Books

Cricket Boulevard RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR With Peter Murray Published: 2004 Pages: 220 Rs 495.00

Synopsis

Cricket Boulevard is a skilfully executed, tenderly constructed, book: a literary celebration of a century of cricket, like no other work. It has narrative and character study blended in an eminently readable fashion. It not only manages to pervade the essential of the essentials of some of cricket’s greatest players -- from Dr W G Grace to Steve Waugh; from Sir Don Bradman to Sachin Tendulkar; from Sir Learie Constantine to Kapil Dev; from Ray Lindwall to Wasim Akram; and, from Clarrie Grimmett to Muttiah Muralitharan -- but, also brings to life a weighty and effulgent collage. More than an encapsulated grandeur of individual brilliance, or cricketing chemistry, of each player, Cricket Boulevard explores not only the many-resplendent delights of cricket, but also delineates a deftly woven canvas of the game’s scientific foundation, art and grammar -- of its players’ phenomenal exploits, acts of courage, grandeur, and ‘shortfall.’ A journey through nostalgia, and a living monument to a philosophy, it is, in sum, a collector’s edition no avid fan of the game can afford to miss.

Says noted scholar and writer, Dr Ramachandra Guha, PhD: “Cricket Boulevard is suffused with knowledge and love of the game… [And] it’s truly impressive.”

E X C E R P T S : Cricket's First Grace

It goes without saying that cricketing contexts are boundless means -- not arbitrary constructions. They are, in more ways than one, nested truths anchored in wider and deeper realities, where each of those wholes are parts of other wholes -- an artwork that more than highlights a particular context. Which also means that the interpretation of a cricketing artwork is not only the evocation, but also elucidation of the accentuated, necessary link, and a subliminal rendition -- one that involves a careful look at the total web of evidence.

Any understanding of a cricketing artwork, therefore, would mean intrinsically, or hermeneutically, to enter, as far as possible, the contents determining the art. In other words, it is a fusion of horizons -- the emergence of cricket as one whole -- in which the understanding of a work of art, of every great player, is simultaneously a process of self-understanding, and even liberating in its final effect. Not so simple, though. You got it right. To understand such a temple of art and science, one must, to some degree, enter its inner precincts, stretch boundaries and, thus, grow in the process. Reason: the fusion of such horizons is a broadening of self.

The immanence is obvious. When one directly views a legend called Dr W G Grace, who was born on July 18, 1848, one is consciously reminded of what all superior art has in common -- the capacity to, quite simply, take your breath away. It is something that makes you inwardly gasp, for a few seconds, when the art first hits you, or enters your being. More so, because Grace lived in a different time capsule -- one that did not belong to TV razzamatazz. Result: one is stunned to connecting picture frames of the old with the modern. But, what is remarkable is -- you are now open to perceptions that you had not seen before. That's Grace's magic -- his cricket seeps into your pores gently. Slowly. Maybe, just a little; maybe, a great deal. But, the effect will be hypnotic. You are changed, thanks to the game’s very own gamut of awareness -- a wholeheartedly accepted existence of not just figures in terms of runs scored, but also its soul and spirit.

Grace was the maker of modern batting. A revolutionary, Grace held conventional wisdom by the beard. His own. He turned batting into an art -- an accomplishment into a science. He developed the all-important criterion of style. In so doing, he also founded the very refined theory of forward- and back-play, where both were of equal importance. Yet, he placed reliance on neither. He was, at his zenith, the finest player born, or unborn. As the immortal K S Ranjitsinhji, the Prince of Batting, put it so succinctly: “He [Grace] turned the old one-string instrument into a many-chorded lyre.”

For more than forty years, Grace was the greatest player. He was also the dominant force in thirty of them. He still is -- thanks to the breadth of his long career, and cogent pre-eminence in his time, and beyond, as Grace, the physician, who used the willow with as much skill as the stethoscope. While it’s true that many batsmen have surpassed his total of 126 first-class centuries, none of them has been so venerated from his playing days till today -- the age of instant cricket, and technological nirvana.

When Grace entered first-class cricket, in 1865, the game was a shadowy pursuit for the best players, who had enough USP, for getting as much money as possible out of it. What’s more, cricket was just a provincial game -- not a prospect with international brand equity. But, by the time Grace hung up his boots, in 1908, the year the one and the only Sir Don Bradman was born, it was a national sport -- a sport that had brought countries together, and spread an affectionate passion even in the usually unsentimental, colonialist Englishmen.

Grace scored runs against bowlers on every conceivable type of wicket, and on a host of varying surfaces. Wickets, in Grace’s early days, were dangerous. Not for Grace, who faced the roughest of pace bowlers, and the highly skilled of spin bowlers, with both élan and efficiency. As he moved up his own ladder of cricketing success, Grace amassed seasonal figures of rare consistency and supremacy with as much ease as Indian violinist Lalgudi Jayaraman on the stringed instrument… In the decade between 1871 and 1880, for instance, Grace averaged 49. That his nearest ‘rival’ averaged just 26 wasn't passé; it was a powerful statement on Grace's consummate finesse, and run-making ability. Not only that. Grace also scalped 1,174 wickets. And, what’s most amazing, Grace topped the batting averages -- for 11 out of the 14 seasons betwixt 1866 and 1879. In 1871, Grace compiled 2,739 runs, at an average of 78.25; his runner-up totalled 1,068 at a measly 25.

