JOYS OF BEING AN AMATEUR & PERILS OF TURNING PRO

All of us sometime in our careers have been amateurs and if we were to take moment and reflect on those days we will see that we all experienced a strange kind of purity in the way we  worked and played. Its like the the first kiss - it remains so vivid in our memories, it is spooky. Somewhere down the line however we seem to lose touch with that and it becomes a job, a career, a profession. There are exceptions I am sure, as i am finding out while reading Andre Agassi's book where he says that he hated to play tennis but as he moved on began to enjoy it. Whether he enjoyed the game or what came to him if he was successful is debatable but a thought to leave with  you.

The attempt here to draw some parallels with my days as a club cricketer, some of my best days and relive those memories.

My first game, my first run, my first hundred, my first man of the match ..so many firsts and they all come back to me at different times. The joy of seeing your name in the newspapers( I still have some of those paper cuttings), proudly showing it to my daughter who off course looks at me and says ' whats the big deal ?. Whats the big deal, I mean, so I had to sit and attempt to explain what was going on .

I was a inter collegiate cricket match and I was representing Vijaya College. it was called the Cibaca Trophy, remember that brand. It was the St Josephs Hostel grounds in bangalore and we were playing hot favourite BMSCE. I vividly remember the ground, the day and not exactly every stroke but certainly the hoicks over square leg that easily got me a six since it was a short boundary, with a big tree to boot, making it virtually impossible to set a field for, if you get the drift. I was a left hander, one of the few playing in bangalore. The others were Rajesh Kamath and another guy, whose names slips my mind. Internationally those days there was only David Gower and Alan Border. One full of grace and the other one of the most boring  yet effective players during that era.

I got the hundred, my first for my college and from the corner of my eye noticed an elderly gentleman leaving his seat and heading back to work. It was my father (now no more) and the man had stayed on just to see my hundred and quietly left. I will never forget that moment in my life. Recieving my one and only man of the match with was a Symonds Tusker bat (those days it was a big deal to own a Gunn and Moore and a Symonds Tusker for the less priveleged, costed all of 1000 rupees adn was bloody expensive).

We went on to lose the next game and were bundled out of the tournament and i failed in that game, the story of my cricketing career really, flashes of elegance but just not consitent enough.

Being an amateur was fun and I still remember the buzz of waking up on the morning of the match and packing your kit bag and getting ready to go for the match. There was no great nervousness or worry of whether one was going to make it in the team or so on , one just took it as it came and went out and had fun.

Where does that all go when you turn pro or start playing representative cricket. i know cricket is probably not the right game to corelate with because the line between being an amateur and a professonal is rather thin. I guess individual sports like Tennis, Golf, Chess, Squash, Badminton or even Athletics could be better ones to see. I have read that tennis players find it so hard to make that jump from ameteur to Pro though they do see that it is the only way in which they can win the championships that they dream of.

So I wonder why they turn pro in the first place ? Is it because that is the only shot they can get to so called stardom and all the perks that go with being number one. They see that they are competing with thousands of wannabes if i can use that term but still they want to give it a shot knowing that only 1 in 20 will make it into the top 100 for example.
Are there players for example who say that they want to turn Pro because they want to compete with the best ? Does that really happen or is just that race to fame which many times is like a mirage that most only dream off.

What would happen for example if money was taken out of sport and all sport was amateur which meant that no prize money, only ranking and only medals like the good old days ? What would it be like, I wonder ??

Would Andre Agassi have been a happier person ? Would all sports have flourished in the same way instead of some like Cricket, Football, Tennis just becoming money making sports ?

4 hours of sleep is more than enough

Waking up this morning, all sleepy eyed I wondered why I punished my body and mind so much just to be able to watch ManU play Ajax in the Europa League round of 32, not even the Champions League, but hey I also would wake up at 1 to watch a late kick of ManU and Norwich so.. Anyway it is funny how the entire neighbourhood knows that I was up to something in the middle of the night and my family is asked whether we left the light on by mistake !!

Well the game went well for us, I thought De Gea had a really good match and atleast in Europe is holding the ManU goal tight. I was personally very interested in watching this young danish 20 year old Erieksen and was very impressed with his creativity, speed and attitude. He had old man Rio in a spin a couple of time and that was nice, certainly a player to watch out for.

I feel for Arsenal though and all their die hard fans, another crushing defeat at the hands of AC Milan.

ManU vs Liverpool or my daughters 10th birthday party ??

llkkkkkkkkkecgt45hhijrrrrr8ubbifccccccccccccccccccccccccccccci9kt9i9oo9ooooiuujhtffftsn- this is what my daughter thinks about it as she sees me writing this post. But jokes apart see the predicament that all of us face. Kick off is at 6 15 and my daughters party is at 6. Will I stay away or just up and leave . My wife has already asked a friend of mine to ensure that I stay away from the TV and she has agreed to try. Will she succeed, time will tell. I have put my digibox on record but will I be able to watch this game recorded ? Friends of mine will be texting the score frequently, will I be able to stay away ?

