could send stories, pictures, images, I don't think it was a
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contest as much, it was just like a collection of the children of the employees and what
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they put out and they came out with a little magazine and we all got prizes, so I remember
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I sent out a short story, Prithish Nandi was the editor of that magazine and because it
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was headquartered in Calcutta, so there was this whole thing of being a writing person
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and being a reading person and so that was always there in my life growing up.
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Because I was so obsessed with books, I loved going to bookshops and when I was about in
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my 10th standard, I remember my class, every class has to give a gift to, like a departing
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gift to the school and our gift was, we gave, they were coming up with a new building, so
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we gave them books for their library.
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So it was 1500 bucks that were collected, this is 1500 bucks in 1984, which is a lot
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of money and we went and bought books, that was like the happiest day of my life, like
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going to a shop and saying, I'll take that, I'll take that, I'll take that, you know,
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So it was always, I was always connected to words and to books and I was always seen in
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the family as the girl who was sort of, like I said, difficult or who was always, I mean,
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I didn't do sort of girly girly things, I wasn't one for girly things at that time,
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what were girly things to do, you know, and, but I had fantastic, I had older cousins who
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were terrific, very tolerant, they would take you anywhere, look after you, feed you, you
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know, feed and water children, they were very good with it, so it was a happy and a comfortable
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life in that sense of, a sense of self and like you're seeing, unformed in a way that
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you have no idea of divisions and of, you know, stratifications that exist, that you
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are some person who is growing up in Bhandub, what the hell do you know that you want to
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go to St. Xavier's College, you know, who do you think you are type, you know, you should
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just go to some college in Sion or whatever and all that, so you had no idea of that,
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you had no idea of that at all.
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I remember listening to the entire 1981 Ashes commentary, entirely, the whole thing and
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I remember with this sinking feeling that Kim Hughes was just like going to get smashed
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in that, my favorite at that time, smashed meaning smashed and yeah, so you have all
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these memories and you have all these things and it's like, it's sort of written into
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your life when you look back at it, that it gave you a sort of sense of security and a
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sense of self that, I mean, it sounds quite arrogant to say that it remains unshakable
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but yeah, you're quite secure when you were growing up, I mean, you had privilege, which
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was a big thing, which you understand and recognize it now, but you're quite secure,
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you didn't want to be something else or, I remember I used to go and meet our cousins
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in Pedder Road and they were very snobbish towards us and we were wondering why, we are
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the ones that have the swimming pool, we are the ones that have the badminton court, yeh
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attitude kahan se, you know, so that was the thing that was there.
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I never understood Bombay's sort of snobbery until much later.
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In fact, you know, what's interesting is that in talking about how disparagingly South
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Bombay people looked at Bhandu people, you managed to randomly insult Sion, I know, I
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know, so bad because I actually got into, I can't remember, I got into a, see where
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we were at Gaskin Williams Bhandu, there were not even schools that were close by that you
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So I got into Little Angels in Sion and I got, this was, by the way, I went to my first
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three years in school, first and second standard, but in the colony school, there was no other
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school that we could go, there was one teacher, there was one classroom, all kids of all classes
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used to be there till whatever age when the parents decided this is a bit un-serious,
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you can't have children studying like this and at one point we had a lovely teacher,
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Mrs. Bernadette, we used to basically, anyone needed a haircut, she would cut the child's
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hair on the table, you know, their birthdays are coming up, you know, she would make the
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dresses, she would stitch the dresses and bring it, she was like a one person university
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of all types, you know, education, home science, whatever else you wanted, Bernadette teacher
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So we grew up in this completely informal sort of system, you're sitting with kids
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who are two years older to you and studying high level maths, so when you have to go to
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school that people kept looking at, apparently they told my parents, what has she done for
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So they said this GKW college, west side is a school, which is not even a school, it's
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like when building and some children and some teachers came there.
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So I didn't mean to insult Sayan because I'm feeling very bad that I've insulted Sayan.
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Yeah, so I got into Little Angels and then Holy Cross and the only reason I went to Holy
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Cross and Thane because it was closer and that the company bus could drop us and I even
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got into SIS college before I got into St. Xavier's college, you see, so there you are.
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You walk into that St. Xavier's quad, how can you not say I want to study here?
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You walk into the quad and you say, this, this, yeah.
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So you know, lots of strands to pursue here and I'm going to come back to the personal,
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but first I'll take a digression because my show is full of digressions, which begins
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actually with a personal question, which is when you started playing sport, how competitive
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And my larger sort of digressive question is about competitiveness per se, because you've
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spoken about how one of the traits that is common to elite sports people everywhere is
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their intense competitiveness, like Leander Paes once said that he doesn't like losing
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in Karim to his sisters and you've described about how, you know, Yuvraj Singh with whom
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you co-wrote that book after cancer about how when he was recovering, he would play
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He'd play one point, win the point, go and lie down, come back again, refuse to stop
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Yeah, so my broader question about competitiveness is this that, yeah, one, sure, sure, I'm guessing
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that has got to be a necessary, but not sufficient condition to make it to the highest level.
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But is it then that like this also seems to me a trait that can be incredibly toxic also
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in the modern world in the sense that if you are competitive about everything, if you look
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at the world in a zero sum way, which is what sport is, this is zero something, you win
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if the other guy loses, the extent of your victory depends on the humiliation of the
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other guy, so to say, in a manner of speaking, whereas the real world isn't like that.
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So in that sense, it seems almost a two sided trait that in something like, you know, sport,
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you need it, you cannot do without it.
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And in many ways, it's healthy because it can drive you to excel.
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Just wanting to be better than everybody else means that, you know, you're better tomorrow
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than you were yesterday, which is a great thing in and of itself.
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But equally, it seems to me that especially in a country like India, we've been poor
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There's, you know, so much kind of scarcity.
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The mindset can also become problematic.
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And then it strikes me that if let's say there is someone who is trying to make it at a certain
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level of sport and they're incredibly competitive, but they don't make it there, or even if they
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do make it there, that trait actually can hurt them more than it can help them.
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What are your sort of thoughts on this, having kind of seen all this from close in a sense,
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seen at least one side of it from very close?
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I think competitive is what you're saying is very, very central to elite athletes.
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And because I can see it in them, I know it's absolute absence in me.
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I like do not possess, I'm not competitive at all.
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I really struggle with that kind of, you know, I will be better than you and this and that.
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So just file on time, be better than what you were yesterday kind of a thing that is
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So and I recognize it in athletes and I admire it also because it becomes, it shows up in
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unexpected places with unexpected kind of people.
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And in India, particularly in Indian sport, what happens is that we forget that our sport
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is, I mean, I remember you were talking to, I think it was Joy Bhattacharya, about saying
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that we don't have a sporting culture, et cetera, et cetera.
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I will discuss this later with you in another of this thing.
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But our sport is fundamentally hooked around livelihood rather than leisure in India.
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And we have to understand everything and everyone from that point of view.
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I'm not talking about absolutely the top elite cricket, but at some point it will come,
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You know, why are so many thousands of kids wanting to play cricket?
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Because their family sees a life and a livelihood in it, better than whatever state that they
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Competitiveness can be toxic.
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I think this whole competitiveness then translates into another level, like a non-athletic level
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translates into the competitiveness for the IITs, competitiveness for, you know, I mean,
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I know of kids who have passed your management, your MBA basic entrance exam, and they won't
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take up, they've got admission into a school, ex-school, they won't take it up because it's
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not one of the top three IMs, or if you've gotten into an IM, but it's not A, B or C,
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you don't want it, you know, so that kind of competitiveness is sort of, it comes from
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I mean, whether it's, it's a place of maybe societal, almost a framework that is seen
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as perfect and the fit and the thing that you should be, whereas all the time you want
#
to tell these kids, listen, you are not what you are today and what you've achieved today.
#
You are going to be what you are 20 years later, so just chill, take a step back and
#
With an athlete, you can't give them time to do that.
#
And I think that in the sense, this is seen actually also because it's a question of
#
like livelihood, I said, it's also seen this lack of, you know, this lack of killer instinct
#
kind of that cliche that we get hammered out, oh, Indians don't have like killer instinct.
#
That kind of thing is so, it's so terrible and so toxic because it's almost like you're
#
insulting the person that's competing to say that you're not competing to my standard
#
of what I think you should compete, you know, and I think our whole, our framework of sport
#
is now organized around, it's a top down kind of a thing.
#
Everything depends on medals rather than on mass participation and from that comes this
#
competitiveness of, okay, I want to be the best person in this field.
#
So I think that the really good people that have it, as in athletically, the people that
#
have it, they just somehow manage to break through and the people that don't make it,
#
it's not that they don't have it, it's that the circumstances just pile on top of them
#
so much that they're fighting against so many things.
#
I mean, to succeed in Indian sport, you have to have almost, you've got to have like a,
#
your skin like a tank, you know, you have to be, to withstand everything else that's
#
there around you and the atmosphere around sport, around Olympic sport and it's improved
#
margin like hugely, hugely in the last say 10 years than what it was.
#
I was just chatting to a couple of my friends the other day, Manuja and Prajwal Hegde and
#
Manuja Virappa from Times of India and we were talking about Dhanraj Pillay and we said,
#
my God, what a player he could have been in this day and age of social media and one of
#
the things that I think Prajwal said, they would not have allowed him to be himself at
#
this point because he was just like a wild guy.
#
He was just, he was like the superstar of his sport and he was a wild guy and at that
#
time in the 80s and the 90s, what did they do to wild people?
#
They kind of just beat them down and a lot of the way in my mind, sport, our sport is
#
organized is that the administrators really don't want people to succeed to an absolutely
#
higher level because they don't want them to become bigger than themselves, you know,
#
so that's what our athletes are competitive, elite athletes are fighting all the time.
#
You see it, you can say, I used to think this was a rubbish notion, you know, because I
#
was 20 years old and stupid and whatever and, and kind of a bit naive, but now I look back
#
and I say, yeah, you know, what would India do if it had five players in the top 50 in
#
Nobody would be listening to the administrator that way, but anyway, this is a favorite topic
#
I could go on for five hours.
#
So I'm just saying that competitiveness in Indian sport, it's you needed, of course,
#
because the odds are stacked so heavily against you and the numbers are so huge that for you
#
to break through, you have to be completely committed and driven.
#
What happens to you on the other side is you would hope that people have sort of a safety
#
net they can fall back onto because I've done this and I can't do more and I got screwed
#
by the whoever it was system person, whoever, and therefore I've got the safety net that
#
But a lot of people we're seeing particularly in, you know, the very tragic story of the
#
young female wrestler who committed suicide about a couple of weeks ago from the Fogart
#
You know, she's a young cousin of Geeta and Babita and because she lost in a bout,
#
she lost about in a tournament that she took part in.
#
So this is the other side of it that there is this pressure and this expectation of that,
#
you know, you are now the ATM of the family, go out and do it, you know.
#
So there's all this that's going on in the last sort of say 10 years or so.
#
I know I'm, I don't know if I'm even responding to what you had asked or discussed, but these
#
are my sort of general thoughts about it.
#
As to my, what level did I play competitive sport, GKW West Side Estate level is what
#
I was just really bad, athletically terrible.
#
No, no, we'll just have to take a word for it.
#
There's no way of knowing.
#
You did say you were a terrific fielder, so it is not as if you are intact.
#
So it's not as if it's entirely a modesty there.
#
No, I mean, just kind of taking off from there that the thing is what you see in sport is,
#
of course, a survivor bias.
#
That is what the fan sees.
#
The fan sees a survivor bias.
#
You see the people who made it at the top and they're happy and the competitiveness
#
But I'm guessing that if you're incredibly competitive, you're always focused on beating
#
the other guy and you don't make it, right?
#
And for whatever reason, it may not even be your inherent skill.
#
Maybe you just hit a wall at a certain level and you're not better than that or circumstances
#
conspire against you or you get one injury and you're done and that's a sheer bad luck.
#
Then I would imagine that that competitiveness, that focus on doing better than the other
#
person can also make you incredibly bitter and can hurt a competitive person more than
#
it would hurt, say, someone not as competitive because, you know, you wanted to beat the
#
other guy so bad and now you're nowhere.
#
You know, and you've obviously, you know, covered sports at all levels.
#
You haven't just covered elite cricket.
#
You've covered every sport at every level, essentially.
#
Is this something that strikes you as poignant?
#
I mean, even with a much shorter span of time covering cricket, I used to come across like
#
I remember calling one of the legends of Indian cricket of the 60s and 70s for a court at
#
And I was in Wisden at that time and this was probably around 2001.
#
And he assumed because I'm calling from Wisden and multinational and all that, he asked me
#
You know, and it was so sad.
#
I just felt like crying.
#
Maybe this is a cricket thing because there is money in cricket in that sense.
#
So you do get that response now more and more from people.
#
But I think what also happens, the other side of sport that you learn is that maybe it teaches
#
you this sort of day in and day out of defeat and, you know, reversal of fortune is that
#
you almost internalize the fact that you're going to have a shit day.
#
You're going to lose more than you win.
#
And not everybody is Federer.
#
Someone is Pichara 703 in the ATP rankings, you know.
#
So that also comes into maybe your psyche as to what kind of person you are.
#
As you grow older, maybe you sort of get used to it.
#
I remember I had gone to do a story.
#
I became after some point, you know, I was I did four years at ESPN India, the website.
#
Which was just the most fantastic thing, because I had to be wean myself away from cricket,
#
You know, I can watch anything competitive.
#
Like I say, I can watch football.
#
I was watching the I-League, the last two round games that were going on.
#
And I can watch Indian football without a lot of people say, what is this?
#
And you know, they get all snobbish and all that.
#
But I love watching it.
#
So I remember going to a SAM.
#
I was going to do a story.
#
I went off from Guwahati towards Abhayapuri and there's this little center that's run
#
in Bundapara by a very famous police officer of that region, famous of that region.
#
And I was talking to him and we were taking pictures and he gets all these kids to come
#
from everywhere and all that.
#
And this guy turns up and he is this man in a banyan and lungi, scrawny, thin fellow.
#
And he turns up and he said, oh, he's so and so.
#
He used to be a great player from this region.
#
He was like he was just like an average everyman.
#
And he was so proud to tell me about his life as a player at that time.
#
He used to go and play in these little tournaments all around the state.
#
He said, I want to Calcutta and play it.
#
I played against and he named some famous players from Mohun Bagan and he has this very
#
I think it was Ratan something.
#
If I could find it, I'll tell you.
#
And I was just struck by the fact that this man's gains from sport had been nothing financially
#
I mean, he lives in this little town in a SAM somewhere, but he was an athlete.
#
He was proud of being an athlete, you know, and I don't think you can play at competitive
#
level without having a streak of that competitiveness in you, because you'll just get brushed
#
aside by the next tougher person than you and the more committed person than you.
#
So he must have had some level, some spirit of cussedness in him that had him compete.
#
But he was not sort of elite level of any level.
#
He wasn't elite level even in his sport in the region.
#
You know, there would have been some 25 players ahead of him from Calcutta.
#
But to see him, he was completely comfortable in his own skin.
#
So I think maybe that works its way all across in sport in the entire ecosystem that you
#
have this mass of players.
#
I remember meeting gymnasts from Tripura, these guys who are from Agartala themselves.
#
Again, not names that you know at all, you know, not even their most famous gymnast before
#
They were just sort of one level below that.
#
And they were telling me about their love of gymnastics and how they saw it for the
#
So we walked in, they went to see some some exhibition from some Russian gymnast that
#
had come in the 70s or 60s or something, I forgot.
#
And they said it was like we saw men flying, you know, and he was he would have been about
#
65, 70 years old, but he could still remember that magic, you know, and he said we used
#
to train by trying and diving into, he said we didn't have a landing spot when we were
#
training for the vault.
#
So we used to train at the edge of a lake and then you'd land jump into the lake was
#
And you hear all these stories and you see, you know, they are as to me, they're as important
#
as all the other stuff that you hear.
#
So because I think particularly with competitive sportsmen, there does tend to be a little
#
I'm seeing maybe of course, there'll be bitter stories in hockey.
#
You'll find tons of bitter stories, you know, I think because 100% at least 50 hockey players
#
will crib about whatever and in proportion, maybe 300 ticket players will just crib, you
#
So that's the other the other lesson that you learn from sport that teaches you to deal
#
with adversity in a sense, you know, because eventually at some place, everybody will hit
#
Everybody will come against some obstacle, you know, I have a great tendulkar story to
#
tell you, but I'll tell you later.
#
Now you got to tell me now because otherwise my listeners will just start fast forwarding
#
through when it's a tendulkar story, let's get it over with.
#
Because when you're talking about this competitiveness, you know, this is I'm talking about tendulkar.
#
The, the Mr. Tendulkar himself.
#
So he there was some interview that I did with him about which was on his birthday.
#
I think the last important birthday that there was 45, 45, 45, so anyway, I spoke with him
#
at a very, very good interview, we chatted, I said, would you have liked to have played
#
all these freaky shots that they play in IPL and he said, no, I don't need to play shots
#
You know, I would have been fine with the shots that I had.
#
I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to argue with you.
#
And at one point, he started discussing the new, the new format, this is just incredible.
#
The new format of the new rules in one day cricket, two new balls.
