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Permit me to invite you to tag along on a short journey that fleetingly slips inside the minds and memories of a few legendary cricketers. Their conversations emanated from the landscape of cricket, but they are replete with insights into the broad tapestry of living. I probably devote too much time to reading about and looking at the game of cricket. I can’t help but -marvel at the bounty that has been made possible by technology. I can’t help but be grateful to those who have collected and uploaded footage and interviews that are available with just a few clicks. I browse, and with YouTube’s penchant for luring you down fascinating rabbit holes, the range of discoveries can happily hijack me. At the beginning of October, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar were part of a gala hosted by the National Cricket League to support domestic violence awareness. Lara urged men to “step back and be bigger” in this rampant, global plague. At the gala itself, he and Tendulkar reminisced about their careers. Asked about whether they were competitors who became friends, Tendulkar immediately responded, “friends first and then competitors”. Tendulkar, four years younger than Lara, made his Test debut at 16. “When I was 16,” said Lara, “I could not hit the ball to the boundary. I used to use the pace of the ball, get it down to third man, get it down to fine leg. But this young man was taking on the best bowlers in the world and thumping them.” He said his respect for Tendulkar transcended everything else. Striking how Lara could identify his strategy at 16. Striking how often the word “respect” comes up in the conversation. Asked what he admired about Lara’s batting, Tendulkar said, “He was a Caribbean calypso. He carried that calypso on the field as well, great footwork. Michael Jackson came quite close to his footwork. I mean he was simply unbelievable, and whereas my game was more of Indian classical -music.” Lara said, “If I had a son, I would want him to bat like Sachin Tendulkar.” There was much more, but I want to mention one portion. Lara spoke about how he constructed an innings, especially those long, magnificent ones. He talked about developing his confidence. “Confidence was respecting each stage of my innings. I would walk out to bat and I felt that I was a very vulnerable batter when I walk out to bat for the first half an hour. I would say a bowler has an 80% chance of getting me out. I’ve got a 20% chance of surviving. I felt the confidence and the respect of that situation for another half an hour. Change those numbers where a half an hour, an hour later, it’s 50-50. Four hours later, it’s 70-30 in favour of me. Two days later it might be 100. So for me, confidence was the ability to respect each stage of my innings, get out of it, and to take control of the game or the innings that I’m playing.” Talking about an innings stretching into two days seems far-fetched for our team these days, far less for one man’s occupation of the crease. One can also apply this capacity to think big, and to respect each stage to many life situations. It recalled Ian Bishop’s comments around the same time on ESPNCricinfo. “I want guys to stop being satisfied with 20s and 30s. The gold standard of Test cricket is for high volume scores; hundreds. Whether the guys have that within them against top class -opposition, we need to start seeing that...time for the batters to hold their hand up.” It speaks to respect for what they do, and the discipline to keep working at their craft. Tendulkar said Muttiah Muralitharan spent 18 months working on his doosra. That discipline is no stranger to West Indies cricket, and I daresay, West Indian society, even if it has become estranged. Ravi Shastri, the former Indian all-rounder, recently observed that although the West Indian team was known for flamboyance, “they were the most professional outfit. Like if a wicket went, by the time you come to the crease, they’ll all be in their positions. So you’re walking alone. You’re going past a Richards, or a Clive and you’re going to the middle there and Marshall is on the top of his mark. They’re all in positions and you’re taking guard and the crowd is getting up. ‘Come on man. Bounce him man. Maco kill him!’ They’re at you...” In this recent Wisden interview with Wazim Akram, the Pakistani fast bowler of great repute, he’s asked if there was one thing he didn’t like about cricket currently. “What I don’t like in cricket is politics...Sports should be kept away from politics. In league cricket, pick every player from every nation. Be brave. Be bigger. But that is not happening unfortunately. And I think that’s where the ICC comes in.” He was speaking after the bizarre outcome of the Asia Cup when Indian and Pakistani finalists refused to shake hands, amidst national tensions. I can’t understand why they agreed to play each other in the first place. Inside these discussions reside many ideas about life—like being bigger. That’s why I compiled these -snippets; our times demand that we envision ourselves with unlimited capacity and we open our minds to -unleashing it. —Vaneisa Baksh is an editor, writer and cricket historian. E-mail: vaneisabaksh@gmail.com.
