Nayudu to Saurav: Flannel Vision

Whatever else it may be, Indian cricket is also a series of immensely complicated and intriguingly complex conspiracy theories. Why, only th...

Whatever else it may be, Indian cricket is also a series of immensely complicated and intriguingly complex conspiracy theories. Why, only this past week there was widespread speculation about the link between the BCCI election and the possibility of a doctored pitch for the Nagpur Test. It8217;s just the sort of stuff Indians love; it8217;s just the sort of stuff Rajan Bala8217;s The Covers Are Off thrives on.

If you ignored the sub-title, 8216;8216;A Socio-Historical Study of Indian Cricket, 1932-20038217;8217; 8212; the book is not quite anything as dramatic 8212; you8217;d still find enough to entertain you. After all, Bala, even if his prose is sometimes a trifle overdone, has known Indian cricket as long as anybody can remember. He8217;s the ultimate fly on the wall. This book describes what he8217;s seen.
The book is structured, very loosely, as a series of impressionistic profiles of Indian captains, from C.K. Nayudu to Saurav Ganguly. Through these portraits, Bala tries to tell the story of the times, the politics, the back-biting, the plotting, the vendetta, the works.

The stories are delightfully illuminating. They tell you, perhaps more strongly and with more anecdotal evidence than other accounts, that the big names and immortals of Indian cricket 8212; Mankad to Amarnath, Nayudu to Merchant 8212; could, just so often, be downright mean and petty. In contrast, Ganguly and Dravid seem almost Biblical saints.

Bala scores with his fund of apocryphal stories and plain gossip. It can be engrossing. He writes about why Deepak Shodhan, a young Gujarati who scored a century on Test debut, had such a short career: 8216;8216;In the West Indies in 1952-538230; Mankad asked him Shodhan as to which side he was on 8212; his or Hazare8217;s. And when Shodhan replied that he was on the Indian side, Mankad had the knives out for him.8217;8217;

The next tour was to Pakistan, with Mankad as captain. Shodhan didn8217;t go.

A whole new angle to added to the Gavaskar-Kapil battle of the 1980s: 8216;8216;If Amarnath didn8217;t get the captaincy after Gavaskar was sacked in 1983, he decided that Kapil, who hailed from the North Zone, could be manipulated to his advantage. This situation was envisaged by a long-serving national selector and later president of the Board, Raj Singh Dungarpur, who once remarked to me, 8216;Mohinder is the master at using Kapil8217;s shoulder to fire his gun8217;8230;

8216;8216;On the eve of the Ahmedabad Test against the West Indies in 1983, I had gone to visit Vengsarkar at the team8217;s hotel. As I came out of his room, I saw Kapil, who invited me to his. He asked me what Gavaskar thought of him. I was shocked. Later, I met Gavaskar, who asked me what the young man was saying about him. I was even more shocked.8217;8217;

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Occasionally, Bala betrays a quirky turn of phrase. One priceless observation from page 16 is: 8216;8216;Considering the status of some of his predecessors, Jagmohan Dalmiya is a sort of Dick Whittington.8217;8217; Er, what does that make Ranbir Singh Mahendra? The cat?

Great reading, this book 8212; Stardust meets Wisden.