#
And you say, remember two new balls and only two fielders outside the circle, which means
#
every time I get the ball past the 30 yard circle, I can take two runs.
#
That means I get the strike back.
#
So it's like, literally, he's still living all those runs that he didn't score.
#
And I was saying, boss, you have made hundreds and hundreds, you have made thousands and
#
tens of thousands of runs, but he still remembers that, you know, don't mess around with me.
#
Imagine what I could have scored when I had this kind of this thing.
#
I just loved the story because he was still a child again, you know, he was still a young
#
He was still a 16 year old cricketer saying, boss, I'm going to max these rules.
#
And I thought, so that is competitiveness, you know, that is competitiveness.
#
Even at the, when you would think he has achieved everything that there is to achieve.
#
He's still looking at those two new balls and said, you lucky guys these days, you have
#
And he was remembering instances where he was, he was in partnership with Laxman, he
#
said, I was in really good, Nick, and I kept telling him take two, take two, so I get the
#
strike back, you know, I said, no, Laxman is not the fastest man between wickets and
#
It was just a sweet story to listen to with this yet completely he was into this whole
#
thing that how can I imagine if I, if the rules are there like that for me and everyone
#
you talk to, they said, yes, you talk to any player of that generation and they'll tell
#
Just, you just double up his runs and see how many runs you could have made like that.
#
So people speaking on his behalf as well.
#
So that is what is a competitiveness of a level that we can't even comprehend.
#
It's like you live your life and you think, okay, my career is over, I'm sitting quietly.
#
I'm thinking of the runs I didn't make, you know.
#
So legend there as well.
#
So thinking aloud from something that you just said, you spoke about how you love watching
#
any sport, you know, so it's not just, you know, and what I think tends to happen to
#
most of us as fans is that we'll watch just the highest level of a sport.
#
So if I'm watching cricket, I'll watch it between countries with football clubs, it'll
#
be, you know, between the top clubs and maybe the world cup and so on.
#
But it strikes me now that in a sense, that's only because it's the highest there is in
#
the sense that I love watching women's cricket as well.
#
Now would say someone like Spiti Mandana be able to play Jaspreet Bumrah, you know, not
#
But to me, that's a pointless question and it's more because it doesn't matter.
#
Like the thought experiment I come up with is, let's say there's a race of aliens who
#
are better than humans at everything by 20% and otherwise exactly the same.
#
And they come down here and they play cricket, right?
#
So now their cricket is going to be a much higher quality than our cricket.
#
But I will still watch our cricket.
#
And therefore, like whatever sport you actually get to see, what matters I think is not the
#
absolute level of skill there is in it.
#
Because I think it's safe to say that a hundred years later, every sport will be played far
#
better than it is today.
#
You know, one can argue about sports of skills like badminton and cricket, but even those
#
I believe that players of a hundred years later will be far better than today.
#
And yet today's is incredibly enthralling.
#
So it really doesn't matter.
#
You could be watching, you know, a colony match or to say though there goes the word
#
colony again, and it could still be enthralling.
#
So if it is not the actual standard of excellence in the specific sport that is drawing us,
#
what do you think there is that makes a sport so riveting?
#
I mean, part of it could, of course, be the stories that are sort of involve the little
#
dramas that we are focused on.
#
But sometimes I could be passing a Maidan and I could watch a game in progress and I
#
don't know anybody there.
#
But I'm still standing and watching because hey, it's not the highest quality.
#
I'm not being able to make personal connections.
#
I'm still standing there and watching.
#
Because we are all saddles.
#
We are tragics in that sense.
#
So, I mean, we're not saddles.
#
I think we take to sport for various reasons.
#
Some people are good at competing and playing.
#
Some people like myself, I know exactly how bad I was and I know exactly how utterly atrocious
#
even like a season coaching would have made me better by maybe 5% but no more.
#
And therefore, I think you appreciate the escalation of abilities that there are.
#
I mean, one of the most astonishing things for me in cricket very, very early on used
#
to be how far they can throw the ball, how far they can throw my shoulder is so useless.
#
Again, I'm coming back to Tendulkar like a proper fan, like a proper Tendulkar Zamanika
#
person that I remember a throw he did in the Eden Gardens.
#
He was on the side of the of where the press box is and where the you know where that press
#
I think Afridi was the best.
#
He picked the ball up from the boundary and he threw it to the wicketkeeper's end, which
#
is the other end of it.
#
And he ran him out, you know, and I'm just saying this guy is like five feet, whatever
#
How did he throw like that?
#
So it's all these little, little snatches, I think, of maybe action or the physical expression
#
of what is high quality training plus ability plus muscle memory, whatever, whatever working
#
It's aesthetically appealing in one sense.
#
And I think I'll watch everything competitive because maybe it's the, you know, slightly
#
mumbo jumbo and maybe it's the energies that we're looking at.
#
Maybe it's the energies that society that we respond to as to what we are seeing, how
#
urgent it is for everybody, that it's there.
#
I remember I was watching a Moto GP on TV once, BRG and whatever 250cc bike and 1990s
#
I remember I used to watch BRG as well.
#
And my mother just passed me and she said, no, this motorcycle also you'll watch.
#
So I said, of course, you know, it's a race, it's on TV.
#
They could almost fall off the motorcycle, but they don't.
#
And then also the other thing is you have to be an exceptional collector of pointless
#
I love to collect pointless pieces of information and I'm watching, listening, doing whatever,
#
So it's all those other things that are going on, you know, and people do watch sport
#
for the excellence of it.
#
I remember having a conversation with one of my colleagues Aniruddh at ESPN and I said,
#
you know, you watch a lot of Indian football and they are those absolutely high level like
#
serious club watchers and Manchester United and everything and I don't watch that much.
#
I'll watch once in a while.
#
So I said, but why do you watch Indian football?
#
Because the standard is so bad.
#
He said, no, because I like to watch it because it's football.
#
You know, that's what I see.
#
It's football cranked down at the speed different to what you see, but it's the same sport.
#
And when you I think when you watch all ranges of it, you can see how it's almost like you
#
don't understand how difficult something is until you when you see it being done with
#
the eyes and you realize how difficult it is to excel at that stage.
#
I remember I had gone to Melbourne for two months to work on a project.
#
It was a fellowship and fantastic, fantastic fellowship and the office which I had, it
#
was next to a music school, the University of Melbourne's music school was there and
#
you could hear people practicing every day.
#
So they were practicing the saxophone, they were practicing the trombone, the piano.
#
There was one guy with the saxophone.
#
He was trying to practice summertime, you know, the summertime, the first few bars of
#
summertime and he was struggling to get it right.
#
But he was in the school, right?
#
So he must have been a seriously good student and you could just hear his effort in making
#
sure that those notes came out clean and that's when you understood that when they played
#
in those orchestras and when they're playing it, they're just flawless and it looks easy,
#
So you were hearing the difficult happening in front of your, you know, you could hear
#
the difficult happening all the time.
#
And so maybe that's what you you kind of understand when you see sport at across levels,
#
you know, when you see sport across quality sort of stages, that's when you understand
#
that this is what it is for people better than you and that is what it is for people
#
that are just of another level of training or, you know, practice or whatever it is.
#
And that music example really, really struck me because I recognized the tune immediately
#
and this guy was like guy, girl, whoever was just like struggling to get it out perfect.
#
And when they got out those three lines perfect, you could almost hear the exhalation from
#
their head when they just stopped for two seconds and we literally were separated by
#
I could hear it every day.
#
It was a great, great insight when I was writing and I'm listening and I'm listening, oh,
#
so they tried to play this and there's two of them or three of them, there's a quartet
#
or a tree or a string, you know, string quartet, they're trying to do, they're trying to get
#
So in the trying to get it right is where the fun and the magic sort of lies, you know,
#
and then what we see on, I have a friend who plays the piano, I mean, I told her that she
#
Now you get what I'm saying.
#
Yeah, no, there's an old cliche in cricket.
#
He makes it look so easy.
#
And the fact is everybody makes it look so easy.
#
It's just kind of insane.
#
And it's interesting how a stray half sentence can allow you to put a date on it.
#
Like you said, BRG and 250cc and the thing is BRG was in 250cc for a couple of years
#
and then he spent more than a decade in 500cc or the actual category.
#
Why do we remember him from 250?
#
Because that's what I remember as well, because those were the years India started showing
#
So the moment you said BRG, I thought of Loris Capirossi and Luca Cadellora and I used to
#
root for a guy called Pierre Francisco Keeley and I have no idea why I rooted for him because
#
I would not recognize any of them without the helmet.
#
But it's just that, you know, so it's some particular moment of drama where you decide
#
I want to support an underdog and oh, this guy is an underdog and you're just going
#
Here's my next question.
#
Now, you know, when you were and again, we'll come back to the personal a little later.
#
But another sort of tangential question, you mentioned that, you know, when you grew up
#
in Bhandup, in your community, you know, people, these sporting events were a big deal.
#
It was actually called an estate, estate, which sounds even crazier than colony.
#
You're wondering that, you know, and you keep trying to sort of tone down the sort of proprietary
#
and sort of perviousness of this whole colony, estate, boss, there were flats together.
#
You know, so yeah, it was called GKW West side estate.
#
It was not called colony.
#
It was called GKW West side estate.
#
So all GKW West side estate residents of the past or present can leave a comment on Twitter
#
You pointed out that, you know, at that point, sports was such a big deal and these events
#
were such a big deal because it was the only entertainment you had 70s like what else is
#
You know, what else are you going to do?
#
And that kind of got me to thinking about, you know, whether the way that we follow sport
#
and the reasons that sport becomes big for us have changed over the decades.
#
Like just thinking aloud, let me try and list out a bunch of reasons why people get drawn
#
One is that it is the only entertainment.
#
You're playing with each other.
#
Then there is you tie sport into larger narratives very often and sometimes in a toxic way to
#
these nationalistic narratives.
#
Like for so many cricket fans, you know, the 80s were a decade of such pain because we
#
would keep losing to Pakistan and Sharjah.
#
And you can also find personal resonances there.
#
Like I can imagine that so many people like me must have been so switched on to someone
#
like Rahul Dravid because you are seeing, you know, so much character there and so much
#
of what you would like to do or be in your own life in your own context.
#
And that can switch you on.
#
And at another level, you know, I often find it weird that so many Indians who've never
#
been to England will have loyalties from Manchester United or Liverpool or whatever.
#
But one kind of reason is that when you are at that formative age of 13 or 14 or whatever
#
these studies are found, whichever club is doing well, you tend to become a loyalist,
#
which is why you can almost aid someone by seeing, is he a Liverpool supporter?
#
Is he an Arsenal supporter?
#
You kind of know when they got...
#
So the younger people, the kids who are 13 today will be City and a new generation of
#
Liverpool supporters as well.
#
So the way that Indians follow sport, has it changed over these decades?
#
Because also it's been commercialised, it's become both larger than life and in your face.
#
And at one point, if you remember 10, 15 years ago, when you would have these TV commercials
#
of star sports for India, Pakistan series and all that, there was so much jingoism thrown
#
in it was almost part of the kind of marketing.
#
So has the way that Indians follow sport changed over the decades in your experience?
#
You know, I mean, obviously it's better for sports people because they make more money
#
and there are more opportunities for them.
#
But you know, how does it play into everything else that is happening around us, the nationalism,
#
the politics and even the non-negative things, non-negative, you know, my writing class students
#
would freaking kill me for using saying non-negative.
#
But even the sort of the happier things like aspiration and, you know, striving to be better
#
and to make a place in the world and all of those things.
#
What's your sense of, you know?
#
I think there's been a huge change in the Indian cricket ethos, if you have to call
#
it that, over the last, say, 25 years, I mean, you will remember this, Amit, that when we
#
were growing up, like you're saying, 70s, 80s, same, same, no difference, you know,
#
there was a certain value attached to fairness and attached to I'm sounding so old fashioned
#
and so boomer, it is like not funny, sort of attached to sort of fairness and a sense
#
of, you know, the whole thing, oh, Indians are very nice and they only shake hands and
#
they're, you know, they're very well behaved and everything.
#
And it wasn't seen as a bad thing.
#
But it became seen as something that should not be, oh, Srinath is apologizing to the
#
batsman for hitting him or something like that, you know, and you're seeing, so that
#
for Indian cricket to sort of shake itself out of this different, almost self effacing
#
mode that it was in, when you look, when we looked at it, when we were in our 20s and
#
our 30s and you said, yeah, yeah, enough of this crap that we're taking from England
#
and whatever, England, mostly, not Pakistan, you know, it was basically our generation
#
was we are getting crap from England, Pakistan is okay, they have better fast bowlers than
#
we do, you know, but that has now morphed into this other thing of new India.
#
Every five years, there is new India, you know, that new India never stops.
#
That has become and because the moment you came into money, have you read this complete
#
Have you read Vivek Shanbhag's Gachar Gochar, his novel?
#
It's a beautiful novel.
#
In fact, I talk about it.
#
In which he has this great line and he said, we think we control money, he said, no, money
#
When we have little money, it sits quietly in our pocket, behaving itself.
#
When we have a lot of money, it just acts tough.
#
And that's, and literally that's what has happened in Indian cricket.
#
You can see it, you know, with, with, and I remember I'm just looking back at it now
#
and I remember Dalmia sort of whatever Dalmia's great non-virtues were, you know, he was you're
#
He's fighting for more countries to be playing.
#
Okay, there are votes to him, but he's able to do that, cricket going to more places.
#
He was on the side of Sri Lankans and Pakistanis and our nation as they say, the subcontinent
#
and you're looking at these guys now and you're saying like, what, why have we become
#
So it's almost like that when money has come in, you have not only changed what you want,
#
how you want the world to see you, which of course it will, but you have also changed
#
how you want to basically be what you want to basically stand for, you know, and the
#
marvelousness and the beauty of Indian cricket is that in, and in the subcontinent is that
#
you have changed the nature of what the game started out as, as this English pastime played
#
in an orderly manner into this on the streets.
#
Everybody's playing at all times, 24, seven, all seasons of the year, we'll play cricket.
#
You've changed the language.
#
You've changed the idiom.
#
Your, uh, Baxman have changed so many things and not just Ranji, your bowlers have changed
#
so many definitions of, and sort of the limit and the range or the boundaries of their skill
#
have also been changed.
#
What you want to do now is we walk around in a Hugo boss suit and kick people around,
#
So I'm just saying it's just, that's the change that I see, uh, in, in, in Indian cricket
#
and it's been fed at the IPL has only amplified it.
#
Remember you were talking about, you can watch women's cricket and men's cricket.
#
Similarly, you can watch IPL and you can watch test cricket that there are two different
#
things you have to just accept that once you accept that you can watch it.
#
And I have come to terms with it and now I'm, I'm sort of a game.
#
So, uh, so the IPL sort of amplified this as well.
#
And I was talking to somebody about the 99 Chennai test match and that scene in which
#
the fans were applauding for the Pakistani players and because nineties had been such
#
a terrible decade in terms of the animosity that had been built up, the Shiv Sena had
#
There was all this **** that was going on, Babri Masjid, all the other **** that was
#
And to see this, it's like, you're so relieved that there is this, this basic decency that
#
I'm sure there is decency still left in Indian fans and Indian crowds and whatever.
#
But now if you've got, uh, scenes like you have in, uh, you know, the Ahmedabad wicket
#
and all the, the furor that came about, even talking about whether that wicket was good
#
or not, uh, you're looking at saying, you know, will that decency even be appreciated?
#
What will happen to it?
#
Could that ever happen again?
#
And what is wrong with it that it cannot, it should not happen again, that the Pakistanis
#
should not play any competitor, if you're saying any, any rival or opponent.
#
What will it be seen if you stand up and applaud any batsman from, from the other team for
#
doing anything, batsman, bowler for doing anything terrific.
#
But you would think that, I don't know, I mean, I suppose the commentators would just
#
sort of improvise, but, uh, I'm saying that has been, it's been fairly unpleasant.
#
Um, of course India's money that is in the game that is there is also great, but like
#
I keep quoting that Anil Kumble is a speech in which he said, you have to wear your leadership
#
You know, you have to wear your power lightly.
#
Uh, he said that in the, I think his, uh, it was his Pataudi memorial speech.
#
So he said, you have to wear your, but we don't, we are not wearing it lightly.
#
And the moment Indian cricket takes that step that is not going to wear its leadership lightly,
#
it's going to wear it to the big stick, the fans and the TV kind of builds it up into
#
the fans that are doing this.
#
And I remember very early on when satellite television had just come into India, and you'll
#
also remember that I remember watching these promos and thinking, yeah, they are making
#
Like it's a big fight and this and that, and a great production.
#
This is called marketing and all.
#
Now I'm looking at it and saying, what is this?
#
You know, this is terrible.
#
So everything is being projected.
#
Like it's a WWE sort of a, at that pitch, you know, it's been projected at that pitch.
#
And so you lose a lot of what are the good qualities about, maybe you don't lose them,
#
but you kind of push them in the background because they don't really sell, you know.
#
So that's my general sort of feeling of what is publicly projected about Indian cricket
#
and proudly projected and been made into this celebration of, I don't know what, money basically.
#
And again, what you said about the IPL, I of course agree with you.
#
I tried to, you know, when Ram was on my show a few months back, I tried to convince him
#
to get into the IPL because like, you know, like you said, it's two separate sports.