What made Grace a remarkable batsman was his redoubtable faith in the basics of the game. The virtue of a straight bat, for him, was akin to the purity of every musical note to Mozart, or the precise, correct word to Shakespeare. He, quite simply, played the right stroke to the right ball in a manner born. Grace's stance was upright. His backlift was high, and he brought into every stroke an astonishingly quick repartee. The faster the bowler, the more delighted he was. Grace loved to smash the ball to pulp through the covers, or straight drive it past the hapless bowler. No shot is as disheartening for a bowler as the drive -- and, Grace cultivated the stroke to perfection.

Grace often said that games aren’t won by leaving the ball alone. He hated defensive strokes, because he thought “you can only get three off ’em.” And, so he hit the ball as powerfully as he possibly could, with stunning effect. His mercurial stroke play was an extension of his personality -- full of zest and qualified self-assurance. When he advanced in age, Grace had a thickening waistline, all right. But, when it came to footwork he was nimble and omnipotent. His placement was sound -- like a snooker player. He found gaps quite easily, in the field, with a great deal of clinical nonchalance.

As his days in the sun progressed, Grace was but a far cry from the young stripling --a colt with an electrical enthusiasm for the game. So, the image that is commonplace of Grace today is his massive, bearded countenance -- a grizzly bear, or a remotely comical figure, for a generation long used to sleek, purely athletic, lissome sporting heroes. Yes, the bat, in Grace’s hands, looks like a child’s first ever willow, not to speak of those enormous feet so transfixed at the crease. They are allegories that do not look like taking the attack to the bowler. But, Grace was Grace. Once the bowler had let go the ball from his hands, Grace would be a transformed man. Result: viola! Add to that Grace's amazing stamina, and colossal strength, and you have one great epic -- Grace's own -- ever written, or put into composition in the game’s wondrous script.

Grace’s value was just not confined to the sports field. It extended beyond — not just in terms of waves of hysteria of people who wanted to watch him play, but also financial productivity. Grace knew his price. He was also cognisant of how hard a bargain he could drive. In today’s world, Grace would have been great copy for cricket writers, thanks to his idiosyncrasies and sense of mirth. More so, because opinion is divided on Grace's gentlemanly qualities -- on whether he cheated and bent rules to suit himself. To cull an example. Grace, who did not like fast bowling, in his later years, once nicked a quickish delivery from a young paceman, Neville Knox. As the fielding side was cock-a-hoop with his dismissal, Grace stood his ground. He rubbed his arm, and said: “I didn’t come here for nothing; nor did all these spectators. Play on!”

The sheer multiplicity of Grace’s anecdotes lends credence to Grace’s larger-than-life image. He was a great character, doubtless. Maybe, he lacked pure intellectual fibre -- an esoteric element of air. But, what was most extraordinary was his sense of dedication to both cricket and his patients -- two vastly divergent fields with nothing in common, so to say. Not that Grace was a rigid professional, a hard man to barter with. You wouldn’t believe it. Grace often gave his services free to the poor -- without holding anything back.

Grace was an instinctive player. He was forgetful too. More than anything else, he was a winsome soul -- a man who loved practical jokes. What he hated most was reading books. It did not affect him at all -- this accumulation of knowledge sort of a thing. He also despised war. The First World War troubled him greatly. He was shattered to think of the idea of how his fellow English cricketers were being butchered in France. Yet, he wrote a famous letter to Sportsman magazine urging cricketers to join the armed forces… ASAP. It showed his patriotic fervour -- the greatest affection for the country of his birth.

Grace’s keen eyesight was his keynote to success. He chiselled the pull shot like no other player of his time. Grace was a great innovator and a great all-rounder -- all rolled into one. His Test average may not do him justice, all right, nor does his first-class percentage of 32.29 and 40.68, respectively. But, they demonstrate one inescapable pointer: Grace, as Grace can be -- an appearance of delicacy, the stamp of a champion. Here’s Grace's fact-file: Tests -- 22; innings 36; runs 1,098; highest 170; 100s 2; 50s 5; first-class cricket -- matches 872; innings 1,483; runs 54,518; highest 344; 100s 126. You don’t judge a player just in terms of statistical excellence -- there’s something else called ingenuity that’s more important. Right? Grace had that luminous element -- all his very own.

That was also his greatness -- a vibrant expansion of his self, belief, method, and conviction of thought, and emotion in motion. Of the bat meeting the ball on its own terms -- simply, sensibly, and without balderdash. Of a blending of the serious with the pleasing -- one that has the wherewithal to please everyone. A force that carries the seed of cricket as all-encompassing -- the most diligent and learned of all sport. Of poetry that springs not from technique alone, but from a kind of Platonian divine frenzy.

The rest, as the cliché goes, is history -- a part of cricketing folklore, and enterprise. It also sums up Grace, the very fountain-head of cricket renaissance. A player, like no other, who carried nothing else, but his originality to a world beyond space and time.

Top

	People Who Influenced The World… Peter Murray With RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Published: 2005 Pages: 288 $49.95
This beautifully-moulded coffee-table book encapsulates 60 great people who helped  create a new world over the past hundred years -- some well remembered, and some forgotten. People Who Influenced The World Over The Past 100 Years, put simply, documents world leaders, artists and entertainers, scientists and thinkers, heroes and icons, as well as revolutionaries and dictators… you name them! A grand, encyclopaedic volume -- a collector's edition like no other.