Samir Chopra
The tale of a win that didn't come to be
Delhi were expected to coast to the Irani Cup title in 1982. Then came an outrageous chase of 421 runs
Samir Chopra
22-Nov-2014
Early in the Indian cricket season of 1982-83, a fan of the Delhi team could be excused some arrogance and complacency. Delhi's Ranji team had won the national domestic competition in 1979 and 1980, lost the final in 1981 and then won again in 1982. The team seemed unstoppable; the word "dynasty" was not then used, but it might as well have been. The players in Delhi's squad were a veritable pantheon of local heroes: Chetan Chauhan, Raman Lamba, Mohinder and Surinder Amarnath, Kirti Azad, Maninder Singh, Sunil Valson, Gursharan Singh, Surinder Khanna. The list went on. It was a good time to be a Delhi fan.
So it was with justifiable anticipation that the Delhi fan looked forward to the Irani Cup final to be played in October 1982. It would kick off another season of Delhi glory, another march to the summit of Indian domestic cricket. The capital would once again show the rest of India just how cricket was to be played. Nothing could or would stand in the way of this juggernaut. The timing of the final seemed appropriately festive: sandwiched between Dussehra and Diwali. And all five days would be telecast live, even to local markets. The weather was right, we were the champions, all was set.
Things only got better once the game began. Nineties from Raman Lamba and Gursharan Singh and a century from Mohinder Amarnath took Delhi to a first-innings total of 429. Some were alarmed by the collapse from 337 for 3 to 429 all out, and wondered if enough had been done to secure the prized first-innings lead, but such anxieties were quickly dispelled once Rest of India had been bowled out for 267. Sunil Gavaskar bowled for a duck by Maninder - was any further proof needed that Delhi now reigned supreme in Indian cricket? It was not just a game-drawing, trophy-winning first-innings lead, it was likely to ensure an authentic outright win.
Full postAcknowledging the Indian who doesn't care for cricket
Yes, such a tribe exists, and it cannot be dismissed easily in this age when we constantly worry about the game's future
Samir Chopra
07-Nov-2014
A few months ago, as I watched the World T20 final at home, my father-in-law, then visiting for the weekend, casually strolled into the living room, parked himself on my couch with a cup of tea, looked at the television and asked, "So when the ball goes flying over the boundary like that, is it six runs?"
My father-in-law, well-versed in the metaphysical intricacies of Urdu poetry, in the finer details of Quranic exegesis, in the esoteric details of the administrative strategies of the Ottoman Empire, was all at sea when it came to understanding the rules of this game. My affirmative response to his innocent question was stymied, just for a second, by the realisation that I was in the presence of that curious creature: an Indian non-fan of cricket.
Yes, it's true. There are many Indians - millions! - who cannot bring themselves to care about bat and ball, willow and leather, stump and bail, and all of the rest. They are resolute in their indifference, and sometimes pungent in their hostility. This anti-cricket sentiment in India has a long and venerable history, going all the way back to cricket's earliest days, when passionate nationalists railed against the importation of this latest colonial imposition, this all-too transparent attempt to impose English culture on the Indian landscape, this latest way for insecure, grasping Indians to ape the manners and mores of their colonial masters, this inflamer of "communal" passions in pitting Hindu against Parsee and Muslim.
Full postThe renewability of cricket
We as players and spectators have a great deal to do with the perceived complexity of the game, simply because we change over time
Samir Chopra
23-Oct-2014
My Cordon colleague Jon Hotten writes, in his recent post, "Cricket: complex, unknowable cricket":
The brilliance of the design of the game provides a framework that stretches off into the future. We, as players and spectators, are finite, but cricket itself is universal.
I think Jon must have meant something other than "universal", because otherwise the contrast made here doesn't work. I suspect he wanted to say something like "cricket is infinitely extensible" or "renewable".
Full postThe joys of India v Pakistan by proxy
The presence of Lahore Lions in the Champions League gave us that for a while. More's the pity that they're not pitted against an "Indian" side in the final
Samir Chopra
03-Oct-2014
As I sit here watching the first semi-final of the Champions League T20 tournament I'm reminded of how disappointed I am that Lahore Lions crashed out and failed to qualify for the knockout stage. For if there was one thing that would have made the closing stages of this often-despised tournament more interesting, it would have been the presence of a Pakistani team.
