Book review: 'The Best Of Indian Sports Writing'

Book: The Best Of Indian Sports Writing
Author: Ed by Sundeep Misra
Publisher: Wisdom Tree
Pages: 185

One of the most decorated sports writers of our times, Pakistan’s Osman Samiuddin, once received startling feedback for one of his posts. A reader claimed to have stopped watching cricket on the telly in order to capture fresh images from Samiuddin’s writing. While that comment may sound a tad exaggerated, it is rare encouragement for sports writers in this age.

The sports writer clacks away on the keyboard knowing that by the time the piece is read, the reader has already consumed the match a zillion times on television and via the web. The after-match analysis — or exercise in self-indulgence — bombards the viewer/reader and there’s seldom anything left to his or her imagination. The contemporary sports writer is thus faced with a profound challenge: to enliven a contest that’s stale.

Sundeep Misra’s The Best Of Indian Sports Writing is a template of how sports narratives can still be fresh and engaging when style weds content. It’s an absorbing collection of 16 of the finest Indian sports stories.

Among others, Misra has brought together the lyrical pens of Partha Bhaduri, Ayaz Memon, Clayton Murzello, Mudar Patherya, Sukhwant Basra, Rohit Brijnath and Sharda Ugra who have covered a variety of sports including tennis, football, hockey and F1.

You are moved by Murzello’s encounter with Winston Davis, the former West Indian fast bowler, now confined to a wheelchair, and Ugra’s narrative of the spirit of the Kashmiri cricketer who “could soar one instant and be shredded in the next”.

No less gripping is Shantanu Guha Ray’s delineation of Franz Gastler, a Harvard graduate and trained ice-hockey player, who ploughed an uneven field with a borrowed tractor so that he could buy the girls of Rukka village football gear and shape them into a cracking football unit. “His awards,” Ray concludes, “are the smiles of the girls. And fireflies that the villagers fix in cow dung every night to light their homes.”

We also get insights on the folly of history that painted Mir Ranjan Negi in black after Pakistan’s 7-1 rout of India in the 1982 Asian Games final. S Thyagarajan reminds us: “Pakistan’s defenders Manzur and Qasim Zia shielded their goalkeeper Shahid Ali Khan more vigorously than Rajinder Singh, Vineet Kumar and Manohar Topno did for Negi”.
To make the literary meal more sumptuous, Misra has brought together two polar opposites: Abhinav Bindra, the picture of calm, and Leander Paes, a breathing fireball. Kamesh Srinivasan recounts the behind-the-scenes story of Bindra who got rid of his fear of failure by undergoing commando training in Germany.

Brijnath, writing on Leander Paes’s Atlanta feat, confirms that he is one of the best stylists in sports literature. Paes, notes Brijnath, “is brilliant in patches. He can compose dazzling lines of tennis but only that. He can write haiku with a tennis racket now and then, but never ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’... he plays like a man soaked in kerosene who fires himself up by lightning matchsticks with his teeth.”

Like Brijnath, two veteran writers charm with their honesty and playfulness. Ayaz Memon admits to have strayed into a gay bar while covering the Prudential World Cup, while Patherya transports us to Eden Gardens where the all-familiar Kolkatan once arrived late for a match because he had to cremate his son that day.

In the final instalment, Suresh Menon poses that oft-troubling question: “Is Rahul Dravid the best supporting act in the history of the game or a great player born in the wrong decade?” Menon concludes that Dravid might have to wait to get his due. But being a man of infinite patience, Dravid “is unlikely to be in any hurry”.

Misra’s compilation can find pride of place alongside Ramachandra Guha’s The Picador Book Of Cricket. It’s a good read especially for sports writers because it can provide you with inspiration when you are on long tour.