#
And I consider myself both a cricket tragic and a T20 fanatic.
#
And I think it's changed the game in so many great ways, which is, you know, like, like
#
this test series, we just won against Australia.
#
Part of it is, you know, part of this death because of IPL, you can't, you know, it's
#
changed the incentives for everyone.
#
Let's, I mean, I don't know whether we can say this at this, sorry, this is my very
#
I have not interrupted you more than once.
#
It can't be the other way around.
#
So I don't know whether you can put it.
#
I actually wrote a column for the Hindustan Times, hopefully it'll be published tomorrow
#
day after, in which I've asked Rahul Dravid to tell the naysayers of IPL to sell it to
#
them and say, come on, what should they watch?
#
Whatever, you know, so that, that I said, let me try it this way.
#
Let me see if it works.
#
I don't know, you know, if it'll help or not.
#
That should be the ultimate sort of, what I call him, the most woke person, cricket person
#
Come on, Rahul Dravid is telling you to watch, watch properly.
#
It's a fantastic sport, but it's a different sport.
#
It's like comparing badminton and tennis, T20 and test, racket is there, net is there,
#
but you know, otherwise...
#
Or ball badminton and badminton, badminton.
#
I have not seen much ball badminton to be an expert, but still.
#
Now, since in the last few minutes, we have mentioned both decency and Rahul Dravid, which
#
Let me ask you a question about the importance of role models.
#
Like one of the things that we have, for example, that we see in tennis and we are very lucky
#
about tennis is that Federer and Nadal are both such incredible role models.
#
They're just fundamentally decent human beings and, you know, very wholesome in every way.
#
And we've been lucky to have people like that in Indian cricket as well, like Dravid and
#
But by and large, one of the things that strikes me is that, look, first of all, I think it
#
often becomes a mistake when you expect someone who has excelled in one thing to also have
#
something of value to contribute in other ways.
#
And I feel we are often unfair to cricketers, assuming that, you know, that their opinions
#
on anything, whether it's politics or where should you invest or any of that stuff matters
#
at all, because, you know, they've happened to excel in one thing.
#
And that is random distribution, that skill and even that cussedness and all those qualities
#
which get them there is random distribution.
#
It is, in fact, less likely they will be good at other things because they would have spent
#
So they are even they're less likely than the average person to know anything about
#
any of those other things.
#
So it's kind of unfair.
#
It also strikes me that many fans have this kind of more nuanced appreciation of the game
#
where it's not just about winning or defeat or these particular narratives that we beat
#
Pakistan or they are the enemy or whatever, whatever.
#
But they have these deeper nuanced narratives and that kind of an approach, it also seems
#
to me, is randomly distributed, making it therefore likely that, you know, a hardcore
#
fan will have that sort of approach than a cricketer himself, because all that a cricketer
#
himself really has got is the talent.
#
And I'm including that cussedness and all of the mentality as part of the talent, which
#
actually means that many cricketers like one, we make a mistake by placing that burden on
#
them that you have to be all of these things.
#
How is it for them to kind of cope?
#
I mean, the smart thing, in a sense, is just to stay away from everything else and just
#
I mean, people blame Sachin for not speaking up at various times for whatever.
#
But in a sense, I understand he's not commenting on any other domain or talking about anything
#
else because the one good thing he knows is cricket.
#
Why not just speak about that and stick there?
#
So how do sports people look at this?
#
Do they sort of have the self-awareness to also kind of be aware of this?
#
Like one of the things I talk about when I'm teaching my writing class is the importance
#
of humility in achieving excellence.
#
So even if someone like a Virat Kohli comes across as an extremely arrogant person, the
#
truth is that when you're in the nets and when you're putting in those thousands of
#
hours in the nets, you're actually incredibly humble because you're focusing on your mistakes.
#
You know, where is my footwork going wrong, where's my balance going wrong, blah, blah,
#
all those little nuances of the game.
#
And the self-awareness there when it comes to your field is incredible.
#
Does it extend to outside of that?
#
Does celebrity become a burden for the elite sports person?
#
And even the nature of that celebrity has changed in all the years that you've been
#
covering cricket from back in the 80s where, you know, you could just approach someone.
#
Like at one point you said that, you know, in the 80s when you were a student at Xavier's,
#
you interviewed so many big names and all you do is call up the hotel and say, you know,
#
leave a message for them and you'd get through.
#
And today like good luck doing that.
#
So how has that changed the nature of celebrity and how sports people deal with it and is
#
it incredibly difficult and just thinking allowed to add one more tangent to that.
#
It seems to me, and I think Harsha Bhogle when he was on my show once kind of mentioned
#
that so many of our cricketers from that generation were from the middle-class and they had these
#
kind of middle-class values about how they should behave and all of that, your kumles
#
and dravid's and laxman's and so on, and that where those values don't exist, it can
#
Like it strikes me that, you know, Pakistan through the 80s, 90s, 80s, we would see these
#
incredible talents come up and just blaze out.
#
And part of the reason could be that they didn't have a bedrock of anything else to
#
be able to cope with the sudden stardom and celebrity.
#
I'm sorry, I've kind of thrown in a bunch of sort of thoughts and questions.
#
I mean, I just have a very interesting story.
#
I know the whole thing of the sort of the cricketers coming from a particular socioeconomic
#
class is seen as a big factor as to how we behave.
#
I must tell you this story and then you can place it wherever.
#
This was in 91 or so, I was about to go to Sharjah to cover some tournament, my first
#
international tournament for midday, very excited and I had gone to meet Vinod Kamble's
#
They used to live in Kanjurma, sort of the suburb, just before Bhandup on that line.
#
And his father used to work in the garage at Geskin Williams.
#
So everyone knew Ganpa Kamble's son has made it, you know, they found out.
#
So I went to meet his family and saw their house and, you know, the usual story that
#
you go and talk to the parents and this and that.
#
So the mother asked me, she said, are you going to Sharjah?
#
And they had all the, I think the team had already left or they were leaving, he was
#
in the hotel, whatever.
#
So Kamble was not around, I just met the parents.
#
And his mother said, are you going to Gulf or whatever she called it.
#
So I said, yeah, yeah, I'm going.
#
She said, just tell Vinod that his mother said he should just behave himself and talk
#
You know, so to say that they come from there and that they don't have any kind of values,
#
it's a bit, I don't really agree.
#
You know, I don't think that's a point.
#
I don't think Harsha meant it in that sense.
#
Yeah, but I'm just, I'm just putting it out there to talk about this, to talk about this,
#
That's the first thing that came to mind.
#
And I remember that so clearly because I didn't write it in the story, I didn't do anything,
#
but it just stayed in my head.
#
And so that is one thing.
#
And you're saying that the sort of difficulties of celebrity, at the same time, there's a
#
huge advantage of being a celebrity, particularly a cricketer in India.
#
We've seen how that it has social media has been part of their whole kind of environment
#
And I mean, in no way denying what you're talking about, the humility when it comes
#
to their sport, you know, like you're saying about Kohli being completely dedicated to
#
He's completely dedicated to his craft.
#
But in my mind is because social media is involved.
#
If you're selling things on social media, using your name and your fame and whatever,
#
then for people to expect you to talk about other things outside of cricket, because you're
#
turning up to promote a movie, a movie star, a product or whatever, then it's almost like
#
that the fans have a right to question you and what do you have to say about this?
#
And it usually happens in every country's most prominent sport across the world.
#
Their most prominent athletes are asked these questions.
#
You know, I don't think anyone's is going to ask the English cricketers about Brexit.
#
I was thinking about this, you know, about the political.
#
No one's going to ask Joe Root about things about Brexit.
#
But you have the Marcus Rashford story as to what he's doing in terms of the issues that
#
So I think a certain self awareness of maybe not political issues, but I think maybe social
#
deprivation around them in India.
#
You would expect players to understand it and feel it a lot more because they are surrounded
#
by that kind of an environment where they have like toughed their way out all the way
#
So I'm thinking that if you are in the social media circus, if you are in that entire cavalcade
#
that is going on, you can't pretend that there is nothing else that you will be asked
#
You can be a role model of your sport, absolutely fine.
#
You would just be grateful if you didn't.
#
Again, when I was younger, I thought it was quite cool for athletes to be abusing each
#
other and saying whatever they want and, you know, general doing their and it's largely
#
You don't see women athletes go bananas usually to do that.
#
You know, it was like, oh, they're having a fight and Jagda Ho Gaya and Panga Ho Gaya
#
and all that kind of thing.
#
But as you grow older and as like, basically, I don't have kids, my friends had kids.
#
They said, we don't want to see these guys abusing on TV because our children are going
#
to look at them and do this.
#
I remember my nephew taking off his, he was one, some seven, eight, taking off his banyan
#
and waving it around his head, you know, so in response and he kept asking me, he said,
#
Masi, what is he saying?
#
I said, don't worry about what he's saying, you know, after that Lord's shirt waving
#
You know, by and large, I think in Indian cricket, particularly as, as when it comes
#
to behaving well, when it comes to generally not being sort of generally not wearing their
#
bad boyness on their sleeves all the time.
#
I think our players are very, very good at.
#
You saw it in the series against Australia, they didn't have to do anything.
#
They didn't have to be.
#
I mean, I find sledging to be purposeless, meaningless, I've written lots about it.
#
I think it's just absolutely falto and it's pointless.
#
And there's so much of it, like it has no, if it just goes away ahead.
#
I mean, SS Das once said in that 2001 series, he said, I don't understand what the Australians
#
All I could hear them was going fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa in my face.
#
I didn't pick up a single word.
#
So they could have been saying whatever they wanted, but I couldn't understand anything,
#
So in the sense of being the role models around their particular sport, I think they are very
#
They are, they sort of literally are within the lines, you know, within the boundaries.
#
I don't know if for all his mischievousness, I don't know if Rishabh Pant would have done
#
what Quentin de Kock did two days ago.
#
You know, I don't think so.
#
So, so we can discuss that later.
#
I completely miss Quentin de Kock.
#
What did Quentin de Kock do?
#
Quentin de Kock sort of signaled to his fielder.
#
This was Fakhar Zaman, was basically coast cruising and going to get going to get Pakistan
#
It's like he told the fielder at the other end, the bowler's end.
#
And actually he meant it.
#
So, so Fakhar Zaman stopped.
#
He wasn't going as fast.
#
He thought he had to like really make a sprint for it.
#
He turned around to see.
#
He turned out to look at the other end.
#
He was running towards where de Kock was and he turned around to look because he saw de
#
Kock pointing the other way, de Kock ran him out.
#
So it's basically the answer.
#
They now they're talking about you are gamesmanship, yeah, yeah, gamesmanship, deliberately trying
#
So they're saying, no, no, it's fine.
#
You didn't try to mislead the batsmen and so on.
#
So I'm saying for all Rishabh Pant's mischievousness, I don't think he would do that, you know.
#
So I'm saying in that context, I think role model wise in terms of what the rules are,
#
how cricket is meant to be run, how it's meant to be organized.
#
I think the Indian players are very good.
#
They at the most they'll appeal a little bit.
#
But now because of DRS, you can appeal as much as you want.
#
You know, so that way they're fine.
#
Should they not be asked about things outside their domain?
#
But if they're going to offer you their opinions or other things like biscuits and clothes
#
and the latest motorcycle, then you would have to say because you are present in social
#
media in such an active way, you will be asked other things.
#
Your fans will ask you because you are engaging in this chatter with them.
#
You want them to buy stuff.
#
You want to become an influencer.
#
You want to you get paid for putting up tweets, you know, so which is why that whole Hardik
#
Pandya, Kehl Rahul thing became like one big burst up and blow up when they went to Karan
#
So that will happen because in social media, if you're engaging and talking to people
#
all the time, they will sometimes ask you the uncomfortable question.
#
If you're not there at all, I mean, you're living your life out in public virtually,
#
you know, you're seeing people getting married, babies, family.
#
Fans love it, you know, but that's the that's the other side of it.
#
And yeah, yeah, I feel a little bad for Rahul in that particular instance, because what
#
are the poor guy to do?
#
He was just sitting there, got dragged into it, but it's kind of interesting because,
#
you know, I think modern social media works in two directions.
#
And one direction, of course, is that cricketers will learn to have filters about what they
#
So it is unlikely that a Hardik Pandya of the future will make that kind of mistake again.
#
And the other angle is that it are, but who's the manager who let him go on the show?
#
My first question is, who's the manager who told him to go?
#
Anyone in the right mind would say, boss, be careful.
#
You know, this is not your thing.
#
You will just be in over your head.
#
The manager is saying, go, go, you will get a lot of numbers, but you know, it will increase
#
When you're a young star, you think you're never going to be over your head.
#
As if the young star will go with his manager, doesn't tell him to go.
#
You know, my whole thing is who's advising these guys, who's giving these guys advice,
#
who's telling them these things, you know, and because this generation is so much out
#
there because of social media, but maybe they don't care.
#
Maybe they see what these two old people are talking about this.
#
No, but there's actually a countervailing angle here.
#
One angle, of course, is that you need a filter because shit like this happens and you don't
#
But the other angle is that social media actually rewards authenticity and when done right,
#
Like Ashwin's YouTube channel, for example.
#
We didn't have to do any work for months.
#
All the men have to do.
#
It could, in fact, be asked who needs Sharda Ugra if cricketers are going to start doing
#
When you lose boss, you're not going to be putting out any videos now, are you?
#
Yeah, no, actually, he might, but no, but it's very interesting because one of the things
#
that I think creators have realised in this.
#
As you say, Mumbai cricket chances, no.
#
One of the things I think creators have realised in this new sort of age of social media and
#
all of this is that authenticity is valued.
#
So this kind of goes against that, that on the one hand, you want Hardik Pandya to SDFU
#
as it were, but on the other hand, you do want Ashwin to speak his mind out and be completely
#
open and not have filters.
#
So it's kind of an interesting challenge there.
#
So, you know, we left your personal journey when you were a child, that's shocking.
#
So let's take a quick commercial break.
#
And when we come back, because remember, you are the focus.
#
So we shall come back and cleverly moved on to Max Bihaji.
#
Yeah, but you know, it's almost a thrilling moment to find that, you know, in that one
#
year when, which is the only year that I watched the sport, you were also watching the sport.
#
It's almost like a thrilling connect, you know, who would have thought that Max Bihaji
#
will form this kind of a thread.
#
So let's take a quick commercial break and we'll see you on the other side.
#
Long before I was a podcaster, I was a writer.
#
In fact, chances are that many of you first heard of me because of my blog, India Uncut,
#
which was active between 2003 and 2009 and became somewhat popular at the time.
#
I love the freedom the form gave me and I feel I was shaped by it in many ways.
#
I exercise my writing muscle every day and was forced to think about many different things
#
because I wrote about many different things.
#
Well, that phase in my life ended for various reasons and now it is time to revive it.
#
Only now I'm doing it through a newsletter.
#
I have started the India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com where I will write
#
regularly about whatever catches my fancy.
#
I'll write about some of the themes I cover in this podcast and about much else.
#
So please do head on over to indiancut.substack.com and subscribe.
#
Once you sign up, each new installment that I write will land up in your email inbox.
#
You don't need to go anywhere.
#
So subscribe now for free.
#
The India Uncut newsletter at indiancut.substack.com.
#
Welcome back to The Scene In The Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Sharda Ogra about her delightful life, a brief sporting career and how she
#
kind of moved on into journalism from there.
#
So far, we know that you're a really good fielder and terrific fielder and middle order
#
Like it seems to me you were in your colony team, what say Atul Baderdei was to the Indian
#
Easily droppable at any point.
#
I'm already feeling bad.
#
We are treating Baderdei like he's Sion or something.
#
Don't even mess with Baderdei, one of the unluckiest Indian players ever.
#
Because 10 years later, if he appeared, he'd be an IPL superstar.
#
And like someone in Indian Express wrote a great piece that his name is the perfect name.
#
That's what his spelling was.
#
Oh God, what a thing to write.
#
So let's kind of go back to your young years.
#
And you know, so from that colony, you finally get into Xavier's and you're doing history
#
I'm interested in this that, you know, when I was chatting with our mutual friend, Prem
#
in the episode, he pointed out about how part of his love for storytelling came from the
#
fact that when he was a kid, people were telling stories all the time.
#
And would it be fair to say that, you know, you're taking history already indicates a
#
prior interest in storytelling.
#
And because you're winning prizes for magazine edited by Pritish Nandi and all that, one
#
can assume you already like to write.
#
So tell me a little bit about the young storyteller, writer Sharda before cricket happens.
#
I think what I love most about history as a subject was the stories that were told around
#
My mother happens to be a writer and a translator herself and the other absolutely so tangential.
#
It's not funny, but I always use it is my great grand uncle was a very famous Urdu poet.
#
So I am to fully advantage of all these things, you know, so and I am the one that's just
#
sort of descended in terms of standard.
#
And now I'm only in English and all this Urdu Hindi high, high level, high level writing.
#
So my mother worked for Amarchitra Katha.
#
She used to translate and she used to write scripts.
#
So I remember that happening all the time.
#
I remember comics coming, which had her name script by Mira Agra was there and stories,
#
you know, we used to travel like all kids of that generation.