I make such a claim not because Pakistani cricketers are "mercurial", "capable of gold one day and dross the next", the most entertaining, skillful T20 players in the world, or anything else like that.
Rather, quite straightforwardly, a Pakistani team would have provided some much-needed frisson to the games - especially in their encounters with IPL teams. As my Twitter timeline seemed to show, these encounters were the only ones of the Champions League that brought out a little tribal edginess in fans, Indian and Pakistani alike.
Full postThe joy of staying not-out overnight
It is one not reserved for those at high levels of the game alone: the most exalted experiences can come in the most humble settings
Samir Chopra
17-Sep-2014
Like for most recreational cricketers, most of the cricket I have played has been of the limited-overs, one-day or one-afternoon variety: twenty-twenty, thirty-thirty, and sometimes even forty-forty. On rare occasions, I have had the pleasure of playing multiple-day cricket. Because my talents were, and will resolutely remain, carefully circumscribed and limited, my ascent up the ranks of cricket stopped at the two-day varietal. Still, playing in that elevated domain enabled the enjoyment of a pleasure never to be found in the one-day game: remaining not-out overnight.
Many years ago, as a youngster, I saw a cartoon reproduced in the 1973 John Player Yearbook that sent my youthful imagination racing: it showed Bev Congdon, the captain of the New Zealand team to tour England that summer, striding out to bat, carrying with him, besides his bat and gloves, a small overnight kit and toilet bag. The caption read (I think, for the years have rolled by): "Bev Congdon will have the morning papers and tea sent out to him." (During that series Congdon had distinguished himself by playing two epic innings, of 176 and 175; they had taken all of 923 minutes and 831 deliveries; he also went first ball in the third Test.) That hyperbolic description of Congdon's powers of endurance made me think anew of the long distance - in temporal terms - the overnight not-out batsman traverses. I thought, too, of the satisfaction of walking off at the close of day's play and the pleasurable anticipation of the next day's batting, one ineluctably tinged with nervous apprehension.
But I never thought I would ever be placed in such a situation.
Full postIs there such a thing as an ideal retirement?
The decision to quit is an acutely difficult one, and many cricketers trip up when it's their turn to take it
Samir Chopra
03-Sep-2014
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine, a Boston Red Sox fan (don't ask), posted an article to her Facebook page, one that savagely took Derek Jeter to task. His primary sin? The announcement that 2014 would be his "retirement year" thus triggering a season's worth of tributes, farewells and sappy goodbyes. I am a New York Yankees fan, and I admire Jeter tremendously, but I was only too happy to - treacherously, given my company - join in this critique of his retirement plans.
Extended farewells like these are a nuisance. During the southern summer of 2003-04, as India toured Australia for a four-Test series that would eventually be drawn 1-1, cricket fans all over Australia were treated to the Steve Waugh farewell tour, for the Australian captain had announced his retirement from Test cricket at the commencement of the series. There were standing ovations, red handkerchiefs waved from all corners of all grounds, and there were many (oh, so many) tuneless tribute songs belted out lustily from the stands, the vocal chords of choirs suitably fuelled by dozens of alcoholic libations. Australia loves its cricketing heroes, but even there, I could sense, by the end of the series, a little impatience at the retirement strategy the normally hard-headed Waugh had adopted. He seemed to have hijacked the summer's cricketing narrative; and besides, how many standing ovations for one man could you, er, stand?
Our dismay at the tedium and self-indulgence of the extended or excessively staged retirement - a sentiment visible in the unease some expressed at Sachin Tendulkar's farewell - is matched by our impatience with, and sorrow over, the delayed retirement. I wonder if there is a sportswriter who has not waxed indignant, bemused, or wistful, as an ageing star declines to go down the supernova route and settles for the way of the white or brown dwarf instead: a series of increasingly bedraggled, tired, undistinguished performances threaten to crowd out the previously dominant images of sparkling sporting glory, prompting ever greater anguish on our part. Why won't our heroes put us all out of our collective miseries and call it a day already? (We are then, of course, treated to plentiful platitudes from other sportswriters, who inform us, in sonorous tones, about how champions never know when to give up, about how the fading of the light is a truth too brutal to be dealt with by most of us, and on and on.)