Oh man I am in turmoil. A part of me says, it is my daughters 10th and she will not turn 10 again. Another part says but it is a big big game and my neighbour is a liverpool fan and if he is watching how can I not.

watch this space for to know what happened

Profiting from sports addicts - this one is still holding on - barely

I have wondered for many years now why the sports merchandising business is one of the biggest and most lucrative industries the world over and the only reason that some clubs and boards are so rich and some barely break even. The Indian cricket board is probably the most greedy one you can find, just take a look at how they treat the indian cricketer like manual labour, throw obscene amounts of money at them and make them work like dogs, abusing their bodies to entertain us and fill the coffers - more on another piece which could potentially be explosive.

And there is no guessing where it all began, the USA, remember the days of trading cards with the baseball greats and then the basketball superstars that were a rage. Then slowly that passed away and entered memorabilia. Suddenly the TShirt that MJ sweated like a pig under was worth thousands of bucks, his jocks were probably worth 10s of them. Some joker who was probably playing around with clay suddenly discovered that he could make Babe Ruth look funny with a big head and a small miniature body and even resemble the great man - and great Figurine was discovered.

Then corporations realised that they could use these sportsmen and women who had crazy followers like me to con me into buying everything ranging from cereal to cars claiming that they ate them every morning and drove in them all day and night ! And we believed them unflinchingly, after all they were our sporting heros and icons right.

Sporting moments that in the good old days were treasured by all who witnessed it, now suddenly became available to anyone who had the money to afford it. So what if you were too busy to be able to watch that dramatic day when the great man took 10 wickets in an innings, you could always go out and buy a limited edition print that had all the pictures  and signed by the great man himself - very affordable I must say if they are still available today.

The nation and atleast a couple of companies await with bated breath the 100th ,100 of the Little Genius, as if he is not under enough pressure already he sees that a soft drink brand he is endorsing has already launched a limited edition can celebrating the event. I mean come on - as Steve Waugh says, the man himself is well aware that Sir Don fell 4 runs short in his last innings and had an average of 99 ish. It is a game after all and there is only so much in the players control. Will all his endorsers just  back off and let him do his thing.

Billions of dollars are generated by football clubs like Barcelona and ManU officially and many more billions unofficially through the sale of merchandise. I continue to refuse to pay 3500 bucks for a ManU jersey and make do with a cheap chinese fake. However i am not sure how long i can hold on since i am already trying to find someone who can bring me one from the UK where I can order online and get it cheaper.

Why is it so important for me to show everyone who I support and in the bargain make some corporate rich. Why cant I just be like I was during the good old days of radio. Why did I just order a Man U calendar for my daughters 10 th birthday and plan to take 2 more for my friends in Singapore ? Am I slowly succumbing to it ? I dont know.

Questions , Questions and more Questions - the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.

THE ARRIVAL OF A PASSIONATE SUPPORTER

I must confess that I have always felt the need to support one player or team while watching any game.I find this a very strange need that I seem to have to emotionally connect to a player or team. It has nothing to do with any nationalistic feeling or anything as cliched as that. I have been grappling with trying to understand this inane need for us to attach ourselves sometimes unneccesarily really and I thought i would explore this and share it.

It goes back to the time when I first discovered the radio and the power of the medium. I was in my early teens, playing cricket for Young Cricketers with the then unknown Jumbo who would even in those days terrorize us with his faster ones ! More on that in another post. I discovered Saturday Sports Special and what began with Wimbledon tennis commentary very quickly spread to the whole 9 yards, be it golf, rugby and offcourse football. I am trying to rack my brain why I supported Manchester United and not Liverpool, after all they were the champions then and dominating the league, but Man U it was. And then there was also coverage of the Scottish League and for some strange reason I had to support a team there too,so it was Dundee United. Did I like the name, I mean why not Celtic, Rangers or Aberdeen.


Once the team was in place then I had to have my favourite players and mine strangely was a goalkeeper, Peter Schmiechel, a Dane and look at the strange coincidence, I now professionally have a very strong Danish connection and consider myself half Danish ! Saturday nights were now taken care of and my support for Man Utd continues unflinchingly and passionately.


Cricket was offcourse my first love, since i played it, was reasonably good at it but the problem was that I was a left hander and those days we were a rare breed. There were even fewer in India, I remember only Surinder Amarnath among the batters at that time. So my hero was David Gower, arguably one of the most stylish left handers the game has produced. That lazy cover drive was worth a million and considering we did not have a TV at home you can understand how good the commentary of Chris Martin Jenkins, Alan Mcgalvray, Tony Cozier etc was. So having sporting heroes who were not Indian created a problem for me when India played these countries because when we played the Windies I enjoyed watching Kalicharan play or the raw power of Clive Lloyd all left handers again.


During the same time I also discovered the passionate Australians and still remember waking up early to catch the early morning starts at the cricket. The EIGHT for no wicket in the typical Australian twang is imprinted in my mind. I have never been to Australia but I got the sense that here was a nation that had sport in their DNA and I fell madly in love with that. So whenever India played Australia, I was an emotional wreck not knowing who to support. Secretly wanting Australia to win but on the outside off course supporting India. Even today, i have similar challenges when we play Australia in particular.