#
We did not go to Pattaya or Bali or wherever we went where our grandparents used to stay.
#
So I used to travel to Allahabad and to Narsingpur where my mother's parents went Allahabad
#
Again, houses full of books and many, many, many stories and the towns and the places
#
themselves were stories.
#
My mother's father, my Nana, he was in the freedom movement.
#
So we heard stories about that, not in a boastful kind of way, but just sort of, you know, you're
#
hearing adults talking and they're recounting, you're hearing them recount the day Gandhi
#
was shot and what happened in that household at the time.
#
You know, you're recounting the day what happened to my mother's brother, my mama,
#
my most favorite uncle who introduced me to cricket, actually took me to my first match.
#
He went for an RSS meeting what his father did to him was like unbelievable after that.
#
So you heard all these other stories about my father's father was in the civil service
#
So you heard stories about how he would ride out into the countryside and have a tent and
#
set up camp and do all these things that workaholics in my family like nobody's business.
#
It's just like a family trait, willing to work long hours and think that that was the
#
way life is to be lived by in that sense.
#
So all these stories that were there and because you read Amarchita Kathas and you heard stories,
#
I always got taken into I had a very good history teacher at school as well.
#
Now remember this is an SSE school and it's a very equitable kind of a school.
#
So you've got kids of all types in the class and all of us are learning about Tanaji and
#
Shivaji and the Kumbhalgarh Fort and we are reading all these stories.
#
I just loved all that stuff and we had a teacher I can't remember whether which year it was
#
we had gone to one of these you know trips that you'll go it must have been some like
#
bussy in Fort or some very close by would have gone and they said now imagine at that
#
time what this would have been like and that kind of just switched my brain on into imagining
#
things with the imagination that it's the things that you hear and that the stories
#
That's why I took history.
#
Now when I joined St. Xavier's College, I did 11th, 12th and then I took three papers
#
history, three papers English and anthropology for the express reason that the professors
#
of anthropology and English were legends in St. Xavier's College.
#
Eunice D'Souza who was the English teacher and Father Marcia who was the anthropology
#
second year anthropology person.
#
So I said I have to get maximum that I can out of them I really did not want to study
#
either English literature or anthropology but I just wanted to be in that class and
#
I mean Eunice taught us in the second year and I remember she was so angry that I had
#
left English and I chose history six papers on the last in the final year, but I always
#
knew I was going to do history because it had all these the history that interested
#
me was much more modern sort of post Indian independence post colonization.
#
I remember strangely being intrigued by the Vietnam War stories, you know, you would join
#
the USIS it was free so you join USIS you go to be a British Council Library you do
#
all these kind of things you get your sources of information from there.
#
I remember going to the USIS and my friend and I went and watch West Side Story, you
#
know, this is a free film shows at some point you go in the auditorium and you see a classic
#
We saw West Side Story at the end of it we came out to say they died.
#
What is this story that they died at the end, you know, we were just traumatized by the
#
fact that they had died.
#
You know, we thought it will be like some happy sort of kind of a story.
#
So it was sort of this kind of storytelling that I took to and because my mother used
#
to write and she always why don't you write the story why didn't you write and I would
#
write really bad crappy horrible endless bad stories I would write but I would write them,
#
you know, I got good marks in English composition in school.
#
But what is that school that I'm telling you about remember it's a room in the teachers
#
cutting hair and giving cake recipes to your mother and making stitching dresses and all
#
So it was that kind of a thing and I always knew that no matter what I did also remember
#
at that time scope neta if you did arts to scopey hair in a scope was a big thing for
#
Nothing is scope of arts.
#
You study more you do is is was a big thing in my family.
#
They wanted me to do to join the civil service.
#
I didn't want to give so much exam and all that I couldn't study that man.
#
I said no, no, I'm not.
#
I wanted to seriously take up library science as a kuch nahi hoga I will take up library
#
science and full I'll spend my life surrounded by books and that'll be my job and what if
#
it doesn't work out if the journalism or advertising doesn't work out and the other
#
joke I tell people is we had to as humanity students you had two choices journalism or
#
advertising advertising you sold biscuits little bit low-class not a good cause journalism
#
was higher cause so that's why you decided to cover cricket which is like absolutely
#
high cause of all you know most meaningless profession going and you wanted to write about
#
sports so that's how I took to writing and again lots of reading lots of listening a
#
huge huge I mean I remember this so clearly one on one of these train journeys we went
#
on at the ah wheeler bookshop my mother came back with a book with a little book very excited
#
cricket heroes or something like that it was when almost the size not an a4 sheet slightly
#
smaller it had stories about we know monkard allen davidson of course gary sobers doll
#
bradman all the big ones but it had all this bapu nadkarni and his maiden overs one chapter
#
was on that and you remember reading this they are all stories you know there are tales
#
that people tell you about the stuff that happened so this is part of folklore these
#
are it's almost like reading about older old cricket and what happened at that time was
#
like reading folklore and I remember in alabad being introduced to somebody who was a commentator
#
again I thought that was just like the greatest thing is the radio skandgupt the hindi commentator
#
skandgupt I was like speechless I couldn't see anything because he's the his is the
#
voice that you heard in the radio telling you what's happening in a particular game
#
so that was that was sort of the whole and fortunately for me I was not a very very good
#
student so I was not like first class I was like fifth sixth seventh I made a little pressure
#
from home to be any other kind of thing you know they knew that that was my liking and
#
that's what I did and it was just allowed to be you know and you're saying allowed
#
now in a way that sounding that it's almost sounding gratuitous that oh my parents are
#
but that is what when you look at the lives of other people that is what happens and you
#
don't know how you'd have responded under other circumstances you know you realize how
#
lucky you are in that sense my brother the non-cricket fan was very good at maths and
#
science and he did MBA but my brother also is a thinker by himself because he did maths
#
and Sanskrit in his BA those are the two papers that he took I don't know why he took them
#
but he just chose maths and Sanskrit along with economics and he was allowed to do that
#
at RUYA college what I said you went to Magu college I went to Saint Xavier's so that was
#
the other listen he's a rich banker you are the poor writers so exactly so that's that's
#
where it started from and I think the choice of journalism was obviously there because
#
it was the only sort of scope sort of choice that there was I joined the Xavier's Institute
#
of Communication to do their diploma I failed the feature writing class which I say so very
#
proudly that was like evening course and in the morning what do you do if you're staying
#
in a student's hostel you have to somehow make up an excuse and not be in you know so
#
I signed up for MA which I never attended I went two days I think to Kalina campus and
#
I took Russian because it was the cheapest language to learn at the time so I learned
#
a little bit of Russian for about four five months and I entered that you know Indian
#
Express you have these interns that they sign up every time so I went through that whole
#
routine me and a couple of friends of mine we went through this whole routine and when
#
Indian Express picked I remember the Ervel Manezes he was asking me he said who are your
#
favorite writers so he said what do you read so like Arthur Haley and all no Arthur Haley
#
no who wrote those novels Airport and all that yeah I said no no I read John Steinbeck
#
which was true I used to read I was a big fan of Steinbeck so so I was saying like what
#
is this Arthur Haley anyway I didn't make that I didn't make that class I didn't make
#
the intern cut for the Indian Express in turn I was my friend and two of the other friends
#
got in I didn't they were more sad than I was happy that they had got it and then like
#
I the story that I've told in a lot of places is that my friend's mother saw this ad in
#
midday for a sports reporter which has never appeared before or since ever in that time
#
I said why don't you apply you have done all these interviews you've gotten you've got
#
pie lines in afternoon newspaper apply apply so I applied and from that day on that's all
#
that I've done in the sense of being a sports journalist and I take great pride in the fact
#
that I worked for midday they've just broken a big story today also so I'm damn happy what
#
story have they broken today about how at Mumbai at Sahara Airport they're just not
#
so hard whatever the new airport is they're trying they are they are letting international
#
arrivals escape through without going through quarantine they've basically got recordings
#
Fala Na Damkala they've just basically like blown everything out of the water good for
#
So tell me about those midday years because it strikes me that that's also an interesting
#
place to work in the sense that is different from the others one in that age of course
#
you have midday and afternoon competing with each other and there is you know pressure
#
on midday that make yourself stand out and the headline has to be like this and your
#
strap has to be a tailor and all that so one there is that aspect where you have to sort
#
of enhance the dramatic as it were which in any case you know is something that happens
#
in sport and the other aspect of course is that your newspaper is coming out later in
#
the day it's not there first thing in the morning so everybody is already kind of gotten
#
the match report and what has happened and all of that so how did all of that kind of
#
shape the sort of work that you had to do?
#
Midday was a great place to work because it had of course it had this sort of you know
#
cutting edge creaming page three photographs I don't know if you remember the page three
#
photograph the page three photograph was supposed to replicate the UK tabloid model of the page
#
three photograph which is the topless but of course you cannot have topless in India
#
so you had one glamorous photo of one woman I remember that yeah I mean you're just looking
#
at it and saying what is this and all that anyway but this was also the age Amit I don't
#
know whether you remember that in not that you would have gone through women's magazines
#
eves weekly or feminine or something they used to have a section that says send us an advertisement
#
or a piece of writing or this thing that is sexist and anti-women say and there's to be
#
clippings of it and they should like call out the advertiser or call out the publication
#
or whatever it used to run like it was seriously done and when you look at it now and you just
#
see what's happening all over the paper oh my god what so obviously that was like the
#
first say 10, 15, 20 years of the women's movement in India and it was a very very important
#
issue and the topics that were talked about in those magazines were very serious and dowry
#
deaths and everything and all the laws and I remember reading all of that stuff anyway
#
then we go into this midday which is irreverent as hell and you had these things of headlines
#
and you had to sell and sport was actually seen as their big almost one of their they
#
had to be their strongest departments but they had only one person in it so Neel Waria
#
who then quit and joined Times of India and then there was me that joined in but the wonderful
#
thing about the place was that it was as democratic as you can imagine you know it wasn't there
#
wasn't a formal structure you were just thrown to the dogs dogs I mean whatever you're just
#
thrown to the thrown into the deep end not dog sorry and you had to just sort of learn
#
on the job virtually you learnt on the job when it came to you doing an interview getting
#
a phone number how do you do this how do you do that and even with the way that you presented
#
your report what you talked about and you were told this all the time that the morning
#
don't tell me what happened tell me something else away from what happened and that became
#
great training because it then gave you a chance to sort of step back from the mundane
#
part of what could be mundane but it was always more difficult so everyone is sitting down
#
when the game is over and if you have typewriters you'll be typing or you'll be just chatting
#
and you had to go around then and try and talk to somebody try and find something else
#
do something so it gave you a way to sort of think differently and work a little bit
#
differently away from what was the convention at the time which helped much later on because
#
there I worked four years at midday and Prem with whom you had spoken last time also joined
#
midday and we had just a complete mania I remember like complete craziness because I
#
was just talking to him the other day and I remember I did a profile in a section on
#
Sunday midday which is called off track which is like an unusual subject it's like a feature
#
Sunday piece on a horse that was a favorite to win the derby and so Prem is telling me
#
yeah it was supposed to be like Seabiscuit I said you never said to me anything like
#
Seabiscuit you just told me go and write a profile of the horse I was just going to go
#
and profile the horse starfire girl so I had written a profile I was quite when I looked
#
at it like I have all my clippings so whatever people say about not sort of trying to be
#
in the background and you know making sure you don't get noticed I have kept all my
#
clippings I have all my stories from India today on PDF files saved and kept I'm like
#
a this thing I made sure I had pictures taken of me at various places which I wanted you
#
know in that sense before the selfie and the camera because I want to remember what I was
#
able to do not as a way of oh look at me this is what I did but this is that experience
#
that I had and I want to remember that in a photograph so it's not so when people ask
#
me do you have photographs of your time I said yes not so but I do I do keep I do I
#
do want to have that memory of the great things that I was able to experience and work in
#
and write about and so on so the midday experience when Nikhil Laxman came in particularly was
#
to tell us how to look at things differently how to look at a sports event away from its
#
conventional sort of side and how do you interview people and what do you do and we got sent
#
to do absolutely mad things like this profile of a horse and I remember I did a profile
#
of M.A.M Ramaswamy he was like such a foreboding and such a formidable kind of a person I said
#
why have I been sent to interview him I was like just terrified that I would get it completely
#
wrong but you went there and you did it you know and because it was almost like a very
#
anti-judgmental place as well you felt completely at home so whatever else happened in the outside
#
world you came into an office environment that was very secure where there were a lot
#
of women around one of the women was in charge of the desk she was one of the chief subs
#
the crime reporter was female the civic reporter was female so it was no big deal that we were
#
female sports reporters at the time me and then the other the others Hemal join Hemal
#
Anusha Prajwal you know it was not odd at all for us to be there what people looked
#
at it from the outside didn't matter because at so midday in the sense was our home and
#
we felt comfortable we felt sort of secure so we were just glad to be there and that
#
gave you a lot of confidence going ahead you know in whatever else you did they sent me
#
to Wimbledon they sent me to Sharjah to cover this one of those Coca-Cola type tournaments
#
but that was the time the South Africa were re-admitted into international cricket and
#
Kuldeep Lal from AFP and I went to meet Makaduj and Deccan who landed in Dubai got some quotes
#
of them and etc etc and because it was a morning paper you could file the story and your exclusive
#
was page one it was there you had spoken to them you went at two o'clock you filed the
#
story at five or six o'clock in the morning and it was published in midday so it was that
#
as well it helped you you had that advantage of time in the sense that if you ideally it
#
helped for say test matches in England or football that was not covered that much as
#
it is now it was not a part of like a newspaper space as it is now but cricket certainly was
#
and the grand slams so Wimbledon when I sent to Wimbledon I had to make sure I did the
#
last matches of that day so when Jim Courier lost I covered that match you know that was
#
the that was the story that you got so you got the last match of the of center court
#
or court man or whatever so it was a good experience because in a way sometimes you
#
would be tired that you are trying to find this new angle all the time but at the same
#
time when you look back and think it was just a it was a great learning and it was such
#
a good atmosphere to work in that you never felt judged or slighted or whatever it was
#
like you were part of this whole team and everybody was on your side and Prem and I
#
were remembering Tariq Ansari who was in charge at the time I'm thinking about what a cool
#
boss he was because we could say anything we could be shouting and say go away we can't
#
hear we'll be screaming on the phone you're not giving us ads it was complete pandemonium
#
and the press was running parallel to you know there was a plywood partition separating
#
the editorial office and the actual printing machine so you could hear the printing machine
#
rattling and the floor shaking when the as the paper was being printed and I remember
#
Tariq Ansari sending me a message this Dubai Sharjah was my first tour and I came back
#
I finished it was the last day next morning I was going to fly they said there's a message
#
for you Telex message and it was from Tariq Ansari and it said you have done so well for
#
us we are so proud of you congratulations I mean who gets that from their management
#
person you know he was like the he was the CEO or whatever he was of the paper he sent
#
this to a junior who was just who's on her first tour so you really felt loved in that
#
organization you felt appreciated you know I believe it's changed completely it's become
#
a different kind of a paper but it was a great great place to work I was really really fortunate
#
yeah I'm I'm struck by a bunch of things let me first sort of ask you about the craft
#
like I remember when I look back on myself as a young sports writer I just cringe at
#
the kind of stuff I would write because as a no don't laugh it's like that with everyone
#
no no because we all laugh at what rubbish we used to write yeah what rubbish we used
#
to write and I'm not laughing at you I'm laughing with you I know yeah it's it's a shared moment
#
like Max PRG yes yeah so bless you Max yeah and I think one of the fundamental reasons
#
that happens is that you're young you're just kind of falling in love with the language
#
and writing and all of that you want to show off how good you are you know and you really
#
become a good writer when you strip the ego away and that's something that you learn over
#
time and of course the ego is still there because you want to do a great story but you
#
manage to sort of not keep showing off I mean I remember in my early days in Wizarded and
#
Crickenford just embarrassing and luckily you know Sambit our former mutual colleague
#
was just such a fantastic editor in terms of you know just letting it play out because
#
he would have known that okay I have all these young people who do all these interesting
#
things but they will grow out of it eventually so and while you were sort of describing the
#
hectic routine at midday where you're all the time going out and doing stories and by
#
the way I spoke to Prem before we had this conversation and he told me this lovely story
#
of how you know one week it was decided that let's do a horse racing special and you did
#
this massive two page spread on Pezi Shroff which got Pezi Shroff into trouble because
#
he was so candid I forgot it yeah he just like went for it yeah yeah yeah yeah almost
#
like he's on the scene and the unseen that sub no filter sub bhol do and got into trouble
#
and Prem was raving about this graphic that you did and this is early 90s perhaps about
#
this graphic where you've got a graphic of a race course and at different points in that
#
you have arrows where you're describing you know you interviewed a trainer and you're
#
describing exactly what the strategy is at that particular point of the race and where
#
all of that is happening and I thought that's just fantastic but you know leaving that kind
#
of aside and if you have the PDF actually you know all the stories that we are mentioning
#
in this if you have the PDF send them to me I'll just if you don't mind I'll upload them
#
so our listeners can yeah yeah whatever if you have them midday I have actual clippings
#
I have like rock like paper cuttings I don't have PDF of the India Today story there ah
#
lovely lovely anyway so to sort of ramble back to the question because this is not like
#
a horse racing track where you can't go sideways and around and into the stands and then come
#
back all of that lovely I love it yeah do you think that having to do stories every
#
day you know having to all the time produce produce produce do you think that actually
#
helped your writing a lot because then that means you have less time to get self-conscious
#
less time to sort of kind of work on the craft you just have to produce produce produce you
#
keep doing that and obviously that constant alteration just makes you better at what you
#
do and also that practice of the gaze that because you're in middle you can't cover
#
what everyone else does so your gaze is different you know did all of that help you and take
#
me a little bit through your thinking of how your craft evolved interesting what you say
#
that nearly I never even thought of it I don't think of it as a craft in that sense maybe
#
it's just sort of reflects of not trying to be too self kind of navel gazing all the
#
time what you're seeing about the fact that you're doing content and you're producing
#
producing producing is maybe it helps you because you just you have to just shut yourself
#
out and just do the job we used to have a section every day it had to be a single column
#
photograph and of the previous day's sport and it to have a clever caption with it you
#
know just a sort of very midday type and it used to be just death trying to think of things
#
every day and I remember when I used to come from the hostel in Colaba all the way you
#
see you've got the bus at five o'clock in the morning because you have to go and the
#
that's when your shift starts basically around six you are in office in the morning and I'm
#
trying to think it was called sports I've forgotten the name it used to just be in your
#
head that you have to think of something and all the time you're doing it and then you
#
have to just regurgitate and eventually what happened is that the chief sabu just tweak
#
it a little bit and it will be perfect whatever that little picture was so it became practice
#
it became also a little bit of almost understanding as to how you frame the story because at that
#
time you had to print galleys on a page and every time that your story was too long it
