Not quite cricket, old boy

I have consistently maintained that I was the worst possible choice for minister of sports as I have never, not even in my youth, had any interest in sports and hated having to play them at school. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that I have not read Rajdeep Sardesai’s much-celebrated book on cricket. Yet, I am making his thoughts the centre-piece of my column this week because I had the opportunity of listening to him on the subject matter of the book at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Kasauli about a month ago. Rajdeep’s running theme was that the world of Indian cricket both reflected and influenced the larger national ethos as India evolved from colonial feudalism to Nehruvian/Indravian socialism and finally to Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation (LPG). Back in the 1930s, he said, when Indian cricket came to be recognised in its own right, it was assumed as normal that the team should be led -- indeed, could only be led -- by a suitably titled captain, say, the Jamsaheb of Nawanagar or the Maharajah of Patiala, but certainly not by a commoner. It was only because chieftains of blue blood dropped out for various reasons at the last moment that a scion of the street, CK Nayudu, became the captain of India’s first test team to tour that holiest of the holies, England. He added that if in independent India, perhaps the most celebrated of our cricket captains was indeed a Nawab -- the Nawab of Pataudi -- it was really only because of his genius at the game, not the colour of his bloodline. Otherwise, said he, it was not until and after independence, the dissolution of the princely states (as they were known) and the abolition (at least on paper) of zamindari that the rights of birth stopped being the necessary passport to the right to captaincy. I was with him all the way till that point, except that, had I had the time, I would have asked him why he saw pre-war feudalism in cricket as peculiarly Indian.For, although I am no expert, I seem to remember from my childhood that in England a sharp distinction was maintained between “gentlemen” and “players,” the former being cricketers with money of their own who would not deign to stain their talent with dross, while players were those who indulged in so vulgar a practice as actually wanting to be paid for defending their wicket against wicked foreigners. Moreover, only a “gentleman” could be captain. If my childhood memory does not deceive me, it was not till Len Hutton was made the English captain at just about the time I was entering secondary school in the very early 50s that a “player” secured social and sporting entitlement to become the English captain. Cricket, in fact, was the ultimate expression of the empire’s mission. It was the gentlemen of the metropolis who “came out” to civilise the players of the colonies.

The nexus between dodgy, dreadful sports administration, and excellence in cricket would have been the most rewarding unwritten chapter of his book

They brought with them cricket and its strict protocol and etiquette, so that “not quite cricket, old boy” became the most devastating reproof an English gentleman could deliver to anyone who did not conform to the rituals of his class, languidly delivered through that haze of gin and tonic required by the reddening Englishman to keep tropical malaria at bay. That India took to all this mumbo-jumbo with practised ease is hardly surprising since the Codes of Empire could be readily and smoothly introduced to a nation that had institutionalised caste as effectively as the “Mother Country” had institutionalised class. So, aristocracy and cricket went together in both India and England -- for who else could afford to take five days off without pay to play a game? Rajdeep is also impressed with the egalitarianism of contemporary Indian cricket that at least since Chandu Borde has thrown open the game at summit level to those not high-born. But that happened in England too, when the Yorkshire bumpkin, Freddy Trueman, made it to the top in England despite his rough-hewn country manners. It was not cricket that made India more egalitarian. It was our nation’s growing more egalitarian that made our cricket more egalitarian. And now, as Thomas Piketty has so convincingly shown, we are moving back to gross inequality that makes feudalism seem a picnic, as economic growth takes precedence over social justice. Top-class cricketers treat their earnings from actually playing cricket as peanuts as LPG ensures they make immensely more money advertising products that, I strongly suspect, they rarely actually consume. I do not begrudge them their takings, but certainly decry the sheer inhumanity of a value-system that encourages 300 million middle-class Indians to celebrate their staggering success even as a billion of their fellow nationals eke it out at the bottom of the pit. Rajdeep pointed out that, well into independence, cricket was dominated by the old composite Bombay state. Now, small towns are being given opportunity, as witness MS Dhoni’s rise to international eminence from tiny Ranchi or, earlier, Kapil Dev’s from some obscure hamlet of Haryana. But that is true of all walks of life: It is hardly breaking news that India has an outstanding captain from the mofussil when India has a PM from even lesser known Vadnagar. What does make for breaking news, however, is that contemporary Indian cricket has scaled such heights despite the shenanigans at the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Delhi District Cricket Association (DDCA). Rajdeep was not quite able to explain the nexus between dodgy, dreadful sports administration, and excellence in cricket. That would have been the most rewarding unwritten chapter of his book. At an early encounter with Rajdeep more than a quarter century ago, I asked whether he knew a Sardesai who had come along with someone called Wadekar from Bombay University to give the Delhi University team a whacking in my last year at college. He modestly replied that that was Dileep Sardesai, his father. This came to mind in Kasuali when Rajdeep dwelt at some length and much anguish at how meagre was the monetary recompense in those ghastly socialist days for those who were giving the nation so much through their cricket, a pittance of just Rs50 a day. I regret I did not reel in shock, as much of the audience did at this revelation. This was perhaps because, being not of Rajdeep’s generation but his father’s, I had started my career in the Indian Foreign Service at Rs440 a month. Had someone in the early 60s offered me Rs50 a day, I would have swooned with disbelief. A rupee then was not a rupee now. Rs250 was equal to five months’ pocket money for me through all my three years of college. And unfiltered information about cricketers’ remuneration befogs rather than clarifies the economist’s distinction between “nominal” and “real” prices. If I go by the prices of my two favourite items on the menu in my college café, then priced at 30 naye paise per plate, when I went back recently to the college café, I found the menu unchanged but the prices up by nearly 100 times. I don’t know if that spot survey applies to cricket but, if it does, Rs50 in my late adolescence would be about Rs5,000 a day today. Not bad, would be my comment.Mani Shankar Aiyar is former Congress MP, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. This article previously appeared on ndtv.com. Reprinted by special arrangement.