Beyond The Blues: A Cricket Season Like No Other

By Aakash Chopra

When Aakash Chopra started to write his diary in September 2007, he had no idea that it was going to be an extraordinary year, both for him personally, and for the game of cricket. It began with a great run in the Ranji, culminating in Delhi's victory. Delhi also went on to become North Zone champions, the North Zone won the Duleep Trophy, and in almost every game, Aakash was among the runs. He ended the season with 1339 runs from fifteen games, with five centuries that included three double centuries. Then came the IPL, with its glamorous tie-in with Bollywood. And Aakash found himself on the most talked about side of them all: the Kolkata Knight Riders.A view from within of all that made 2007 such an exciting year for cricketers and cricket lovers, this fast-paced and often tongue-in-cheek account takes us behind the scenes with an honesty and forthrightness uncommon to Indian sport.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9789351360551

Aakash Chopra

One of the highest run getters in Ranji trophy cricket, Aakash Chopra is a well-known former Indian cricketer, television commentator, columnist and author. Aakash writes regularly for ESPNcricinfo, Mid-Day and Starsports.com. In 2009, Chopra wrote his first book, the critically acclaimed Beyond the Blues: A First-Class Season Like No Other. His second book, Out of the Blue: Rajasthan's Road to the Ranji Trophy was released in 2011.

Book preview

Beyond the Blues

A Cricket Season Like No Other

AAKASH CHOPRA

HarperCollins Publishers India

To my parents who have made this journey

possible, and to my elder sister Aekta who

passed away in 1996 at the age of twenty-two

CONTENTS

Cover Page

Dedication

Preface

Story

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Preface

I’m not quite sure where the story of this season began. Was it at the departure lounge of London’s Heathrow airport on a chilly Sunday morning in what euphemistically passes for an English summer—the day I decided, for some reason, that this season must be recorded?

Was it on the day I got a double hundred against South Africa-A in the unofficial ‘Test’ at the Ferozeshah Kotla, my first double hundred in five seasons, watched by a bewilderingly lukewarm national selector, wondering what I had done wrong to get such an apathetic reaction?

Or was it even earlier, on 29 October 2004, the last time I had played for India in a Test? Or the next day, the morning after a crushing loss to Australia, when I masochistically opened the newspapers to see myself crucified on the back pages, with my professional obituary written up by journalists and sportswriters alike? With scores of nine and one in that game at the Vidarbha Cricket Association stadium, I had known that I was most likely sunk, but I hadn’t known it could get this bad. It could. And worse.

On the day I began writing this diary, 9 September 2007, it was exactly 1043 days since I last walked onto a field with my India teammates. I could divide the time in between into three broad phases: the first had been spent in hiding, licking my wounds and obsessing over what had gone wrong; the second had been spent in obsessing over how to make a return, pushing myself too hard and getting nowhere in the bargain. And this third phase, where I had got over being obsessed with a comeback and was finally beginning to enjoy my game again—and, wonder of wonders, it was beginning to show.

That day in Heathrow airport, with four hours to go before the counter opened, I decided to take the advice of friend and Cricinfo journalist Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, and begin to write. Siddhartha had been nagging me to keep a diary and I had been putting off the task, but that day, only ten frightening days short of my thirtieth birthday, I decided the time was now, or never.

As I wondered where to start, and how, never having kept a journal before, my mind kept taking me back to the nightmare that was Nagpur. Cricket is a funny game and no one knows this better than cricketers, who are often the victims of fate’s caprices. Even when I was dropped unceremoniously after Nagpur, the scapegoat in a game in which my illustrious team-mates didn’t quite shine either, I believed that it was only a matter of time before I came back. That I would go back to domestic cricket, make some runs and hey, presto, the India selectors would come calling again.

Well, I was in for a very strong reality check. I did go back to domestic cricket but my arm refused to move the way it had been trained to do, my feet did likewise (or didn’t), my bat refused to play the same way against bowlers it had piled up runs against in the past, and worst of all, my mind refused to accept that I was out of the national squad, without a clue as to when I would be back.