#
was very simple we used to say peeche se kato the bottom most lines would just get cut off
#
so it didn't matter how you had formed the phrase what you had done what was structure
#
they didn't care they just cut it off from the bottom if you wanted to save your last
#
line then you have to cut three four lines upar se and find that so it was almost like
#
a it was like fitting things into a box so you became very very pragmatic about it of
#
course that doesn't mean you got very antsy when your copy was cut even 25 years later
#
you get very agitated and you said what is this this is like proper prose and you're
#
turning you have no appreciation of art but still it just became very very practical that
#
that you had to remember what was superfluous had to be put right at the bottom virtually
#
and what is important had to be put on the top of the thing and the other good thing
#
that worked for me I mean Hindu of course Hindu was another so I had various different
#
experiences when it came to writing midday Hindu India today and then cricket for is
#
that the requirements and the demands are different so you learned how to adjust as
#
to how you wrote in Hindu I used to pull off this little my I thought it was a big trick
#
that I knew after the first day I would know what kind of the sub editor was on duty at
#
night who was a guy was good so you knew if you could slip in a few phrases have a little
#
bit of fun with language say something cheeky if that was a week to do it if there was a
#
guy on desk who'd laugh and appreciate it then you just went for it you didn't do too
#
much but you just put enough little bits of what you thought were gems or what you thought
#
they were gems who remembers and you get away with it and one week there would be someone
#
who had no time for all this just give us the facts forget all your stylishness and
#
all that the hell with you give us the facts so then you made sure you just give them the
#
facts and then when I joined India today I was told I don't know who told this to me
#
I think it was Rohit Brijnath if I'm not wrong or maybe it was one of the India today people
#
told me said do what you want for the first two paragraphs in the third paragraph in 25
#
words tell us what the story is about you want to do drama in the first two paragraphs
#
you want to talk about birds skies clouds do it by the third paragraph we have to know
#
what the story is and it doesn't mean that your first two paragraphs are 300 words each
#
your first two paragraphs have to be short because again you're dealing with a specific
#
small amount of space and page and so on so it was fun learning it in that sense and you
#
also learnt about how to be which of course went completely out of the window in Kirkin
#
for because it's the internet you can publish as much as you want so it's been disciplined
#
with your language and I remember doing this in India today that I would just be so I was
#
really tense all the time because it was a new job and I'd moved to Delhi and everything
#
and I would be writing and at the end of it I felt like I'd written nothing because I
#
had got so much information and you use 30% of it in the story and I am so bad I have
#
to tell you this that in one of my email I have a folder of unedited stories of all the
#
unedited stories that I sent to India today which they then turned into what is a fairly
#
readable thing eventually at the end and a very very good desk they had a superb desk
#
in India today who knew exactly how to keep the essence of your fun or your style or whatever
#
your voice so to speak but all the bullshit they would just cut out you know all that
#
nonsense frivolity and all they would just throw it out of the window and those people
#
at the desk are still my friends I am in a whatsapp group with them they were so so qualified
#
and so adept at their work and so good at it that each of them I used to tell them they
#
could have run the midday news desk page each of them could have run that newspaper really
#
I headed the desk in the paper there were such good such high quality people on the
#
desk over there but I kept my unedited stories baba I should be able to read them later and
#
you know what you sound like you sound like Sachin Tendulkar talking about all the runs
#
he could have made now that you said it yeah now that you said it you are the Sachin Tendulkar
#
of Indian sports writing we've put you in your place yeah exactly no no no I had this
#
other crazy thing so at one time some interview I was doing at Tendulkar I interviewed him
#
after 10 years and literally that was like it was great because all 10 years ka bhaada
#
sa nikal hoon and interviewed him because he had become a so when I was in the Hindu
#
I mostly did first class cricket and I did volleyball and table tennis and everything
#
and I barely did very little Indian cricket and so from 1993 to 2003 I had never spoken
#
to him in another thing but in 2003 he gave me a fabulous interview fabulous yeah and
#
in which he basically said like all competitors I only will lose to my children nobody else
#
yeah I can only bear losing to my children but not anybody else so that is the same competitiveness
#
kind of thing that is that is there among a lot of other things at that time so anyhow
#
yeah so where was I yeah so I had this unedited stories it's still there I should read it
#
I'll probably I'll vomit when I look at those stories now when I look at it but that
#
file is still there so I did a story on the Formula One guy on Narayan Kartikeya and whatever
#
and I kept all that all that material then in Cricket 4 my problem was with speed I couldn't
#
write fast enough you know I used to take five hours to write a story then in the time
#
that I finished as in five hours not a match report match report was done no even match
#
report would take that much time then it was down to two hours so I was alright I was within
#
the acceptable boundaries of Cricket 4 turnaround time but five hours too bad I remember Andrew
#
McClash in in London in the news desk 2011 World Cup I was sitting and writing my story
#
on Tendulkar and Strauss's two innings and that tied game and Nasher sitting at 12 o'clock
#
in the night and I said Nasher I'm just filing said yeah take your time in this very Cricket
#
4 relaxed okay I'm here to take nonsense just do it said it so it took me that much
#
time in midnight at 5 o'clock in the morning and I used to send the story so it was it
#
was great in the sense that you had because you had so you had such a range different
#
type of writing that you had to do that you were able to you had to adapt and keep moving
#
and keep switching it around and sort of being flexible in in in what you wrote and when
#
it came to sort of saying finding your voice or whatever then you sort of discuss much
#
later on in the in the piece you kind of really say okay this is what I really want to say
#
I've spent 20 years of my life doing this now in the last 10 or 5 or whatever this is
#
what I have to say this is what I think is important and you learn those things as you
#
go on or you in your mind you it's come to say what you really want to talk about no
#
I think you're being harsh on yourself it's not just a 5 or 10 years I remember reading
#
you from the late 90s and you were always just fantastic a question sort of taking off
#
from something that you just said like first and aside like you you mentioned at the tabloids
#
how they would snip from the bottom yeah in the in the third of my webinars that I do
#
in my writing course I talk about six different forms of writing and the first of them is
#
the tabloid or even news agencies also follow that you know your single sentence paras and
#
all that and it's called a string of sausages because you can cut it from the bottom so
#
that's literally what it's yeah and and it's very functional if I was a tabloid editor
#
that's also what I would demand of my writers so I can't write like that or read like that
#
but it's a function of the form and of course the last of my six forms is a literary novel
#
so we kind of look at the imperatives of different forms now my question there is and while you
#
were talking it also struck me that you've actually also worked in all these different
#
forms where you know like I put up an essay which are linked from the show notes talking
#
about how firstly form can shape your content and then it can also shape who you are because
#
you know your content shapes that for example if you are doing say five minute interviews
#
you don't really have to go too deep you can ask one or two surface questions if you're
#
talking to an author you don't even have to read the book if you're doing a three hour
#
interview you've got to read 30 books and you've got to kind of not just that one thing
#
and so the form forces you to go deeper shapes the content and because you're going deeper
#
it then shapes a writer as well it shapes what you're looking at like you spoke at midday
#
how one of the imperatives is find something different so you're looking deeper you're
#
looking at different things you're looking at the human stories you're going and meeting
#
Kamli's parents and you know all of that is happening when you think about all the forms
#
that you worked in like you've done your tabloid thing in midday but it's a tabloid thing with
#
a difference because whereas the form doesn't seem to allow for much creativity the form
#
seems to demand a certain kind of function just give the information the fact that the
#
space that you're in you're competing there's a certain kind of journalism you're doing
#
you're looking for something that is sensational even sensational even noisy yeah you use
#
those words not me and so that works in interesting ways that shapes the content and the kind
#
of thinking you do in interesting ways you know India today would have had a similar
#
sort of effect trick-and-fool like you said you can completely spread out there are no
#
sort of limits in terms of how much space you have and all of that so you know one how
#
important is the form to shaping what a writer does and how they look because it strikes
#
me that if you weren't in midday let's say you get through the Indian Express internship
#
or whatever you know you're doing a different kind of writing do you then go in a different
#
kind of direction and I know you can't obviously sit and think of counterfactuals about yourself
#
but it's it's all these kind of happy or unhappy accidents make us who we are so what do you
#
think of that what do you think of form and what do you think about like you know so many
#
young talented cricket writers I read today as well and you know who are getting to spread
#
out in places like cricket for and who are even doing things on YouTube or whatever I
#
mean in terms of form there is so much open to you how have you seen that sort of evolving
#
like there was a conventional cricket writer like I remember when I came into cricket writing
#
and there were a bunch of young writers at that time you know Rahul Bhattacharya and
#
so on and we'd go to all the press boxes and I'd feel this resentment towards me and one
#
day one veteran writer from the Hindu told me that listen I had to cover the local Ranji
#
matches for 15 years before they let me anywhere near a test match and you young whippersnapper
#
have just come and you're like covering international matches and all of that and how has that kind
#
of landscape changed and how does it then change the kind of writing that people do
#
I think it's changed completely you know what the what the Hindu reporter was telling you
#
that I got so much time and all that I mean I would think that you know I could sort of
#
crib the same in the sense but not in midday because midday just threw you everywhere you
#
wanted to do a test match you went and did a test match that kind of so again had I gone
#
to Indian Express I heard my friends were there I heard stories about the desk and how
#
it was a very formal sort of a kind of an environment my friend didn't want to be on the desk she
#
wanted to be a reporter so she had to leave the desk whereas she was very good with language
#
and she then had to go and fight for this sort of space and fight to do night shifts
#
and you're thinking of all these things and say my god I was lucky and what was I cribbing
#
about that I had to do something else and I just couldn't sit and write one boring
#
report of you know 300 words and so on that played a big part I mean Prajwal was also
#
from midday and we both say the same thing that that was such good discipline for us
#
because it it really when the entire structure of what a sports page should look like shifted
#
we were ready for it because we done this in our in our very very early days you know
#
we were absolutely fine and we knew how it was done because we had we had the drill like
#
you said the gaze is already there to try and see the thing which now it is very simple
#
that I tell any younger reporter going out to work I said try and tell people what they
#
won't see on television you know try and find those things in your story so look for those
#
things don't get just get sort of swept up in the whole sort of thing what has happened
#
I think when cricket for has completely changed the genre virtually because of the fact that
#
it had the space and it had this young writers coming through and giving them time space
#
opportunity you know for so many young sports journalists opportunities took such a long
#
time coming what you did in the time when you waited is either you got fed up or you
#
and you stopped paying attention to what you did or you just took enjoyment out of what
#
you were doing so I remember in the Hindu I used to go and cover all these first class
#
matches and everything but I loved it I just enjoyed it because I was able to be at a other
#
place and see a game I mean the whole thing my favorite story is being a sailing reporter
#
for the Hindu nobody cared about sailing except us me Sunil warrior and Anand Rekhat Raman
#
we were the only ones who were interested in sailing so we would go and spend afternoons
#
weeks we would spend on the afternoon on a boat outside the naval sailing club talking
#
to sailors finding about the course and what the wind was like and when did you tack and
#
what was the so you did that so because you enjoyed it it was fine it didn't bother you
#
if you didn't like it then you could get really sort of frustrated and bitter and angry
#
and sort of point out to people that I waited 25 years to go to a test match the other thing
#
that I'm looking at maybe it is I don't know how it will play out when what happens
#
with is whether doing too much of this you know too much of this early is then makes
#
you jaded from what you're doing and you need to kind of dial down and go back to say
#
then let me go back and cover first class cricket there's much more to be gleaned out
#
of it there's much more to be got out of it so you're just working the process in sort
#
of reverse and remember that in the times that even when you were covering test cricket
#
or you or Rahul was or Sid V was or whoever at that time the entire environment around
#
the Indian team was different you know I remember we used to crave for having a media manager
#
see Australians have got media manager now I think media manager is like a disaster because
#
you'll not you don't get people to say things they really mean you know are you just getting
#
formulaic responses to things so you're looking at young cricket writers now and saying I
#
you know listen guys do as much first class cricket as you can because this is like it's
#
not fun we don't have to be going to these games to write what we want to write about
#
it because it's on television it's online we can decipher it we can whatever it and
#
now because of covid they're not even letting you in you know so go and do the small stuff
#
which is where there is a lot of fun and there's a lot of color and quality and you'll get
#
to know I was chatting to a couple of my younger colleagues yesterday they told me great stories
#
about covering matches Gujarat versus Jharkhand some final or this thing match or great stuff
#
you know so I think the the form does change in a way and the best thing as a journalist
#
if you're a young journalist can be is that you make yourself as adaptable almost like
#
it's almost like all three formats you know you it's like that you have to try and adjust
#
to all the three formats that you have to play they're really long piece which is where
#
the the author and the creative writer and the reader and you might emerge then the sort
#
of middling 800 word piece and then the little stuff you've got to push out quickly so try
#
and do that because it will just keep I think it'll just keep your mind fresh in that sense
#
so at this point in time I'm writing pieces for Hindustan Times so I have to write about
#
say 1100 1200 words in a particular way then I have to write a piece on Ganguly for a night
#
watchman hopefully it'll get written which will be a 2000 word piece will be slightly
#
longer I also did some video thing for somebody for a little short period of time that you
#
give out your video response Google cameos whatever that was a beta test for about two
#
minutes on video it is so tough to do that because all the time your brain is like you
#
know all 25 places at the same time you have to say something creative and funny in a single
#
cogent sentence and whatever and on camera and so it's these three the sort of it asks
#
you to sort of yeah adjust to the various formats that are there and the more adaptable
#
you are the more fun it is there you know you can write in different voices I know it
#
sounds like a sort of psycho but you can write in different voices you can write in different
#
tones because you can't respond to sport in just one way all the time you know you have
#
to look at it at all the levels that it exists and and and what you look at it and what you
#
make of it I suppose no and I think you know if I was a young writer today I'd probably
#
find more enjoyment going to smaller games and first-class games and all of that and
#
the big test matches because the big test matches are saturated done to death and you
#
have no access so at a practical level you can build access to future stars by covering
#
them today and becoming friends today but at a deeper level at the level in which it
#
helps your writing you will just find more human stories and deeper stories if you actually
#
go and cover the smaller games and to me that's much more exciting you mentioned sailing
#
so tell me something is our journalism shrinking in a way that a sailing reporter isn't possible
#
today I don't think so at all I went to go out everyone says what's your favorite assignment
#
so of course I've had much I've been to Olympics and everything you know but I went to go out
#
to cover the world enterprise championships might have been 1994 after I joined the Hindu
#
in Goa for writers I think it was about 10 days and we were just covering sailing for
#
10 days you know the world it's a particular class that's only sailed in the Commonwealth
#
so it's sailed in Pakistan and it's sailed in Australia and Britain and so on enterprise
#
I don't even know if it exists anymore now it's not an Olympic class of board but we
#
were pretty good at it at that time and you knew all these sailors and we spent 10 days
#
in Goa and like I should say nobody in the Hindu Chennai cared what was happening but
#
I had gone to cover the event so I had to file 600 words which I would file with my
#
best efforts and intentions trying to describe everything and this the weather the wind speed
#
the what the sailors were doing and then in the evening we would get onto a bus and literally
#
you went to work with a wallet a notebook and a pen in your Bhamudas pockets and your
#
chapals you went to work that was your office for 10 days so I think the space has shrunk
#
so much that you don't even get coverage of things like national badminton tennis tournaments
#
we did so much of that it's almost got European football has I think elbowed out a lot of
#
that saying that oh people don't want to read anything about these wretched tennis players
#
and sailors though like a back of the queue almost you know and it's very sad because
#
I mean I'm saying it's very sad because I had fun but still it's very sad because if
#
you're a sports journalist you want to see as many sports as you can if you have an interest
#
in that and find out things about how sports function how people think what happens what
#
are common patterns what are uncommon patterns and India had a pretty good sailing sort of
#
tradition in the 90s we won medals at the Asian Games level which we now I think we
#
have won a couple more recently so it's those kind of things that if you are interested
#
in Olympic sport you know or non cricket then you have to have a space to give all of them
#
more mileage or all of them more almost bandwidth to say that there is this kind of thing that
#
is there because the cricket to other sports number is about 10 times you know and it's
#
very very evident you can see that when you write you can see that when you in if you're
#
doing your checking data and things like that it's 10 times and it's not that there's no
#
there's nothing to write about in in those sports as well you know and you know people
#
who are in other sports what kind of keeps him going because on the one hand you have
#
cricket being the you know the big sort of gorilla in the room as it were no offense
#
to gorillas and this is gorilla, sayan, atul bedadey are all now falling into this category
#
of people dissed in this vodcast I'm feeling really bad now I know really no no nothing
#
sayan is great and atul bedadey was superb yeah actually I was the person who told him
#
that he got picked for india I remember this was in cci I said atul you got picked he said
#
did you know you're in the team and he was like completely zapped you know after this
#
happened I forgot what the event was I remember telling him this but this is the time when
#
there was no twitter there is nothing yeah you know I'd interviewed him for something
#
else and I was passing him I said are you in the team he said really yeah you know so
#
it's quite likely that the happiest moment of his life has your voice in it so imagine
#
that maybe already you maybe I'm maybe I'm dreaming this up but I remember it so clearly
#
he was like completely lit up completely yeah yeah wow yeah so you know stories of his
#
big hitting were legion for those of my listeners who may not know atul bedadey was this insane
#
six hitter in the late 90s and he got picked for the 99 world cup and didn't really do
#
anything I mean he just just couldn't make an impact but that could just be a question
#
of opportunity or whatever but in domestic cricket he was a kind of hitter who I think
#
even today at whatever his strike rate was then he would have been a beast would have
#
been an absolute beast beast so to kind of get back to my question and I'm having to
#
look at my notes because for a moment I forgot but when you sort of look at these other sports
#
people I want to ask you about a couple of aspects of them one is that just at a mentality
#
level what kind of keeps him going in a sport where there's really no money there's only
#
so long that you do something for the love of it I guess part of what they want is that
#
you know whenever you're part of any small community whether it's gravel players or
#
chess players or whatever your small community is that community seems really poker players
#
or poker players that community seems we have to discuss this still we'll have a reverse
#
conversation if you insist we can have a reverse conversation about this later so that small
#
community seems like a really big community to you so obviously it is enough of validation
#
that within that community you rise and you are still competitive but over a larger period
#
of time it's a mess like I remember I used to play a competitive chess in my late teens
#
not very good which is why I stopped in my late teens but I remember once there were
#
these inter-university games and I was representing Maharashtra and I kind of went for that and
#
it was all sports so you know the four of us chess players were taken into this room
#
where you had 200 other people everybody's sleeping on the floor and the floor is kind
#
of damp and there's not enough space and there's one set of three toilets for everybody in