I think just the way they play the game, for that matter any game is so refreshingly different. It seems so much more natural for them while for us it seems almost artificial. When they run or they slide, it is very very apparent that they do it far more easily than us.


And finally individual sports like Golf, Tennis, Badminton- I find myself needing to support one player or the other. My daughter asked me the other day who I was supporting when Nadal was playing Djokovic in that epic match and I very instinctively said Nadal even though my favourite Fedex had already lost in the semis to that very man, so logically should I not have been supporting Novak ? But Nadal it was and what a rollercoaster it was. I did not have tears in my eyes but still felt for those two warriors.


So why this need to support, to be a fan, to have a favourite. I think we all want to and need to be part of a social structure be it family, be it a pack, gang or fan club. It gives a sense of brotherhoood, belonging and allows us to share our joy and fears and cry on each others shoulders, curse at will and at the end of the day find your family. I enjoy that inspite of the fact that with it comes all the emotional turmoil and the division, the competition, the winning and losing and much much more.

I finished my 10th from a KFI school and those who know it will understand when I say that here I was really into competitive sport in a school that felt that competition and the things it did to the human mind was very distructive and inherently dangerous to well being. I can see where they are coming from in the sense that we will be kidding ourselves if we do not accept that  all of us do feel a tinge sad for the loser and do comment on any over exuberant celebration by the winner. Professional sportsmen will claim we do not understand the sacrifices that they go through and how they train to win and it is that deep desire to win that has got them where they are and cant argue with that.

DEFINING MOMENT

The journey started way way, way back when I was just 8, studying in Baldwins High School, Bangalore, the quaint convent school just opposite the Military school on Hosur Road. It was a school cricket match and of course a large part of me wanted to be there but… but hey even at 8, nothing was impossible so I rallied around the troops, all of 6 of us and hatched a simple plan. We would bunk. I mean it was far more important than that silly class we were to attend. After all we did have the rest of our lives to catch up. Different matter that I am still catching up and I would dare guess that my friends are too.

Anyway back to the story so we decided to head out to school like always and then suddenly took a sharp detour to the venue of the match. We had a great time, our team won but then we were confronted with the bigger challenge of sneaking back to school. I must admire our guts for being brave enough to be able to face guaranteed consequences when we got back to school today, tomorrow or whenever. During those moments the world welcomed yet another sports addict who even today refuses to watch a match recorded and will do whatever it takes to watch his favourite team live in action. More about that later…..

The consequences were of course painful.  We sneaked over the school wall but how the hell were 6 kids expected to get into class without being a caught but you know how we are at 8 right, foolish and optimistic. Wonder where that attitude goes as we get older… our sports master was waiting for us, as though he knew that we would be coming, cane in hand and the rest is history. Whack, whack, whack, that day as you can see is firmly imprinted in my mind and will stay with me till I die!!

Well that was not the end of the agony. I still had to face the mother and the father who I hoped would be little more sympathetic to me, that poor 8 year old. My mum says that managed to hide those tell-tale marks on my hand and she only found out when at a parents meeting soon after.  She of course then asked me what happened and I had to tell her, I think she understood and felt that I had got my punishment – capital punishment was not to her liking but well at least I did not have to face anymore pain.

We were heroes in school, all of us and it seemed all worth it.  Of course we never did it again, but when you get whacked like that, the sting stays forever..

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF A SPORTS ADDICT

The world of a sports addict is a tough and unforgiving place. There is room only for winners and that makes it even more challenging because in most sports there is one winner and one loser always.  And if there isn’t then there is a strange sense of emptiness.  So what is this world like? Let me attempt to illustrate and believe me these are all things that I believe in and fight against all the time.

1.       Is a world without time zones

2.       Is a world where there is only room for winners

3.       Where tears flow from the eyes of 60 year old babies and 5 year olds for different reasons.

4.       Where watching and playing sport is the centre of everyone’s life, everything else is worked around it.

5.       Where there is the highest rate of divorces and consequently almost everyone is single. The ones who are not, you guessed right, have been lucky enough to marry an addict themselves.

6.       Where there is a thriving pub and sports bar culture since it is a sure shot way of making money. Everyone drinks when they win and drink when they lose!!!

7.       Where the newspapers that have the highest circulation are the sports tabloids and no one really cares what is happening with elections in UP or the US or for that matter what the state of the Euro Zone is.

8.       Where the player is treated like god even if he just a kid playing lower division matches.

9.       Where even the lowest division matches have half the neighbourhood out cheering the kids or adults.

10.   Where flash football matches or basketball match ups take place in the middle of the road and all else stops.

I am getting goose pimples even as I write this, I mean what a world…where there is a strange sense of tranquil and peace, where you kind of live your existence till the next game, the next win, the next loss, the next home game, the next away game….

Does this world exist? