Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Don’t ask me why but I did celebrate the day Parvez Rasool and his merry band of cricketers from Jammu and Kashmir made it to the quarter finals of the Ranji Trophy this year. That they did not make it to the semis or the final just did not matter. The important thing seemed to be that they had finally made the cut; they had just joined the big boys. No more the perpetual underdogs whom every other team looked forward to meet, to deliver a whipping as it were, and, of course, to taking full points for the match, J&K always reduced to the bottom of the table. The losers everyone loved to toy with.
That a change was a coming, even belatedly perhaps, had been noticeable for some time. Parvez Rasool’s selection to the national team was by far the strongest bit of evidence of that. One had been told of the birth of a new generation of young, aspiring boys from the State wishing to make the grade. By none so vociferously as by a former Indian captain, the spinning legend Bishen Singh Bedi, who I believe, saw potential in the boys from the State. That was during the short time Bedi was the team’s coach.
And reading and talking to some of the cricket writers I now felt reassured that the team is finally on an upswing. Mind you, I am not suggesting that one swallow does a summer make. It needs a lot more perseverance, far more effort to spot talent, nurturing it from early school days onwards. It also means investing in the future, in terms of money, effort and above all necessary infrastructure. It surely does not mean unscrupulous people taking charge of the State cricket association not because of their love for the game but because it gets them into positions of influence and access to the overflowing coffers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Was I surprised by the reports that the State Ranji Trophy team had not received its legitimate dues for two years and that the local cricket association was literally shamed by Parvez Rasool into making the overdue payments with the team’s laudable effort this year.
No, I wasn’t surprised at all after what I had read about the financial mismanagement, involving a few crores, if not more, by the State’s cricket busses : I recall reading of a controversy surrounding cash doles received by the association from the BCCI. Experience tells how rapacious politicians can be when it comes to partaking of the BCCI’s bounty whenever the latter chooses to advance funds to the State unit for promotion of the game.
Pray, tell me how a Laloo Prasad Yadav takes charge of a cricket association. For that matter, how does a busy politician and a senior Minister in the Union government, Sharad Pawar to wit, find the time to worm his way into International Cricket Council (or whatever its name). Not just time, he becomes its chairman as well. Or how Maharashtra Chief Ministers manage to take charge of the State association?
Frankly, it’s not a surprise at all. Cricket, glamour of the sport apart, gives them access to funds, to indulge in influence peddling. How else do you account for the presence in, say, the Delhi team of Laloo Yadav’s son or his presence in an IPL team? The young man spent two seasons with an IPL team without ever having to don his team’s colours.
I am sure if the boys from Jammu and Kashmir had godfathers in BCCI – you get into that position by controlling the State Association – a few of them would at least find themselves rubbing shoulders with other players who make it to big money via the IPL. In their case the problem lies with the State’s representative on the Board (normally State association chairman) who in Kashmir’s case probably doesn’t have the time to involve himself in the nitty gritty of managing the sport. Or maybe he allows his cronies to account for the funds which the BCCI provides for promotion of the game.
I can’t imagine a State like Jammu and Kashmir not having a worthwhile cricket ground. On my many visits to the summer capital, Srinagar, I have seen scores of boys pretending to be playing cricket but most of them without a bat, beating a used tennis ball with a piece of timber. And this in a State which exports cricket bats by the thousand.
Even the so-called stadium outside the State guest house in Srinagar – which once hosted a India-West Indies match abandoned due to crowd misbehavior – is barely an excuse for a venue. Some kind of a pucca structure, am told, has been built now, more for a handful of VIPs, but not a cricket-worthy venue by any means. If a Dharmshala in Himachal can build a picture perfect stadium, surrounded by mountain ranges, why can’t Jammu or Kashmir boast of similar stadia? If the State association is lethargic why can’t the State Government step in to build one?
How come I have suddenly woken up to cricket in Jammu and Kashmir? Frankly, it has something to do with me at the personal level. For one thing my nephew, studying at Amar Singh College then, had represented the State in cricket and I am conscious of the excitement it caused in the family. Later, as I began to learn my first lessons in reporting in Delhi, I did start as a sports reporter. That was more than five decades ago and I had seen and covered the Silver Jubilee cricket teams, with some of the world’s best known players represented, the West Indies and, of course, the Hafeez Kardat-led Pakistan team playing in Delhi, Kanpur and Lucknow. I had seen Kashmir football teams being knocked out in the first round of the Durand Tournament, India’s oldest football contest.
In my own days at Srinagar’s S.P. College I had seen the Islamia College, Peshawar cricket team, which included the six-footer pacer Khan Mohammad, who later played for Pakistan, whipping a rag-tag local team with Billoo Sethi, a future national golf champion, the best of the lot.
Then, there is the very personal angle of having been told much later in life that I was no longer a State subject, because I had been away for longer than seven years. And, of course, the final blow, when my brother had to sell our ancestral property including our half-burnt home. My home where I was born and did initial schooling and first years of college, was set on fire because a Srinagar newspaper had discovered that I was a “senior” Kashmiri Pandit journalist doing the behest of New Delhi. I was in the words of Sheikh Abdullah, one of the greatest Kashmiri’s known to me, an “Indian viceroy” in Kashmir. Sheikh Sahab was speaking in a different context during which he had reserved the above description for Srinagar-based journalists who he believed had always opposed him from the days of his “quit Kashmir” movement.
So, when I salute Parvez Rasool and his men in some peculiar way I see a vindication of myself and my decades as a journalist. Doesn’t make sense to you? Be assured, try as you might, you can’t take away my identity from me.
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