#
the morning and obviously we've got wrestlers and judokas and boxers and all that with us
#
so chess players are not really going to manage to make it to the front of the queue and it
#
is it is a mess it is horrendous and there are two aspects here one is you find you love
#
your sport but how the hell do you motivate yourself to keep going and keep doing it and
#
all of that because you know maybe a third aspect we can talk about is a way that is
#
administered which is also so pathetic and the other sort of way of you know the problem
#
that they must face is that and this is especially true in the 70s 80s 90s is that you don't
#
have access to how the rest of the world is training like I remember I spoke to my good
#
friend Devanshu Datta who was a competitive chess player in the 80s and you know and he's
#
a close friend of Vishwanathan Anand and he at one point told me about his chess playing
#
days which were in the 80s that the training was so far behind that you would be talking
#
about some problem with a soviet player which is incredibly difficult for you and you would
#
find that that is one of the basic fundamentals they were taught when they were like two years
#
old or whatever and you know in a column that I wrote about Vishwanathan Anand once I said
#
that effectively to understand his achievement you have to understand he was driving a Maruti
#
800 in a formula one race which makes it so staggering and he somehow managed to do that
#
but how would these sports people cope how would they train what are the kinds of jugar
#
they had to go through like in a recent interview you spoke about the kinds of jugar people
#
have been doing in the last year over the pandemic you know where they'll set up an
#
obstacle course in their living room or whatever and figure out ways give me a little sense
#
of the life of the average non-cricketing Indian sports person you know through all
#
these years so you're looking at sort of basically two lots you're looking at Olympic sports
#
that are there I think that in a lot of the main what they call there's a word they use
#
for it in the Sarkar priority sports in what are priority sports there is a very currently
#
there's a very clear structure of how on a pathway basically of how things are done
#
it doesn't mean administration is perfect but it's much better than what it was in
#
the 80s and the 90s and you remember this so what you're telling the story about university
#
athletes is a story similar story I heard about a woman cricketer talking about going
#
to a men's cricket event and being in this big Shadika hall and the two teams being separated
#
by this one string of cloth or some wall or some of kapra hanging between the two sides
#
so that has changed considerably in the last say 20 odd years the maybe 15 years or so
#
because there are you know the size centers are huge there are just a lot of them there
#
and so there'll be athletes if you're picked for it you get coached and there is an understanding
#
that for every hundred athletes that you'll be working with you'll get three or four
#
that will be of a higher quality and the younger athletes will go I mean I've heard stories
#
then so there's these Olympics sports and then there's football and in football you
#
have massive number of community sort of places that are there that are self-run like the
#
person in Bundapara who I was telling you about that do these things and what the athletes
#
lack at this point in time this is pet topic of mine we could have separate four-hour podcast
#
on this is enough tournaments to play in that is what Indian athletes lack more than anything
#
else at the moment what has happened is because of the internet and cheap data availability
#
on mobile phones they are able to get access to the best quality of training coaching advice
#
drills all the rest of it it's there on their hand so they train they work hard they want
#
to do they understand that there is a living in sport to be made depends on the sport if
#
you are X level you'll get a job in the railways it's a pathway to a secure life if you're
#
coming from there now if you're in football there are these other multiple sort of various
#
levels at which you have it's not as organized as it could be it's not as sort of well spread
#
out or evenly worked out as it could be it's not equitable in any case in some places it's
#
much better in some places it's worse but always at every level you're finding out there's
#
not enough competitions taking place it's not that there's not enough talent and at this
#
point so there's not enough opportunity you know that is what is lacking with with the
#
people so the people that are competing and then you've got this amazing for the first
#
time because it's a very incredible center privately funded inspire institute of sports
#
by the JSW group set up just outside the plant in Vijayanagara and their thought process
#
is very very clear it's got four combat sports it's got jumps and athletics run sprints
#
basically and it's got swimming so they're not sort of spreading themselves too thin
#
they're just doing very basic things so which you don't need too much of infrastructure
#
right swimming running combat sports which is you versus another person and that's it
#
so there's all this that's there and I remember an official in Guwahati in Sai telling me
#
that we can train all these athletes Guwahati has this incredible Sai center in the middle
#
like imagine a Sai center in the middle of I'm going to say Sai again but I'll just
#
get killed by people in Sai you already said Sai I already said no no imagine it's sort
#
of in the middle of I'm trying to think what's the most crowded place in Bombay you can think
#
of the most crowded Dharavi I don't know Jacob the Virar fast no no that is the train
#
the most crowded place in Bombay you should have a camp in a train though you should have
#
a sporting camp in the Virar fast wrestling yeah so imagine sort of say in the middle
#
of Chirabazar in the middle of Chirabazar is this huge athletic sports facility that
#
has a full size football field a full size indoor hall a full size and they produce these
#
players from there so this is called Paltan Bazar in Guwahati and that guy said you know
#
we can produce all the athletes you want we'll do all the things they'll do the drills they'll
#
go through these particular programs that they have to but then you have to they have
#
to have events to take part in you can't have them only taking part in three two national
#
tournaments in a year you need for them to compete all the time are people that are rowing
#
so one of the rowing coaches from overseas who had worked with another Olympic rowers
#
he said my son is under 16 this year when he goes into X particular regatta he would
#
have competed in 25 regattas before before the around the time he's 16 17 years old
#
he said I don't know a single rower in India who would have competed in 25 regattas now
#
okay rowing is an expensive sport or whatever but you're investing money into it give them
#
events to compete in so that to my mind is the big the next sort of step the next push
#
that you have to make is to get people to have enough events to compete in you know
#
there is talent there is no opportunity that's the that's that's what there's not enough
#
opportunity there is but there's not enough opportunity um which is what and but what
#
keeps them going I mean I'm I'm always astonished at despite everything again in the conversation
#
I was having with Prajul and Manuja yesterday we were talking about the things that you see
#
in people like the bent ears of the wrestlers or you look at I saw this Dattu Bokanal's hands he
#
was a rower you can see that our gymnasts are competing with injuries because that's what they
#
do all the time and I can't understand what there is just a sense of almost boundless optimism in
#
them it's very hard to beat that out of them that boundless optimism to just be competing and to
#
just say just give me a chance and I'll show you what I can do it's almost in a way it's like you
#
want to cry when you hear about it you know but they just have it at every level they seem to
#
have it and their optimism and their energy doesn't get beaten out of them as easily as it
#
would get beaten out of maybe I don't know you and me you know it's it's just the most I can't
#
describe it you know if you're thinking of all the qualities that you find an athlete's competitiveness
#
but this this thing what it is I don't they may be happy with what they've got they've got a decent
#
livelihood they're doing okay and all but this whole thing to keep going and not to not stop
#
that is that it's a very hard thing to for you and me to grasp and understand what it means you
#
know it's it's very difficult yeah I think I think somewhere else you mentioned how you know
#
Deepak Karmakar when she did the Pradhunova once she did it with a hairline fracture on her ankle
#
yeah like what like how yeah yeah yeah you know and and and it wasn't that she was pushed into
#
doing it she just wanted to do it yeah and she had that kind of streak in her I mean then you
#
hear about the horrific stories about gymnastics and the reason why gymnasts from USA and Romania
#
won't try the Pradhunova because it's too dangerous but with athletes from our country it's the only
#
shot they have at anything at anything that gives them this thing whatever else we'll do if we can
#
nail this you know that's the thing but the whole thing that is dangerous is you know the whole thing
#
but oh it's the death the vault of death it's a vault of death if you don't practice it if you
#
if you're an athlete to do it we will die you know straight away first try we'll be dead but
#
they practice it enough you know so that they're able to just nail it once they practice it that's
#
that's all that I'm saying it is the vault of death but only for clueless clunks not for competitive
#
athletes you know no and also I guess to talk about it in poker terms if you're behind then you want
#
to take a higher variance path so other countries may not need to try the Pradhunova but there is
#
there is a certain rationale to her saying that I'm not going to reach the top otherwise I have to
#
do this shit and that's also very poignant and sad in a way I guess you know and and you've
#
one more story in this I'll just interrupt you here is that had she not had the sports authority
#
and the sports minister not pushed she would not have gone to Rio to compete because there are two
#
gymnastic federations fighting with each other about who owns the gymnast which is the official
#
one which is not the official one she would not have gone to Rio if it had not been for her coach
#
being one completely stubborn person and reaching out and basically breaking the door down and saying
#
you have to send her you have to send her to the test event in Rio which she won and then she was
#
she qualified and everything so that's the chance you're giving these people yeah what is this
#
so I'll ask you about the politics now but before that to complete the last question about sort of
#
the jugaru ways in which people kind of you know get past all their kind of shortcomings like I
#
remember I think Rahul Bhattacharya in the early 2000s wrote the story about Indian fastballers
#
of the late 80s and early 90s and he mentioned some fast bowler there who somebody told him
#
that listen you need stronger shoulders why don't you try bowling with a short put and he tried
#
bowling with a short put and his shoulder got dislocated and he never played for India again
#
and you just had this lack of knowledge and you're trying these random jugaru things and all of that
#
which also seems to me to be really sad because these are people with the talent with the desire
#
but they don't have the information they don't have the ecosystem and yeah and now there is
#
information because of the internet you'll get information you'll be told you know this is this
#
is what you try this is what you don't try this is what you do and it's told to you from experts
#
and the whole thing of language and not speaking english it just goes out of the window it's like
#
they can work it out they just work it out they just it's almost like that the desires
#
and the ambitions of our athletes is way ahead of what the ecosystem can provide them you know it's
#
literally it's trying to catch up with that and there is a tussle and a friction and all the rest
#
of it but it's there because the outside world has come here you know and in a sense it seems
#
to me that there are so many obstacles within the Indian system for any sport other than cricket
#
that just to get to the top you're actually selecting for people with a higher level of
#
cassettedness and mental strength and talent than anywhere else in the world so you know
#
before we get to politics so that brings me to this question about India as a sporting nation
#
like it is often said that listen you know a place like say Australia has a sporting culture
#
people are always going out and they're surfing and they're doing this in their free time
#
and in our free time i don't know what we do we order Zomato so the question then is that and
#
there are various theories for why we are not a sporting nation there is a weather because tropical
#
hot all the time but hey that didn't stop other countries there is a genes but that also hasn't
#
stopped other countries with similar and we have a range of genes we have a range of exactly and
#
there is also the diet which is you know sometimes brought forth but you know even in terms of diet
#
i don't think that's any more a kind of an excuse by the way just and just a kind of aside a former
#
chairman of the Indian selectors circa 2001 and you will surely know who i'm talking about
#
once during a game in Mohali picked i think three fast bowlers for our team who happened to be
#
muslim and the night before he was having a drink with us and he took and he went on and on about
#
this whole racial theory of you know look at Pakistan so many fast bowlers yeah so you know
#
for fast bowlers we are going to look at muslims from now on that was yeah he was he was admittedly
#
a little drunk at the time and i won't take his name because you know and yeah yeah you can't
#
it's hard to not know but so what are your theories because i think none of these like we both agree
#
are really completely legitimate reasons so why is it that we are not a great sporting nation in
#
sports other than the one which is played seriously by seven or eight countries
#
my answer to this is very simple it's taken me a long time to arrive at it
#
but the answer is basically how our sports are administered and the opportunity that we give our
#
athletes i think in the early years of indian independence the government did a lot for sport
#
had it not been for government intervention and the army and banks and you know oil companies and
#
you have this inter-institutional tournaments we would not be able to compete in a lot of the
#
sports that we do now in the era of professionalism instead of responding to the environment around
#
them and the fact that there are so many opportunities there's so much information
#
available there is so much money in the indian market the administrators are still living in
#
the 1970s where they are my bap they want to be my bap like i said that they want to be you know
#
they are a bit worried that there'll be a superstar that will be bigger than them and you'll see this
#
across the board everywhere you'll see this when there's political involvement in they don't want
#
to hand sport over to professional management they want to be in control of everything and that is
#
what has led to the fact that we're here where we are and the ultimate sort of reason the ultimate
#
validation to what i'm saying has come from the creation of these non-sporting non-profits
#
it is a jugar that has come because the system was so rotten that the administrators were so
#
crap that athletes who take six months to get their permission to go and get treated in a
#
hospital for something before the event is three days away you know so that kind of scenarios they
#
have not caught up with professionalism and they don't want to catch up with professionalism
#
and that is why our sport is where it is it has nothing to do with talent it has nothing to do
#
with our lack of a killer instinct our diet our genes nothing and the the football example is
#
classic in the sense that we have i think joy battacharya also spoke to you about this about
#
the baby leagues it has just begun i mean i have gone and seen not a lot i'm like a complete
#
interloper into indian football but you can just see of the kind of talent that there is and the
#
kind of numbers that there are anyway in india you'll get numbers anywhere you know in any sport
#
you have numbers turn up but you are not giving them enough events to compete because it's too
#
much work covid is the perfect time for people to sit on their behinds and do nothing and say
#
baba we cannot organize a tournament there is covid you know we can't create an infrastructure
#
or a pathway or anything because there is covid so that is that is primarily the reason and look at
#
what has happened is that when you put an organization how are you able to churn out uh players that are
#
in the top 50 in badminton in in men's particularly in women's also to a certain level because you
#
have this ecosystem that created it and they were literally forced the badminton people to to have
#
a lot more events and because the sport came out in the front pages everywhere you have a world
#
champion you have world number one what is going on you know so the biggest sort of fallback in
#
this is the tennis people you tell indian tennis has gone behind rather than going ahead whereas
#
in the 90s you had competitive davis cup team sanya mirza was your great women's player coming
#
through so my blame is strictly on administration and literally when i moved to delhi is when this
#
kind of just clicked in my mind oh this is what it is this is this bloody gravy train you guys have
#
been riding on that's our taxpayers money that you have been using all this time and doing bugger all
#
about it you know and uh as a young journalist you sort of that's what administrators tell you all
#
the time when you talk to them lack of killerism they only want jobs hello how are people to make
#
a living how are they to feed their families they only want jobs they are so lazy yeah they're lazy
#
they're greedy they're lazy they're self-centered but they can hit a penalty stroke like you can't
#
know so shut up and give them the chance and make them do it but look at what you've done to hockey
#
also in india as well anyway i could go on forever yeah no in fact it strikes me and this is not just
#
true of indian sport i think it's true of india in general that whatever people achieve is really
#
despite the state like even badminton it's these private individuals like upichand and all of that
#
making that kind of effort which has built that ecosystem and uh you know almost fortuitous that
#
that one individual happened to be there at that time just so driven at that time and he kind of
#
built everything another question you know whenever i sort of write about any indian problem uh outside
#
of sport like whether it's agriculture or just take any problem there's a deeper subset of the
#
problem which is the role of women in it right everywhere if there is an agriculture problem
#
there is a deeper subset with women farmers and farmers families and all that and everywhere
#
is a deeper subset because one hardly needs to say the status of women in india is so in a sporting
#
context what is it for the women like you have high profile things like all these wrestlers
#
coming out of haryana and even even there of course the original instinct is a patriarchal
#
one because you know chandgiram didn't have any sons and you know in 1979 they open up the
#
olympics for women's wrestling and he says okay i'll train my daughter and then you know mahabir
#
fogat is one of his assistants and the whole story kind of starts which is why you have that
#
bizarre sight of the most probably the most misogynist state in india haryana with you know
#
the lowest boys to girls ratio actually doing so well in a girl sport and and and today of course
#
it's heartening to see that you know the women's cricket team which is like so delightful to watch
#
almost more than the men's team sometimes so recently i think both teams have been
#
just killing it no no and recently i think both teams have been killing it but it's just
#
joyful to watch what's the scene there like because of barriers there are so much more
#
just at the basic level of girls going out to play the way you could i mean you are such an outlier
#
that you ever even got to play with the boys right yeah what have you seen there
#
you are right with regards to women but with regards to women's cricket what i've been saying
#
a lot recently has been that when compared to any other sport women's sport or sport in which a
#
women athletes are involved cricket is the worst for when compared to women's hockey women's
#
wrestling women's boxing women's badminton women because the olympic charter demands that men and
#
women's sport is treated on par so if men have to train the women also have to train if men have to
#
go out and compete at a qualifying tournament the women also have that qualifying tournament
#
so therefore it has been made incumbent on indian sports administrators to do this
#
in a way is that you have to show those you have to show that presence that yeah it's there it's
#
there we are here our women's team is here our women's women competitors are here so you'll see
#
the wrestlers the boxers the shooters everybody is there cricket is literally like women's cricket
#
is handled like in a medieval fashion that we will give you some scraps we will give you they
#
don't have like what am i talking about opportunity is just look at women's cricket just look at the
#
lack of women opportunity at every level in a way for the best the richest supposedly the best
#
administered in open courts fought in the country look at how they're looking at their women's
#
they're treating their women's team it is outrageous as to how they're getting away with it
#
and it is despicable i cannot even imagine that you will go a whole year without playing
#
you will make them play three tapori type matches in i in dubai for during the ip l and think you're
#
doing them a bloody favor it is ridiculous what they're doing you know and so in comparison
#
women the hockey federation is looking good because our women's hockey players are
#
competing they went to germany they went to argentina they've competed in this covid time
#
they're trying to they're they've got uh you know they are they are looking forward to compete
#
competing at the olympics as compared to last time our women shooters are there but where are
#
the women cricketers they are only doing social media what is this rubbish you know so you can
#
see that if not given if not made mandatory this is what happens to to women's sport if it's not
#
made part of this thing that you have to do it's part of the this is what happens and if you look
#
at how indian men's cricket is compared to all the other countries in terms of output 2000 matches
#
a year all the other stuff that is going on and all that and look at what's happening with the
#
women in cricket you know so you have to see that power responds to if not uh required to do
#
the opposite of what they be if not required to behave in a fair manner uh they will behave with
#
in a patriarchal manner with the women that are there in their little uh in in their ecosystem
#
they will respond to them in the way that allow karenge chance denge it's not like that you know
#
you can't you can't be like that i mean what is going to happen to these girls that are there in
#
the national team we're not even talking about the first class women the players in the first
#
class uh setup we're not even there we're just talking about your most elite team as to how you're
#
treating them so it shows you that this kind of a mindset and this kind of an attitude is it it's
#
almost uh instinctive it's almost it just comes this it's natural if you didn't have to do it
#
this is what you'll behave like this is what you'll do you know no and it always strikes me that it's
#
a chicken and egg problem that is actually solvable is it's chicken and egg because