Being an India cricketer is hell in many ways, because of the intense scrutiny you are subjected to by a billion people. But not being an India player is worse. The same people who feted you one day suddenly behave as if you are the bane of their existence. Everyone has an opinion about you—the way you bat, why you made it to the national team, how you let your country down, why you were never suited for this level in the first place.

I knew, of course, that I wasn’t in this alone. Parthiv Patel was also dropped after that infamous Nagpur loss, and frankly, it was probably much worse for him. He had been the baby of the team and the sweetheart of India’s cricket-crazy millions. For over a year, he had been praised by all and sundry for his work behind and in front of the stumps. But his form had dipped as had his performance behind the wicket and this, unfortunately, had coincided with the team’s poor form (a very bad combination that spells disaster). The same people who had put him on a pedestal were now viciously baying for his blood.

Since the two of us were in the same boat, we spoke to each other often, and laughed about our situation. What made it hard to bear were the remarks by several ex-cricketers on different news channels. I will always remember what one such cricketer of the 1983 World Cup-winning team said on a show about Parthiv: ‘Jaise andha dekh nahin sakta, goonga bol nahin sakta aur behra sun nahin sakta, vaise hi Parthiv keeping nahin kar sakta.’

As I listened to this callous talk with morbid fascination, I commiserated mentally with poor Parthiv, and wondered how my senior colleague (and he’s not the only one) could forget his own playing days. No one goofs up intentionally. You don’t get out, or bowl a bad ball, or drop a catch, on purpose. It happens, and when it does, you pay for it by getting dropped from the side. One would expect that a cricketer who has gone through the whole range of emotions would understand the helplessness of a fellow cricketer. Unfortunately, that seldom happens.

You are painted as a villain by people you grew up admiring, on television and in print; you become a veritable pariah for a while, or worse, you are greeted with indifference. People do not even acknowledge your existence. Something that really got to me for a while was being called a ‘strokeless wonder’ in print by a very senior journalist. That tag followed me for a while and negated everything else I had done until then, or so I believed for a while.

The same job that I had been entrusted with barely a year ago in Australia, during the 2003–04 Test series—seeing off the new ball and making sure the middle wasn’t exposed to it, and runs be damned—suddenly became sure proof that I couldn’t score. The same people who had told me not to worry about the runs, just do the job I had been roped in for, disappeared into the fissures that abound in that constantly changing entity called the Great Indian Cricketing Opinion. I was deeply hurt and though I didn’t know it then, clearly in need of help and healing before I could play again, in the way I used to.

I found that healing with the people who mattered the most to me: other cricketers. My team-mates from Delhi, cricketer friends from other state teams, fellow club cricketers and first-class cricketers in England, some of the guys I played with in the Indian Test team, and people like Simon Katich (whom I went to meet in Hampshire and who told me categorically, ‘age is just a number’).

There were others too. For instance, Michael Atherton, the former England captain and my cricketing idol for a long time, told me to relax and treat the game as a game and not as a matter of life and death. He also told me not to forget why I had started playing cricket in the first place—for the pleasure of putting bat to ball.

In the process of making it to the top and turning professional, we tend to take cricket and ourselves too seriously, and that messes things up. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I must mention that Greg Chappell gave me some very sound advice too. He said there’s a devilish little voice always saying negative things in your ear, like how you’re going to fail or get out to so and so bowler in such and such a manner. He said that often, instead of ignoring the voice, we start believing it and not only that, we begin adding to it. We mull endlessly over things that can’t be changed and pull ourselves down to the point of no return in the process. He told me to let go and concentrate on the present.

Then there was Rahul Bhai (Dravid) who was never short of encouragement whenever and wherever we met. He would always tell me that I had to learn to relax and the runs would come. He told me that the Indian team valued and recognized what I brought to the team, and I should remember that too. This kept me going for a long time.

And how can I forget V.V.S. Laxman? He once told me after a Duleep Trophy game that I was too good to not get runs for so long and advised me to go to the UK in the summer and relax, and things would turn around for me. They did.

These were the people who understood how tough it is to play the game competitively, especially under intense media scrutiny. They never passed judgement; they sympathized, encouraged and reassured me that the demons I fought in my head were not uniquely mine. For most of them had their own private battles going on too. Most importantly, we learnt together to laugh about it all.

