Rainman talks Cricket

Indian cricket took a quantum leap with the advent of the Indian Premier League in 2008 which transformed almost every dimension of an Indian cricket fan’s relationship with the game. Among the many well-documented changes that resulted from its arrival on the scene, one of the most positive was the elevation of fringe cricketers to the mainstream. The likes of Swapnil Asnodkar, Rajat Bhatia, Manoj Tiwary who were toiling away in domestic cricket for years were as visible as a Zaheer Khan or Sourav Ganguly for those two months of the Indian Premier League, and in some cases, as well paid. Although domestic cricket continues to be played across the country in front of empty stands even now, lives of a lot of domestic cricketers did change courtesy the Lalit Modi brainchild.  Another fairly unimportant fallout of the league was to affect me personally. In this piece, I want to talk about that - the change in the relationship I shared with the stars of domestic cricket before the IPL ...

It wasn't hubris. It was never arrogance. It was just self-belief. Extreme self-belief that eventually proved to be his undoing. Fourteen months ago, I was struck by a thought that really gripped me, so much that I wanted to write a book on it. My lofty ambitions were grounded by events of the following months where writing a book became the last of my priorities. But the thought never left me and in those grim days too, I kept engaging with it. At the heart of it was a simple question - How does an athlete come to know or accept that his time with the sport is over? How do these individuals with immense self-belief and who are massively motivated and driven accept that their best days are behind them? The more I thought the more I felt that it's bound to be a deeply emotional decision for an athlete. In fact, it’s possibly the most emotional that gives them many sleepless nights. After all, these are people who pretty much give their entire growing up years to a ...

There is little doubt that Virat Kohli is special. And comparisons of Virat with Sachin Tendulkar are pointless. But there is something that I want to compare today between the two – their fandom. And in trying to do that, I want to trace the change in the way cricket is consumed and how that has impacted its relationship with its fans, especially in Sachin and Virat’s country. To do that I will step back a bit and talk a bit about something that made Sachin ‘The God’ that he went on to become in the 90s. A cricket fan in the Sachin era (the ’90s) was characterized by an itch. This itch kept him distracted. This itch kept him motivated to get past his day. This itch also got him in trouble. This itch was to watch the game somehow. And if not able to watch, this itch came out in the form of those three beautiful words – score kya hua ? The relief of getting to watch cricket in the Sachin era was unmatchable. It was a festival of sorts to watch India play then, a fes...

The buzz around the VIVO Indian Premier League was slightly subdued this year. Thus, when the 12th edition of the T20 jamboree began on an unusually tepid note without the razzmatazz of a star-studded opening ceremony on 23rd March, it seemed to be foreshadowing a season of cricketing action minus the fireworks the league is synonymous with. The first match, billed as the ultimate showdown between India's current captain and his predecessor, also turned out to be a damp squib.  But that, as we look back at the eventful first week of IPL 12 action, seems to be a distant past. The IPL came back to life, just the way it almost always does. The opening weekend of the 2019 edition of the VIVO Indian Premier League attracted 219 million viewers, which was 31 per cent higher than last year’s opening weekend. Hotstar, the official digital streaming partner of the league, claims to have reached 135 million in the opening three days of the cricketing event which is 2.2 times mor...