#
you can easily say that the numbers aren't there therefore the money won't be put into it therefore
#
there'll be no ecosystem therefore the you know the numbers won't be there and it's it's circular
#
but the numbers you're talking about profitability numbers you're talking about revenue generation
#
numbers or numbers of women to compete no i'm actually talking about uh demand for viewing the
#
sport and the point is that only grows when you have more iterations of the sport actually on
#
air if like if your women's cricket team is playing all the time then obviously the eyeballs will also
#
explode more and more people will discover how good these players are and had they not sorry i'll just
#
jump in again had they not reached the final in 2017 and 2019 the bcci would have been very happy
#
if they would have lost early the moment they reached the final everyone switched their tv on
#
semi-final harman prithkor you switched your tv on you said what was that you know yeah and that's
#
what they don't want literally when you say they don't want to produce stars now they don't want
#
to produce women's stars it's there you can see it happening in front of you you know you don't
#
have to be uh this thing to know that it's there that is it's too much work why should we bother
#
all this money that you're sitting on we'll put it in fixed deposit five percent
#
that's the mindset so here's a thought leading to a question that sitting where the bcci is where
#
they have both men's cricket and women's cricket and women men's cricket is just making so much
#
incredible money that uh you know you can see why their incentives are that you do your thousand
#
matches a year or whatever it is for men's cricket and keep that uh going now the structural issue
#
there is that one easy solution would be that you just maybe hive it off and create a separate body
#
for women's cricket but the larger issue is two problems here one is that earlier we were talking
#
about how uh sort of the government federations will also spend a certain amount of time on the
#
women's sport because it's mandated and all that but otherwise we have seen that the sports that
#
are run by government organizations are in a complete mess because the incentives are all
#
over the places politics bad administration it's the classic state the government doesn't run these
#
sports amit the government doesn't run these sports it's the federation that runs the sports
#
and they reach out to the governments to get money from them so the sports ministry doesn't
#
run any sport it's all these little federations where all these politicians are stuck into it
#
that runs it so what the federations always do is that they blame the government for saying visa
#
nahi mila, paise nahi mile, permission nahi mila but actually it's the federations that are sitting
#
on their arse and doing nothing you know it's the federations that are causing this thing
#
are these federations quasi-government organizations in the sense that they get all their funding from
#
the government they get their funding but they want to be autonomous it's the the bcci the only
#
reason they fight for their autonomy saying we don't take money from you these federations say
#
we are independent of government interference and before they try and stop any kind of government
#
questioning them accountability therefore they stop the sports bill therefore they stop all these
#
things they are not obliged only now they have begun submitting accounts to the government only
#
so they've only now begun doing it the government has just got some control on their functioning
#
though they're trying to ease themselves off it because they don't want to be answerable you know
#
they don't want to have regular elections they don't want to submit accounts they don't want to
#
have women in their bodies they don't want to have a player organization so this is part of a sports
#
court that they have to answer to now which bcci is also blocking so i'm saying it's like a cross
#
party gravy train i call it you know it's like a cross all-party buffet let's come and feed into
#
taxpayer money it's a cross-party buffet except bcci is not eating into our money it's all hockey
#
federation gymnastics all these people that are doing it you know so there's a deeper structural
#
problem which i was coming to which this feeds into yes which is basically that one these
#
federations have a monopoly on the sport and that makes it a monopsony for the players a monopsony
#
by the way for those who won't know is like the opposite of a monopoly where there's only one
#
market for your services which is essentially the case with all sports right if you play a sport
#
you have to play it within the umbrella of the bcci you can't go anywhere else what happened
#
with the ip l was that there was within this system there was an artificial market where you
#
have multiple buyers for your talents and in terms of incentives is a little better but i think a
#
problem that all countries have and uh it's probably felt more acutely in india because it's
#
so dysfunctional is that there is no competition and when there is no competition the incentives
#
are sort of horrible like imagine if all writers had say a writer's federation you know which had
#
to go to the government for funds and they would decide which writers to promote which writers to
#
train sharda imagine what would happen to us i don't think either of us would probably come up
#
through the system to begin with right dead no chance i would be in library yeah and we are only
#
there because there's competition you know express didn't take you midday date you know and and and
#
so on and so forth down the line and this kind of baffles me because i can't think of a way that
#
this can ever kind of get sorted out cricket got lucky that at least in men's cricket there has
#
been a virtuous cycle and uh you know all the money coming in has kind of helped and now it's
#
finally really helping the cricketers as well to some extent and we can quibble about aspects of it
#
but cricket's doing fine but when you look at other sports in the country what are your feelings are
#
there positive signs of movement which i presume would come from private initiatives but are there
#
positive signs of movements what's the deal i think that there are some federations that are
#
better than the others uh you know for example shooting uh they are able to do they have a
#
generation of shooters that are now coaches you know so one of the very important things that
#
that sports need to do is also create uh opportunities for when you have finished
#
playing what do you do after that which you know so shooting has done it very well we've seen that
#
now we've got some 10 11 people going to the olympics we have a better chance of winning medals
#
because so there is some element of let's make our sport bigger let's make our sport better
#
and of course the athletes and the administrators will fight they've always fought you know they've
#
always had differences and problems but you are increasing the width and the base of your sport
#
is increasing and it's an expensive sport so you're limiting it with the kind of people that are
#
coming into it but say for example when i think when rathore won his silver medal after he won a
#
silver medal at the olympics at that time just to have about 300 people competing at the nationals
#
it became 3000 after the gold medal it multiplied further it's so big now that you are trying to
#
get people to trim their competition the numbers in india just go wild so like for example the
#
shooting is one of those federation then it's there as an example you see how it's working
#
look for example the parallel to what joy was trying to do through volleyball joy batacharya
#
was trying to do through volleyball they fought with them the federation didn't allow them to
#
have it there's a court case you know they're bad so that volleyball league has stopped because of
#
the guys in the volleyball federation who wanted to control everything they don't want private
#
enterprise they don't want this thing so you've got these two ends the only way that you will see
#
progress i mean i would think that at some point that athletes would just break out of this kind of
#
the really exceptional athletes would break out the one federation that is i think most answerable
#
and should be most answered what is not is athletics we've had people in that in athletics
#
federations for 20 30 years why haven't we won more medals at an international level than we have
#
so you have to see what are you doing that is wrong it's if it was say a case study in business
#
it would it would just stand out like a you know tree on fire in a public place that's how evident
#
it is i think in individual sports you will get a better chance in that sense of people breaking
#
through and doing better in in boxing maybe in in wrestling men's women's whatever it is you'll get
#
that you'll get those sort of breakthrough stars coming but at the same time it's like this girl
#
who's offense qualified for the olympics in fencing which is a sport that we don't imagine
#
indians ever could be competing in it's because she's been supported from the outside by private
#
funding and by being able to go and train and working her way through and people working on
#
her behalf to basically fight the fight that she needs to fight the same similarly with bipas story
#
in gymnastics there are younger people in gymnastics coming through so institutionally it's a mess but
#
you would hope but like you're saying it will translate into everything in india is the same
#
way that you'll have you'll get people individuals coming through that will just pull you along in
#
another direction so for example golf my views on golf are not to be uttered here in public
#
we have decent level golfers are nation competing in europe it's fine it's doing okay it's running
#
on its own it's got these clubs and all the rest of it but you know because there is so much of
#
bad administration and institutionally bad administration uh that you will always hold
#
yourself back but you'll have people breaking through i think that way i mean maybe it's a
#
cycle and a churn and we are seeing a change that's taken place i mean i remember from the
#
from the 90s to now it's a massive change that has happened and it's almost like athletes now
#
have got so much power that they are able to demand uh they are particularly the superstars
#
at the top level they can be a bit precious and everything but like i say listen they have the
#
ability which the administrators don't have you just put up with it so that's the way i do look
#
at it in the sense of there not being a sporting culture is i think we have to redefine the fact
#
that in our country sporting culture is a livelihood issue and our leisure is separate our
#
issues of our leisure are not that important in the long way you know we'll always find a way to be
#
entertained and to enjoy ourselves and and go to a club or go wherever else it is to play whatever
#
we have to play you see all these little parks that come up five a side football that are there
#
in the cities on the roofs of buildings that that's fine but when it's a livelihood issue
#
it's it's a way you have to look at differently in terms of creating more opportunities
#
for those for those athletes to have before them i mean joy's volleyball league is a prime example
#
of what is wrong with the administration of indian sport yeah it's very sad in fact my episode with
#
him was incredibly inspiring because through the second half when he spoke about football especially
#
and all the work they're doing at the grassroots is just so inspirational but yeah my listeners
#
won't forgive me if i don't ask you this one question though what are your views on golf
#
can't say it's not it's not fair because joy sakkawati who's a very good friend of a
#
journalist of my uh slightly younger than me he has a very nice twitter handle called the joy of
#
golf i cannot be mean to him so i will not say it you're not being into him you're being into
#
golf okay let's uh sort of leave that aside and let's in fact now you know because we are
#
you know tripping on on your story and away from your story and back to your story let's kind of
#
get back to your story and you know so you are sort of a journalist in media you've already
#
spoken about how your craft evolved over a period of time and all of that but what is it like being
#
a woman in the sport because you know you've spoken about how when you first went to a press
#
box you were the only woman there uh you know is that like all of us young people you know are
#
faced of whatever gender are faced with the imposter syndrome when we first start covering
#
where you start asking yourself questions like you know am i good enough can i manage this you
#
want to impress people that anxiety just kind of takes over you and it just feels like you have
#
another layer of that uh to deal with when you start so what was that sort of process like and
#
obviously it's you know people like you and himel asher at midday and all of that are kind of
#
legendary for the kind of early work you did you know prem keeps talking about how he didn't do
#
sports writing in his early year because you and himel were just so good which is three girls three
#
girls in the department three girls yeah which is mind-blowing yeah yeah yeah so uh so what were
#
those sort of early years like and even beyond this issue what was it like in terms of being
#
able to do stories on cricket like getting access to people getting them to talk to you i imagine
#
it must have been a whole different world uh it it was a very different world and i think what
#
helped me you do have a lot of anxiety when you're going through you had to present yourself as
#
professionally as possible because you are female you can't be seen as groupie fangirl you have to
#
try and like kind of literally almost do the opposite uh kind of a thing so you wanted to
#
sort of melt into the furniture which you can't really do so there was that but at the same time
#
at the background because i had institutional support in the organization it was a fantastic
#
story great story they'll tell you very good what is this nonsense your spelling is wrong the stress
#
sentence so you you know it was almost like uh you were being looked after as a young professional
#
coming into it and your your femaleness of it was only a big deal outside that little world and if
#
you felt that confident then you didn't really worry so the first four and a half years it was
#
like just and getting to know people and and honestly amit you know the thing is that people
#
were so good people inside the sports ecosystem was so good they were so decent so helpful uh
#
welcoming almost you're just thinking about it and when people tell you horror stories you think i
#
have no horror stories to tell you you know i i genuinely don't and i'm so blessed in that sense
#
that uh it's like they took some time to get used to you but the point is because you are working
#
for a local paper you're a bombay person your bylines were coming the next day your stories
#
were coming they said okay this is one reporter only what else only gender is different and there
#
is no toilet for her but it's okay she'll manage you know so you just had this amazing sense of
#
sort of fitting in closely and so cricket was like the the big gorilla but in other sports for
#
example hockey tennis whatever people were just fine they were just happy sailing they were just
#
happy to chat with you they were just happy to tell you things uh they were happy to share their
#
experiences with you and it wasn't a problem because what they saw as a finished product at
#
the end of it was something they was like okay it's fine it's written nicely nice piece good
#
photograph i'm happy savita ke loskan used to take pictures super photograph very happy and
#
that's how it worked um you know so i don't know what it was like in the bigger newspapers for
#
example times had started having women reporters express had a few i don't know what that was like
#
that whole big like mega what's it called now legacy media big media i do i have no idea what
#
that atmosphere was like you know how the women reporters were treated there because i just was
#
very lucky to start out in midday which was literally like being with people that are slightly
#
and kn radhakristen who was the editor of the really old sweet gentleman who was there
#
sound principles he had you could not pass no bullshit would pass him so he was saying no no
#
you cannot write this this is not correct and that was it it was just done and he was right when you
#
looked at at the end you had overstated something or understated something or whatever he was like
#
the news editor in charge a lovely lovely uh gentleman and just a wonderful sort of senior
#
person to work with as well mostly there were younger youngish people they would have been
#
older than you by say four five years or something like that max in their 30s and everything and uh
#
even the artists that you worked with the layout artists were there they were all young people
#
and you had tarik and sari putting up with all your nonsense you know so it was just a so you
#
just felt very secure and you felt looked after and protected by your organizations even when
#
you went on assignment which i think is something that i was very keen to do when i became a senior
#
in any organization like a senior person say i was in india today when there was someone going out
#
in say calcutta or kerala or bangalore to do a story i made sure that the that the reporter who
#
has gone there did not get shat upon because you could shit upon them kind of a thing you know
#
you had to you had to look after that reporter you had to say okay listen this is what you've
#
got like why don't we try and do it this way one because of what i learned at midday that's the
#
kind of organization it was the hindu was very different because it was very very like proper
#
cut and dried you just did your stuff and then you went ahead and you did uh what you did and
#
but the hindu gave you this rigor of being a cricket reporter in the old-fashioned sense
#
that you turned up before the first ball of the match and at the end of the game you tallied the
#
scoreboard yourself before sending it to the to the office you know and you filed your match
#
report and you could not make mistakes and that was it so that was another kind of drill
#
but then uh and you went to all these places uh i remember i traveled to uh surat and walsad
#
with hemant kinkare we went to cover some cricket so you had colleagues that were there that so you
#
you were generally looked after you didn't feel it was like odd you know like it was like strange
#
so by the time when i reached india today and i went in delhi as well i was quite sort of secure
#
in that sense you know i had like something to fall back on and because in midday the culture
#
of having women working around you was so normalized that you didn't think it was a big
#
deal that there were two more women reporters so as far as i know like the people who went out from
#
midday elsewhere then really discovered how shit the world could be really in the big papers that
#
they really they came across insecure colleagues and it was like hell when i heard stories about
#
that um and then i sort of dived back into cricket 4 which is a completely a lovely working environment
#
as well but the only strange thing used to be i went back to england from 2000 i had gone there
#
i was the only woman in the press box i went to england in 2011 and again i was the only woman in
#
the press box and i said this is absolute nonsense how can this be and so at the same time the numbers
#
of women that are writing sport talking about it podcasting or you know or doing programs or
#
videos or digital copy desk everything that number has really grown i just did a rough audit of it
#
uh a couple of years back and i i sent a message out to a lot of the women that i know who are
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working i said listen tell me how many women do you know that are there give me their names give
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me the emails i have a list of more than 60 wow i am so happy to hear that more than 60 is
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a massive number from from nothing and i think and in india you find this you know maybe all of them
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will have terrible stories to tell you a couple of them did write back and tell me that you know
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thanks for asking this is what it's been like so i just had a general mass mail out the nightmare
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type of a mail out and i said i just i'm just trying to see how many of us are here and we are
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about more than 60 and i checked with somebody in sjf i said how many are they said oh about 25
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many more yeah so uh so so that's the thing and i think in other sports it was normal for there to
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be uh women in sports journalism say from the mid 90s you know in hockey in tennis in badminton
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it was normal for there to be women reporters that became a normal thing and every paper began to
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have either one woman on the desk at least if not a person on the desk and a reporter you know that
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kind of a thing the websites made a difference as well so it's been it's been quite a i only
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remember when sharja somebody asked me pakistani it's such a lame thing i did he was the manager
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of the pakistani team i remember his name but i will not say bechara for no reason he said why is
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it that india only has women sports reporters and i was stupidly so i said why is it that only
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pakistanis ask which was just like such a cheap thing to say fantastic answer though yeah but
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it was terrible look at it now it's just a sick thing to respond to you know and there was this
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because there were two of us who were there at that time there are two women me and this other
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girl i don't know whether she writes a hurly in her nimble i don't know that she writes anymore
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it is just so trite yeah it's such a bad thing to say i should have ignored it and all and i
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remember that thing now i say oh yeah what is this nonsense and at that time farishti was there
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farishti gati was at that time i think she wasn't at that tournament but she was writing you know
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she was there she was her byline was known meaningless anyway that's a lovely answer and
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you this conversation is making me very nostalgic as well because savita kirloskar hemant kinkrey
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they've both been colleagues of mine in different places so it's like you know it's like starting
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with max brg there's a whole thread of kind of connections between your past and my past
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so let's uh at one point you mentioned mr radhakrishnan in midday talk you know
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talking about that this is too overstated this is too understated let's talk about overstated
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and understated because it seems to me that sports writers have to face these almost conflicting
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imperatives and one imperative is is that you capture the essential drama of whatever game
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you're watching you capture the drama and you make it alive and that's great sports writing