This is a beautiful game, especially because it is not just about seventy minutes of playing together, or ninety. It is about backing each other up for five intense days; of living together during those days, travelling together, cursing the system and the selectors, sharing gossip, dreams and horror stories, feeling the petty envies and jealousies but then also, enjoying someone else’s success as much as some of them enjoy yours.

When I began writing this in the Heathrow lounge, on the cusp of my thirty-first year, I was attempting to capture some of my thoughts, especially about what lay ahead. I had no idea that this would become a defi ning first-class season for me and my mates from Delhi, or that I would end up as the first-class season’s highest run-getter.

This diary, therefore, is as much my catharsis as the story of my team; it is as much a personal journey of salvation as a recounting of what has been an incredible season of joy; it is as much about learning to grow as an individual, as learning to accept that one is part of a very special brotherhood. And finally, for those who love this game as much as I do but have not been lucky enough to play it for whatever reason, it is an attempt to tell the story of what we go through to play it. For, in the end, it is all about the game.

9 September

I’m sitting in the departure lounge of London’s Heathrow airport on a chilly Sunday morning in what, by some strange English logic, is called summer. My body is aching in parts I didn’t know existed, but my mind refuses to stop racing. I’m protecting the seat next to me with my bag and my will. I really don’t want any company at the moment and my red-rimmed eyes, four o’ clock shadow and patented glare have my fellow passengers keeping a wary distance.

It’s been twenty-four hours since I last slept. Over the past day I’ve played a 110-over game for my English club Hem Heath, got a century and bowled a few insipid overs too. I’ve done well enough, topping the division averages. My team, though, has lost the game and has been officially relegated to Division 1, after one inglorious season in the Premier Division. So I’m probably out of a contract for next season.

At this point, though, all I can think of is that I’m heading home to what could well be a special season. I’vejust got a call-up for the India-A squad to play South Africa in two unofficial ‘Tests’. It’s been almost three years since I played for India and in many ways, it’s been a lifetime.

Everything else can sort itself out. The real excitement is about getting ready to wear India colours again, but I’m also bloody nervous. I’ve played only one first-class game in the last five months (against Sri Lanka-A, getting a second-innings ton) so starting the new season in three days’ time against quality opposition seems a challenge above the ordinary. I’ll be home only by the morning of the tenth, and am expected to check into the Taj Palace, New Delhi, the same night, jet lag be damned! Welcome to the life of a first-class cricketer.

10 September

I’m absolutely bushed. I barely slept on the flight (which was via Dubai), and it was 6 a.m. by the time I got home and into bed. I wake up around 1 p.m., wolf down rajmah rice and shahi paneer and call up Prof. Ratnakar Shetty, the BCCI’s chief administrative officer, to ask if I can spend at least one night in my own bed and get to the hotel the next morning.

Prof. Shetty, unfailingly helpful, agrees immediately, just asking me to let the coach know. I call Paras Mhambrey, Mumbai’s former Ranji Trophy-winning skipper and now successful first-class coach. Paras, experienced in the travails of the English summer and the sheer luxury of being home at long last, agrees without a fuss. Hurray!

11 September

India-A is practising only in the afternoon, which allows me to catch up with my Delhi mates and have a knock in the nets at Delhi’s Ranji camp in the morning. Batting on Indian tracks after a long time is always testing, though it might seem like a cinch to play on tracks you’ve grown up on.

It’s like swimming and cycling, however: the familiarity you develop over the years helps you get used to the bounce and pace quicker than you can imagine. I get out more than a few times in the nets, but for the first time in my life, I don’t feel bad about it. I just laugh and bask in the sheer bliss of being back and playing cricket.

I have learned over the past few years that acceptance is the start of the healing process. Logically, if you play in two different continents in the space of three days, mistakes are bound to happen. Cricket requires a lot of adjustment, which is something I wish people handling the system remember while drawing up gruelling schedules. I know that the best way to get used to the conditions is to bat as much as one can and that’s what I am banking on.

This India-A team I am joining has just come back from a successful tour of Kenya and Zimbabwe, and apart from a couple of changes (including me), the team is more or less the same. There isn’t too much time for me to get to know the others, but having played professional cricket for nearly a decade, this has ceased to be a problem.

Of course, if you’ve played for India and have a reputation for being a decent bloke, it helps. And if you’re comfortable with your game and don’t crave the approval of your team-mates, you do just fine.

My first India-A tour was completely different. Even though I was selected on the back of my performances in the domestic circuit, I had a desperate desire to impress all and sundry, a feeling that really piled on the pressure. The truth is that once your colleagues start respecting your skills, life becomes a lot easier within the team. This time around though I feel no such need. But there are others who need some assurance and time to gain acceptance within the fold.

Amit Mishra, the leg-spinner from Haryana who, like me, wasn’t on the just concluded A tours, tells me that there will be more pressure on the two of us to perform than on the others. They have done exceptionally well in Zimbabwe and Kenya and can live with a failure but it is our only chance. I share his opinion but shrug it off at this point to avoid putting too much pressure on myself.

But it sets me thinking: this team has been picked on the basis of the previous season’s first-class performances. If we did well enough to warrant a place against a strong opposition like South Africa, why weren’t we deemed good enough to tour Zimbabwe and Kenya?

I’m going to be frank here at the cost of annoying some very important people. It’s been this way in my short international career, ever since Sehwag and I walked out against Gillespie & Co. in Australia in 2003 and miraculously held our own for enough time to make it matter. Every time I am considered, it is to play against a better opposition, not a weaker team. Just as a case in point, in the eight Tests I have played so far after making my debut in the two-Test series against the Kiwis at home in 2003, I have played Australia in Australia, Pakistan in Pakistan and Australia in India. Ouch!

It’s probably different for Mishra but I don’t want to think about it too much right now. *

13 September

There’s more grass on this Kotla track than I’ve seen in the last few years. I cannot understand the logic of a green top for a game against a team from South Africa, who rely heavily on their quick bowlers to take wickets and are good players of the fast ball.

Kaif, who is captain, and Paras ask me if some of the grass can be shaved off before the game. I suggest they speak to one of the vice-presidents of the DDCA but I doubt that it will work. I am right. They refuse to take the grass off.

When Kaif goes in for the toss, Parthiv Patel tells me we’ll bat first if we win the toss and I tell him to stop kidding. I am pretty sure that whoever wins will field. But Parthiv is right; we win the toss and choose to bat.

I am a little surprised, but I don’t have a choice, do I? I generally take first strike, but this time, taking advantage of being the ‘senior’, I ask Saurashtra’s Cheteshwar Pujara to face the first ball. The last first-class game I played was a couple of months ago for the MCC and suddenly,

I am a little apprehensive. Even though I scored runs in England, playing against a top quality side is a different ball game.

The first ball Pujara faces is outside the off-stump and bounces twice before reaching the wicketkeeper. The ball doesn’t move alarmingly at all and the bounce is on the lower side. It is actually Kotla, not Perth.

We lose two early wickets but somehow, I manage to hold one end up. Batting isn’t easy as they don’t bowl any loose balls and I prefer to wait and watch. Then, Parthiv walks in after the fall of the second wicket and immediately goes after the bowling. Even to me, it looks like there are two different games being played at the different ends. I am struggling to get the ball away while he is stroking it effortlessly to all parts of the ground. Soon, he not only overtakes my score but moves ahead in double quick time. I am beginning to get embarrassed at my inability to find the fence and try to hit out of my misery.

In the process, I am dropped twice off two consecutive deliveries, one on the long hop and the other a waist-high full-toss. I just can’t get the ball away. I am hitting it too hard and hence have no timing. I am batting on 29 at lunch, a really low individual score for a first session in these conditions, especially when the other guy is batting on 60 and has come in after the fall of two wickets.

For some strange reason though, I come off smiling at the break. I am laughing at myself for playing the way I am. I know I’ve dug a hole for myself and the only thing I tell myself during lunch is that I have to find a way to get out of it.

They introduced spin just before lunch but I wasn’t able to take advantage. After lunch, though, things ease out and the runs start to come a lot easier, if not fluently. The bad part is that Parthiv, who has got to his century meanwhile, is run out in a rare moment of miscommunication between us. The good part is that I have started to hit the ball well, thank God! I don’t plan my innings but it keeps moving in the right direction. I accelerate without any conscious effort and finish the day unbeaten on 137. It is a strange innings in which I start incredibly slowly, unsure of myself, and then move along nicely without trying. It is as though I am batting on autopilot. I am not complaining: I’ve managed to get to my eighteenth first-class century. Moreover, I’ve started the season in style.

