IN the world of cricket there have been some brilliant commentators and some exquisite writers but rarely have we come across a wordsmith who showed excellence in both fields. Omar Kureishi was one exception in the subcontinent. It was fun listening to his comments on the television, and earlier on the radio, and pleasure reading his analysis on the day’s play the following morning in the sports pages of Dawn. His interesting turns of phrases conveyed his insight into the game.

The one person in South Asia who wears Kureishi’s mantle these days is Harsha Bhogle. The collection of his columns, published earlier in the Indian Express, is aptly titled Out of the Box. In the preface his editor, the eminent journalist Shekhar Gupta says, “If on TV his words make you see what’s not on the screen, in writing he takes you way beyond what he already told you from the commentary box. It’s an ability few individuals can match in the Indian media, of being able to tell the story as it unfolds on camera so coherently and then taking it forward in print. This is what makes Harsha Bhogle so unique.”

Analysing the two, Bhogle writes in his preface, “While television rewards spontaneity, the written word demands weightiness. It is a completely different genre but one that is crippled by insensitivity to words.” Any one in love with words, written and spoken alike, cannot agree with the columnist-commentator more.

Dates mentioned at the beginning of each column in the book give context to the pieces. What, however, makes his writings highly readable is his yen for similes and metaphors. For instance, he calls T-20, the newest genre in cricket, “a relentless gladiatorial sport”. His comparison between the shortest and the longest form of the game makes a lot of sense: “T20 values people who think on their feet, it rewards initiative as different from the equally enticing Test match format where patience is a virtue, where a storm is allowed to pass and you have time to pick up the debris and rebuild.”

One, however, suspects that he is tilted in favour of the longest version of the game when he says, “Test cricket will never compete with T20 just as fine dining cannot compete with a hamburger”.

The volume under review is divided into five chapters, the first is all about T20s, the second comprises columns on ODIs, the third has pieces on Tests, the fourth is on cricketing giants and the last on “rules, regulations and infrastructure”.

His column on Inzamam-ul-Haq shows his penchant for the figures of speech. Read the opening paragraph: “Inzamam-ul-Haq reminds me of a banyan tree; huge, immovable, cool, soothing, roots everywhere you see, roots that can slow you down or roots that can provide strength. There is a timelessness about him that makes urgency seem an irrelevant fetish.”

Writing on India’s unexpected victory in the 1983 World Cup final a quarter century later, Bhogle opines that it is wrong to think that the game went in favour of the underdogs only because the mighty West Indians were overconfident or that it was merely due to a spirited performance by his compatriots. He rightly feels that the success was due to both factors.

Bhogle’s fondness for Inzamam-ul-Haq notwithstanding, in a column commenting on Pakistan team’s decision not to take the field when Umpire Darrell Hair accused the Pakistan team at the Oval ground of ball tampering, Bhogle disapproves of the strategy. “Pakistan chose to sit out and I’m afraid that was a huge failure of management. They needed a calm, shrewd mind in the dressing room and they were let down. The captain has to bear the brunt for that, but so must the manager.”

While on the umpire, Bhogle says, “In terms of likeability Darrell Hair is at the other end of the scale. In our part of the world we don’t like him at all. And we need to be careful while offering reasons for it. I heard the word ‘racism’ come into it, and that is sad.”

Commenting on the terrorists’ attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore, Bhogle maintains that they achieved their aim for no team would tour Pakistan and the large number of cricket lovers in the country would not be able to watch the game live for quite sometime. He goes on to add, “One of my greatest professional regrets is not being able to go to Pakistan on the 2004 tour, from which almost everybody returned with beautiful, almost magical, stories of the people they met and the warmth that was showered on them.”

One hopes that, sooner than later, Harsha Bhogle will get to experience the hospitality himself.

The reviewer is a writer and critic

Out of the Box: Watching the game we love(SPORTS)By Hasha BhoglePenguin Books, IndiaISBN 978-0-607-08305-3275pp. Indian Rs450