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but the other imperative sometimes might be that you're watching a really boring game that is
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completely dull but because you as a writer want something great to come out of that you kind of
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uh you kind of create the drama hype it up like you know when i think of wall-e hamman's famous
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phrase about amar singh bowling of the cracks of doom you know and i i can't figure out
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ki matlab ki it clever hai but i can't figure out whether it's good or bad because on the one hand
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fine it's you know you remember it but exactly it's like wall-e hamman told you and me you know
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he came off the wicket like the crack of doom and you think wow you know yeah it's but on the other
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hand did he really so you know this is why let facts in the way get in the way of a good story
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you know our legendary phrase yeah yeah yeah see but the great things that wall-e hamman didn't
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have to prove it to us with because there was no television he could tell us what it was what he
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saw yeah maybe he just maybe just say anything so it's just too good in fact even with a lot of
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sort of carduses writing i get this feeling that it's not not really like that but is this
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something that you then have to that as a sports writer you start becoming aware of your own
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tendencies of maybe like in my case i certainly feel that there were times when i went too far
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and sometimes you just need to take yourself out of the equation and kind of get really blank and
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try to notice things for what they are and you know i love your writing because you sort of
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capture both like there are moments in your writing especially your feature stories that
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you know that have that sort of emotional poetic feel to it almost like you know like your former
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colleague Rohit Brijna that is best for example but there's a lot of your other writing which is
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very muscular narrative driven you're really going forward you know so you're one of those very rare
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writers who does both of those very well you know touches a sublime and at the same time you can
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really get deep into the action and and the kind of nuances so like forgive me if i'm if sound like
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sound like i'm overthinking it but you know in my own writing i sometimes try to think about my own
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tendencies and what am i doing here and all of that is this stuff that you think about is this
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something that you have to warn yourself against ki nahi aari ye cracks of doom wala scene nahi hain
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thanks for all those fantastic things you said first of all but what you're saying is right
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i think it depends on what the situation demands i think almost that that's how i respond to what
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i have to write now if i'm writing a piece that is completely a spontaneous response to what has
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happened then i feel you have to just let go and go for it you know because you should be able to
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create in your piece that response of emotion or whatever the visual sight that you saw that you
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couldn't forget you should be able to create it so that when you read it 10 years ago you remember
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what it felt like you know that i feel that is really important because that to my mind is the
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fundamental essence of descriptive sports writing for example so but you learn that in a way it's
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almost like there's a discipline that you do it you know it's almost that you sit down and you say
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okay this is what i have to do and you're going for it and when you're responding to it i don't
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know whether you do that as well i'm a compulsive note taker so if i know i have to write something
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i will take notes and take notes and take and i may not use any of it but i will take notes
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because that's my way of having a stick in my mind when you're writing something else when you're
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writing something that is i mean it may almost look cynical in a way that you're saying it but
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i think you have to be very clear about what that piece has to be what you're going to say in it how
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you're going to you know what is not how you're trying to tickle the public's emotions or what
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in a sense but what you're trying to replicate so where i want that piece to reflect that moment
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in time when i'm writing about something with an emotion so when you're writing about uh you know
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i wrote that piece in which was my colleague joy's idea at ESPN about the three women athletes in
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Rio Deepa, Sindhu and Sakshi so you're trying to write what that felt like so that you when you
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read it 10 years later you still remember what it felt like because it was fabulous at that time
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whatever happened to them whatever their careers turned out however things went in that moment it
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was a special thing for everybody all of us was in it you know at the time uh so like what happened
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you know when Tendulkar retired i had so many people i keep coming back to Tendulkar this is
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nonsense so so and i wouldn't even call myself a Tendulkar fan fan but who knows so uh when he
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retired i had people sending me messages saying i'm crying i don't even like cricket because they all
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saw his speech i didn't write anything but so it's that kind of a thing that you remember that time
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so that's what i try to do when i'm writing something on the at the top of my head it's
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actually not at the top of your head it's done in a very very careful manner that you have to
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literally put it down there if it means emptying yourself of that emotion almost by putting it
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out on the paper then that's what you do because then when you go back to it and you look at it
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and say okay and now i remember what that felt like you know that is what i try to do and in the
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other kind of writing that you're doing if you're trying to analyze or you're trying to like the
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bumara piece for example you have to just break it down into its smallest possible element and
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explain it to people and say look i need to share this with you that what i have found out i need to
#
tell you to understand how good he is because of this you know that's the two sort of levels at
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which you work i mean i recently wrote a piece on Rashid Khan for Al Jazeera online and i forgot
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that the audience that is going to read that piece doesn't have to be an entire cricket audience at
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all so i'm writing about grips and i'm writing about types of googly's and this and that and
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the other and it just got edited out because hello people are reading this in parts of the world where
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they don't play cricket they only tell us the story of Rashid Khan what he was like before he
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became a superstar so i mean those details were there i spoke to a couple of people and everything
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so you can sometimes over but you need to know who you're writing for in in that sense how much
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you have to explain how much you don't have to explain so it's that kind of thing that that i'm
#
very careful of what that piece is to be i mean and it's just training with which you do it you
#
know you can't write an emotional piece when you're trying to explain something in a very clear way
#
about what someone's uh this is like maybe a couple of sentences here or there but you have
#
to basically then explain something but if you if you're going for emotion then go for full emotion
#
as they say like prajwal's billy gene king thing when you have to we said go for the back of the
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court you know go for the line don't go for the bottom of the net go for the back of the court
#
just if you have to hit it out hit it out but other side not not don't play don't choke don't
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control your shot just go for it yeah yeah i remember some writing advice given to me by tim
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delisle who was my boss sambit's boss at wizden when i had first joined in 2001 and what he said
#
was quote when in doubt play your shots uh stop code which is something i do tell my writing
#
students and he's written a great book called the cornell guide to how to write well so if
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you're interested in writing and you know you're listening to this just do buy that up it's on
#
kindle unlimited so is it fair to say like from what you're saying is it then fair to say that
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there is a certain strand of your work not all of it but a certain strand of your body of work
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which is like a chronicle of your emotional journey as a sports lover absolutely absolutely
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i would say that that is you know so i remember in the athens olympics lianda and mahes lost that
#
match in which they could have won a medal it felt like death and now when i think about it
#
i'm thinking okay they lost but that time it felt like death so you have to just put it all out and
#
then that's it's almost like a therapy that you just get it out of the way you know that it's
#
just out of there so it would be it would be that that's a good that's a good sort of assessment of
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uh what you're saying but the other thing i remember very clearly is what shashi deshpande
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said once and i it stayed in my head she said uh there is there are two types of writing uh the
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kind that says listen to me and the kind that says look at me said but always be the i would prefer
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i would prefer to be the kind that says listen to me listen to what i'm saying listen to what i have
#
to share rather than look at how stylish and how good i am and whatever whatever that's to my mind
#
that is the thing and the point is that she pointed it out so clearly which tells you that you have
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to be because it's very easy to kind of you know embroider but it's not easy to uh emotes a horrible
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word but you know what i mean yeah no this is a beautiful quote it's straight away going on a
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slide for my writing course uh listen to me versus look at me i'll find the quote and send it to you
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i'll find the quote and send i have it i have it somewhere safe and is it the case that then
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you know given how sport is so much a part of our modern mythology the stories we tell ourselves
#
about who we are and so on that the story of sport is not really a story of events on sporting
#
fields with people competing against each other but it's a story of an emotional arc of a
#
nation almost as you know we we go through different points and when you look back on
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your old writing do you sort of uh you know like if you look at something you wrote 20 years ago
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or 15 years ago which you can because you just try not to look at them i try not they're just
#
there but i just try not to look at them i seriously try not but does it become a reintroduction to a
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person you were and you no longer are perhaps i remember watching graham pollock play and i
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just i just fell in love with his covered right he was like he was in his 60s i just fell in love
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with it and i remember writing the sports tab which of course they cut something about i can't
#
remember it's just nonsense i wrote something about it god or something like that they just cut it
#
you know because i literally it was like one sublime thing that i watched you know that way
#
so i don't know whether it's a person i'm not it's not like that i think i'm the same maybe i'm just
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more uh maybe yeah you can't be the person you were when you were in your 20s you'll be completely
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naive and uninformed about anything you have to be a little bit more pragmatic and proper
#
and and realistic uh in this day and age uh so yeah yeah perhaps when you look back and you see
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that you'll say oh boss okay so i i've kind of taken a lot of your time and honestly listen
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really i could speak to you for four hours more so we must do it again sometime uh but i'll talk to
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you about poker amit yeah i'm happy to talk about poker anytime there's not much to say it's not
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it's not really even uh it's very interesting because it's not just a sport it's on the
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intersection of a bunch of other things not all of them are uh so uh kind of uh attractive but no
#
but there are there's tons of stuff i wanted to talk to you more about but we shall leave that
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for later but i'll end with this you know that you've kind of almost co-written or put together
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a couple of books you know john writes indian summers and the yuvraj singh thing and all of
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that and i remember when i was in wisdon and then quicken for in the early 2000s and i would tell
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all my young colleagues that what are you doing our counterparts in england they are writing one
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book every three years it was almost like a rite of passage that uh that you write a lot of books
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and i think that's a great thing because it forces you to look look in a different way you're
#
attempting a new form uh and you kind of grow by doing and all of that and um and it seems to me
#
that with a lot of sports writer a lot of their writing it feels that it just it's in a lot of
#
dispersed locations and it feels transient for that reason it kind of just disappears in fact so
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one of the things that i would ask you to do which i think many listeners will agree with me is that
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please start a newsletter of your own which we can get in our inboxes where you publish regularly
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so there's like one place for it to create a website shardaogra.in or something but quite
#
apart from that what are you know when you when you look ahead you know you've had a remarkably
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rich journey and i suppose most of it isn't planned you know life is what happens to you when you're
#
busy making other plans you just kind of follow the flow but looking ahead what are some of the
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things that you would like to do or go deeper into because i know it won't just be more of the same
#
there are so many subjects in which your knowledge is so deep your passion is so deep more importantly
#
so you know can we uh have the audacity to expect some books to come uh with your name on it what's
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how do you look ahead i would be humbly uh graciously i would be first of all thanks was
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great chatting uh i mean you know almost i feel like i feel like sort of narcissistically i've
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like said whatever i had to say but yeah i mean i would i would like to write a book there are
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couples of ideas that i have one that i'm particularly passionate about is about women
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in indian sport i would like to write about that in a way that is not uh it's not indian sports
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what happens to women when they come into indian sport that's my sort of topic of interest uh and
#
i want to see how that goes i want to see whether it's uh sort of viable to do it because you would
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want to spend a lot of time focused on how you're on what you're uh you want to do it fully rather
#
than sort of try and cover your rent and so on but but so it's but i would definitely i would
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definitely think that now because i'm not uh employed anymore i describe myself in two terms
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i say i mean i'm i oscillate between azad parinda and pagal kutta so a free bird and wild dog you
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know so i'm kind of going from here to there so that's my that's my range as you say so um
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yeah but so definitely a book uh about that uh i think primarily that is of my interest
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this thing about women and sport i'm getting more interested in the subject and i think it should
#
be written about more carefully and with a little bit more depth and a nuance and understanding that
#
uh that is there uh because of the fact that the last 20 years for example have been
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almost a complete sea change for what happened i mean i have these stats at hand i remember
#
reading through them i don't know if they're here let me see suddenly literally in the 2000s
#
the numbers of women competing at the olympics almost doubled and troubled you know in the
#
20s it just the numbers has just gone up widely and so these last 20 years are important to look
#
at and to see what it was like what are the conditions that they are because everyone sort
#
of hung up on this nari shakti and you know the hero myth the arc of the great story and everything
#
i want to just look at it in a in a different way to see all the all the sort of possibilities
#
and the problems and the and the various sort of shades that are there in the in the life of women
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who are involved in indian sport as competitors and as coaches and so on
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well more power to you and godspeed can't wait for that book to come out i must by the way point
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out here that just as you were kind of cruel to scion and to atul bedede and so on you have done
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the same thing for dogs where you have said i don't know whether i am azad parinda or pagle
#
kutte what is wrong with kutte earlier and i have noticed this see my power of observation
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earlier you used the phrase thrown to the dogs yeah i know i know very bad two lots of dogs i've
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done this to very bad yeah twice you've done this to dogs deep psychoanalysis in no time at all you
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have discovered all my biases and everything yeah scion atul bedede and dogs no but this is my range
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i have i'm happy to be pagle kutte i'm very happy to be pagle kutte and azad parinda that is the
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that is the the full range well may both the azad parinda and the pagle kutte and you flourish
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thank you so much for coming on the show i've had such a great time talking to you
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thank you amit it's been great it's been great fun i don't know what it ends up sounding like
#
but i had a great time thank you so much if you enjoyed listening to this episode head on over
#
to the show notes for relevant links and go out and read everything that sharda has ever written
#
the story of indian sport is the story of india and no one has chronicled it better than sharda
#
ogra one reason she has been so productive is that she doesn't seem to be on twitter shock
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horror but you can follow me on twitter at amit varma a m i t b a r m a and you can browse past
#
episodes of the scene in the unseen at scene unseen dot i n thank you for listening
#
did you enjoy this episode of the scene in the unseen if so would you like to support the
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production of the show you can go over to scene unseen dot i n slash support and contribute any
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amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you you
