LAHORE: Indian author, historian and columnist Prof Ramachandra Guha says his book, The Commonwealth of Cricket, is a memoir, not an autobiography because it is not about playing cricket but history of cricket.

He was in conversation with Osman Samiuddin during the launch of “The Commonwealth of Cricket” for which he was in conversation with senior editor ESPNcricinfo Osman Samiuddin.

Mr Guha said the first part of the book was about his lifelong love affair with cricket.

“I am 60 and my first memory goes to cricket when I was four and it was six decades of watching, playing, discussing, writing, debating and arguing about cricket all over the world but mostly in India.”

He said he travelled to Pakistan, England, Australia, and South Africa to watch cricket matches.

“I was passionate about cricket because I wanted to tell the world that cricket is a sophisticated sport like squash, football, tennis etc”

He said his book was a memoir but not an autobiography because he was an ordinary cricket player. “If I was Anil Kumble or Sunil Gavaskar, the book would have been an autobiography.”

Mr Guha said the book was more about cricket matches he watched, perceived, debated about and discussed and was it a tribute to the great cricketers across the board, including club cricketers from India, West Indies, Australia and Pakistan.

He said the last part of the book was about his service in the BCCI and it had some nostalgic part of an old man’s life at the end.

Replying to a query, he said that during his teenage and early twenties, he was a cricketing nationalist, he was a bit grown from nationalism in the 30s and later he also liked other teams.

He said he had come to know that sport was not the most important thing in life. “I am a historian but cricket was an abiding passion outside my work in my teens and twenties but in later life classical music took over it”.

Remembering his visit to Lahore many years ago, Mr Guha said he had asked his host to take him to Anarkali cassette’s market because he wanted to buy old cassettes of Roshan Ara Begum and got three of them and now these songs were part of his iPod.

Terming it a shameful confession, he said the great classical musicians of the sub-continent whether from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are more important than cricket.

“I love cricket but I don’t want to invest my psychological, emotional and ideological energy in cricket. So now I also enjoy any good innings or spell of any cricket player or team.”

Replying to another query, he said he was writing history because he was not a novelist and could not make up anything.

“A novelist can invent dialogue, character, context and sketch even those that don’t exist and can plot a town that can’t exist but I have to research and write about facts and footnote to every assertion.”

Mr Guha said he had come to know that a first spin bowler Palwanker Baloo, a Dalit and social reformer, had played a role in negotiation between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar over devising the Constitution of India.

He said when he was researching Baloo, he had realised that cricket was not immune to politics of caste, religion, race and other things and the book brought together his profession and passion purely in an accidental way. He said cricket was intermixed with and informed the social history of India.

Mr Guha said that he realized that caste, race, and other social structures were never divorced from the playing field.

Guha pointed out that there had been a time when a Brahmin/ upper class Indian captain asserted that he should not be a captain but that his place actually belonged to another fellow player. He said one never imagined a cricket player ever saying that he should not be the captain as he was acknowledging the role of caste in the assigning a position of authority in the team structure.

Mr Guha ranked cricket players in four categories of superstars.

“The first is that of the crooked superstar, the second that of the player who actively engages in a conflict of interest, the third category was of those superstars ‘who think right but keep silent’ about it and the final category is that of the lone man who stands on his own.”

In addressing the farmer’s protest in India and the mixed messages which came from cricket players, Mr Guha said he did not expect cricketers to be activists but if they could not speak for something, at least they should keep their mouths shut. With this he noted the tragic trajectory of Sachin Tendulkar in his public statements after his retirement.

While answering a query about this might be his last book on cricket, he said he had written four books on cricket, first two books were about cricket of the 1960s and 1970s and the recent book was about cricket was his memoir.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2021