India, and in turn, Indian cricket, continues to fascinate the outsider. No wonder, then, that James Astill, political editor of the British magazine The Economist has written a highly readable account, The Great Tamasha – Cricket, Corruption And The Turbulent Rise of Modern India (Published by Bloomsbury under the imprint, Wisden Sports Writing).
Astill gives away the whole book in a single sentence that accompanies the title. It tells the reader how modern India is riven by corruption, including in one of its few vibrant spots, cricket.
The Great Tamasha, no doubt, is meant for a non-Indian audience since most of what Astill writes about has been discussed and debated earlier such as its history, the class and caste consciousness that informs the game. So what’s new?
Astill, by the way, has great cricketing background and an India connection. One of his ancestors was part of the MCC team that played a drawn game against the Hindus at Bombay in 1926, before India played Test cricket in 1932. Ewart Astill, a Leicestershire professional who bowled off-spinners and medium pace cutters, took five wickets in the match and went on to play nine Tests for England. Also, Astill is one of the few journalists who had the privilege of facing up to the fearsome Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar, when India toured Pakistan in 2004. Courage, it is called.
Astill is greatly agitated by the Indian Premier League and the clout that the Board of Control for Indian Cricket (BCCI) wields. Is BCCI corrupt? There are few pointers to believe the veiled charge that BCCI is corrupt. There is no doubt that BCCI is feudal in character. There is, also, crony capitalism at work. But, for example, is N Srinivasan corrupt? Has he siphoned off money from the BCCI to India Cements, the company he owns?
Astill writes that IPL is perhaps the chief illustration of the Indian board’s disregard for cricket’s future good. “It is a splendid cricket romp, hugely popular and great fun for players and spectators. But its effect on international cricket has been destructive.” Is BCCI, then, expected to play the role of United Nations?
What made BCCI as rich as the Mughals is one-day cricket. IPL and T20 came much later. But one-day cricket was not the invention of the BCCI. T 20 was not BCCI’s bastard child. So what wrong has BCCI done?
Astill has taken some effort to deflate sociologist Ashis Nandy’s theory (whom he describes as an obtuse cricket theorist) that “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English,” which Nandy put forth in his book The Tao of Cricket in 1989. That theory was purely based on the open-ended form of Test cricket and equivocal nature of the five-day sport, where no one is fully defeated and no one is fully victorious.
Now in the age of T20 and IPL, Astill asks Nandy and us a pertinent question-- is cricket still an Indian game?
The question becomes significant in the backdrop of the manner in which England cricketers celebrated their Ashes win over Australia at the Oval last week. I assume there is no corruption in England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the gentlemen, who run the game there, are civil to a fault. May be James Anderson, Kevin Pietersen and Stuart Broad may have an Indian bone.
And now to read Astill’s depressing outlook that “India, a country that has so enriched cricket, is now the gravest threat to its most precious traditions” would come as a revelation to you. Before Jagmohan Dalmiya barged into the ICC boardroom and when MCC was ruling the cricketing waves, what good it had done to cricket in India and elsewhere?
Did MCC bankroll the development of Indian cricket? It is all fine to preach to BCCI that it should resuscitate the game in the West Indies and Zimbabwe. May be nothing should stop someone from suggesting that BCCI should bankroll Pakistan cricket as well since not having a strong Pakistan team would also affect the board’s pecuniary interests. Imagine broadcasters shying away from bidding for satellite rights of an India-Pakistan series if the result is a foregone conclusion.
I suggest that Astill should write about the serious business that English cricket is. Forget Nandy. Why is it that England, the inventors of all forms of the game, including ODIs and T20s, have never won the World Cup? Men, I’m talking about.
Astill is right when he writes that the good of Indian cricket is not the chief priority of the politicians (read Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Rajeev Shukla, et al) who run the BCCI. To be fair to these politicians, he should remember that India has won two World Cups with such villains around, but England has none.
What BCCI has done for world cricket cannot be ignored, despite small men riding the IPL wave now. By taking World Cup away from colonial masters, first by winning it in 1983 and then by staging it first time outside of England in 1987, when words such as liberalisation, globalization were unheard of India, was an act of imagination. There were no Modis, Narendra or Lalit, too, at the wicket. Astill himself has quoted Wisden: “The fourth World Cup (in 1987) was more widely watched, more closely fought and more colourful than any of its predecessors held in England.”
It is a travesty then that we take The Great Tamasha a little too seriously. One could not miss a sense of grovelling when eminent journalists from India’s finest newspapers ask Astill how cricket needs to be run in India so that it benefits India and world (not part of the book, but in an interview Sunday Times of India carried on August 25, 2013).
But, for all that, Astill does not spare Indian journalists. Read this: “Indian newspaper journalists can be rather an insecure lot. Less well paid than TV reporters, whom they tend to despise, they protect their dignity jealously. And these cricket reporters, all deeply serious about the game, did not feel it was well served by the IPL.”
Astill also points out that Indian sports editors were unsure how to cover IPL. He says the T20 format did not call for traditional match reports. A fair point, one should concede.