India-A 354/4

14 September

It’s nearly impossible to avoid the newspapers and what is written about your game. I go through a couple of newspapers in the morning and am deeply hurt. The coverage isn’t exactly what I expected (the match is taking place in Delhi and I am the local lad after all) but I can deal with that.

What really upsets me is the fact that I have been misquoted, and badly at that. I did say that I had not seen a Kotla track as green as the one we were playing on, but having said that, added that the green seemed more for show as the ball didn’t do much. I commented that the new Kookaburra ball swings in most conditions, when it is new. When asked about Parthiv’s knock, I said that he was playing really well and being a left-hander, he got a few balls on his legs which I didn’t. I specifically added that this should take nothing away from his innings as you not only have to put the bad balls away, you have to block the good ones as well to score runs.

What I read in the newspaper is: ‘I’ve never seen a track so green at the Kotla in years.’ ‘Parthiv scored runs because he’s a left-handed batsman.’ ‘The ball was moving around the entire day.’ I don’t know how to react.

First, I find Parthiv and apologize to him, explaining that I didn’t say what appeared in the paper. I want to call up the sports editor of the newspaper concerned, but picking a fight with someone isn’t the best thing to do when you have a good chance of scoring a double hundred against a touring side. One thing is for sure, though: I lost some of my faith in the media today.

Play begins with my fellow overnight bat, Tamil Nadu’s S. Badrinath, in a different gear. He goes after the bowling from ball one while I, on the other end, am more than happy to take singles. After all, 150 is in sight. I am not willing to take any chances so I keep taking singles whenever I get the strike, but this means that I am playing only one ball in an over.

After a while, I start counting and realize that I have played only seven balls in the first ten overs. Badri races to his hundred and doesn’t shift gear even after this. I make slow and steady progress, reach 150, and carry on. Badrinath, luckily, gets a life as Justin Ontong, the best fielder by far in the SA side, grasses a simple catch at point. This halts Badri somewhat, but not too much. He has come into this match with four or five successive first-class hundreds, which means he is in prime form, and having scored a hundred again, there is no stopping him. I barely manage to stay ahead of him, which is quite embarrassing given that he is a number five batsman and I am the one who opened. Although, I was only in the 30s when he joined me in the middle.

Anyway, I walk in at 188 at lunch on day two. I figure that going from 29 not out to 188 not out in three sessions isn’t too bad. But a former India batsman and now an official with the BCCI thinks differently. After saying ‘Well played’ in a low voice, he tells me, ‘Accelerate’. I don’t get the logic. Yes, I was slow during the first session on day one, but now, I am only 12 runs away from a double century. It has been a long time coming (my only other double hundred in first-class cricket came in 2000–01) and I am not about to throw it away because somebody—and I don’t care who it is—has asked me to accelerate.

I decide not to panic and mess things up, so I go about taking singles after lunch till I get to my double.

Badrinath, meanwhile, is also nearing his double and I have a window of about 10 runs to score as many as I can before he reaches his double hundred and we declare. I go somewhat berserk then, and hit three huge sixes (which surprise even me, forget the incredulous spectators) and finish the day unbeaten on 239 with Badrinath on 200 not out for company.

Incidentally, this is the second biggest partnership for the fifth wicket in the history of first-class cricket, after the unbeaten 464-run partnership between the Waugh brothers for New South Wales.

But our day isn’t over yet and I get my first taste of Kaif’s captaincy. He gets intensely involved in the game and goes to the extreme quite often. He rotates the bowlers very often (a very good thing), will bowl the spinner with a relatively new ball even before the third seam bowler (can be either good or bad) and will change field positions (if only an inch or two) after almost every ball (which is just plain tiring!). Different captains think differently and there is almost a manic energy in the way Kaif does things, so it is quite an experience.

We take early wickets and have the Proteas on the mat with some good bowling and fielding. Kaif introduces spin very early and it proves to be a good move. However, he doesn’t give a