Full post66 for 6 and all that
How does an Indian fan react to this most evil of numbers?
Samir Chopra
22-Aug-2014
Forty-two days of Test cricket ended so quickly; it was a bit of a blur. It ended with a long procession of batsmen, stretching as far back as the eye could see, their giant columns raising dust, taking guard, coming and going, their names going up and then down, on a giant scoreboard. Small numbers - very small! - appear next to their names. And then, finally, silence. How was one to make sense of it all? Especially as - when the smoke had cleared - it wasn't even 42 days. This is the era of unseemly brevity; of 140-character missives. Who has time for five days of a Test? Not the Indian batting line-up, eager to rouse the watching spectators from their indolent slumbers and send them, well ahead of schedule, back to work, back to reinvigorating national economies, back to reuniting families. Too bad for those selling beer at the grounds.
Sometimes catastrophes have to be approached gingerly. Tentatively. In small doses. So here go a pair of attempts at reckoning with disaster.
1. As parenthood has brought new responsibilities in its wake, my leisure and cricket-watching hours have undergone modification. I now spend Saturday and Sunday mornings taking my little daughter to the park, content to engage her in a ball sport or two. I leave behind my trip to the gym, my mornings in front of the cricket. When I return home, and touch the spacebar to bring the world of cricket to life, abbreviated scores spring into view, alerting me to all - the eventuation of cricketing fortunes - I have missed in my absence. Most notably, while I had been away these past two weekends, fourth innings began and went nowhere, sputtering in circles, before finally running aground on the shoals of deliveries that deigned to not maintain perfectly straight paths.
Full postThe dark subtexts of cricket literature
Why reading acclaimed works from decades ago is often revealing
Samir Chopra
07-Aug-2014
In a post here on the Cordon, a couple of years ago, noting my book-reading experiences as a youngster in India, I wrote:
Slowly, I moved through the denizens of Area Code 796.358, all in hardback, and which included, quite obviously, the usual suspects: Cardus, Swanton, Fingleton et al. This was the British Council library, and my mind was slowly attuned to a particular history with its particular narrative, its preferred locales, heroes and legends. As far as ideology-promulgating institutions go, the BCL was particularly successful: I grew up with a particular cricketing mythology central in my mind, one that would take some displacement.
I was reminded of that childhood and teen years reading experience as I read the excellent Picador Book of Cricket (ed. Ramachandra Guha). This post is not a comprehensive review by any means, but rather a very brief nod at one aspect of the acculturation provided by my reading experiences noted above.
Full postBattling the fear of defeat
A fourth-innings chase can be brutally unforgiving; every wicket can lead to acute anxiety
Samir Chopra
24-Jul-2014
The difficulty of the fourth-innings chase is an abiding legend - with adequate basis in fact - of Test cricket.
When England set out to chase 319 in the recently concluded Lord's Test, the statistics were overwhelmingly against it: in the history of Test cricket, in some 2130 Tests, a fourth-innings target above 300 had only been chased down a grand total of 27 times. Strictly speaking, this statistic is misleading: a more revealing one would also tell us how many times such a target has been set. But we do gain an inkling of how difficult this task has been in the history of the game.
What makes it so?
Full postAn old-fashioned series
India's five-Test tour of England feels like a throwback to the 1950s, down to the weak touring squad
Samir Chopra
04-Jul-2014
When India last toured England, they played four Tests. They lost all four. They started the series threatening to be competitive and then fell apart. They spent days in the field hunting leather, finding it increasingly difficult to take 20 wickets. Indeed, so bad had things become that when they did dismiss an English batsman, they changed their minds and called him back to have another go.
They let English crowds of this new millennium experience the halcyon days of the 1930s when Bradman and Trumper and Hutton laid waste to bowling attacks with merciless application. When their turn came to bat, India found their old guard - except for one grizzled veteran - had retreated, sowing panic in the ranks.
India generously gave Stuart Broad the first of his hat-tricks and turned Tim Bresnan into a 1980s West Indian incarnate. The Indian defeats even moved journalists to descend to juvenile headlines that drew on language drawn from teenager text-messaging archives, all the better to capture their on-field catastrophes.
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