John Cheeran is a journalist with The Times of India, Kerala. He has earlier worked for Indian Express, Asian Age, Pioneer, Gulf News and DNA.
Astill gives away the whole book in a single sentence that accompanies the title. It tells the reader how modern India is riven by corruption, including in one of its few vibrant spots, cricket.
The Great Tamasha, no doubt, is meant for a non-Indian audience since most of what Astill writes about has been discussed and debated earlier such as its history, the class and caste consciousness that informs the game. So what’s new?
Astill, by the way, has great cricketing background and an India connection. One of his ancestors was part of the MCC team that played a drawn game against the Hindus at Bombay in 1926, before India played Test cricket in 1932. Ewart Astill, a Leicestershire professional who bowled off-spinners and medium pace cutters, took five wickets in the match and went on to play nine Tests for England. Also, Astill is one of the few journalists who had the privilege of facing up to the fearsome Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar, when India toured Pakistan in 2004. Courage, it is called.
Astill is greatly agitated by the Indian Premier League and the clout that the Board of Control for Indian Cricket (BCCI) wields. Is BCCI corrupt? There are few pointers to believe the veiled charge that BCCI is corrupt. There is no doubt that BCCI is feudal in character. There is, also, crony capitalism at work. But, for example, is N Srinivasan corrupt? Has he siphoned off money from the BCCI to India Cements, the company he owns?
Astill writes that IPL is perhaps the chief illustration of the Indian board’s disregard for cricket’s future good. “It is a splendid cricket romp, hugely popular and great fun for players and spectators. But its effect on international cricket has been destructive.” Is BCCI, then, expected to play the role of United Nations?
What made BCCI as rich as the Mughals is one-day cricket. IPL and T20 came much later. But one-day cricket was not the invention of the BCCI. T 20 was not BCCI’s bastard child. So what wrong has BCCI done?
Astill has taken some effort to deflate sociologist Ashis Nandy’s theory (whom he describes as an obtuse cricket theorist) that “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English,” which Nandy put forth in his book The Tao of Cricket in 1989. That theory was purely based on the open-ended form of Test cricket and equivocal nature of the five-day sport, where no one is fully defeated and no one is fully victorious.
Now in the age of T20 and IPL, Astill asks Nandy and us a pertinent question-- is cricket still an Indian game?
The question becomes significant in the backdrop of the manner in which England cricketers celebrated their Ashes win over Australia at the Oval last week. I assume there is no corruption in England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the gentlemen, who run the game there, are civil to a fault. May be James Anderson, Kevin Pietersen and Stuart Broad may have an Indian bone.
And now to read Astill’s depressing outlook that “India, a country that has so enriched cricket, is now the gravest threat to its most precious traditions” would come as a revelation to you. Before Jagmohan Dalmiya barged into the ICC boardroom and when MCC was ruling the cricketing waves, what good it had done to cricket in India and elsewhere?
Did MCC bankroll the development of Indian cricket? It is all fine to preach to BCCI that it should resuscitate the game in the West Indies and Zimbabwe. May be nothing should stop someone from suggesting that BCCI should bankroll Pakistan cricket as well since not having a strong Pakistan team would also affect the board’s pecuniary interests. Imagine broadcasters shying away from bidding for satellite rights of an India-Pakistan series if the result is a foregone conclusion.
I suggest that Astill should write about the serious business that English cricket is. Forget Nandy. Why is it that England, the inventors of all forms of the game, including ODIs and T20s, have never won the World Cup? Men, I’m talking about.Astill is right when he writes that the good of Indian cricket is not the chief priority of the politicians (read Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Rajeev Shukla, et al) who run the BCCI. To be fair to these politicians, he should remember that India has won two World Cups with such villains around, but England has none.
What BCCI has done for world cricket cannot be ignored, despite small men riding the IPL wave now. By taking World Cup away from colonial masters, first by winning it in 1983 and then by staging it first time outside of England in 1987, when words such as liberalisation, globalization were unheard of India, was an act of imagination. There were no Modis, Narendra or Lalit, too, at the wicket. Astill himself has quoted Wisden: “The fourth World Cup (in 1987) was more widely watched, more closely fought and more colourful than any of its predecessors held in England.”
It is a travesty then that we take The Great Tamasha a little too seriously. One could not miss a sense of grovelling when eminent journalists from India’s finest newspapers ask Astill how cricket needs to be run in India so that it benefits India and world (not part of the book, but in an interview Sunday Times of India carried on August 25, 2013).
But, for all that, Astill does not spare Indian journalists. Read this: “Indian newspaper journalists can be rather an insecure lot. Less well paid than TV reporters, whom they tend to despise, they protect their dignity jealously. And these cricket reporters, all deeply serious about the game, did not feel it was well served by the IPL.”
Astill also points out that Indian sports editors were unsure how to cover IPL. He says the T20 format did not call for traditional match reports. A fair point, one should concede.
John Cheeran
John Cheeran is a journalist with The Times of India, Kerala. He has earlier worked for Indian Express, Asian Age, Pioneer, Gulf News and DNA.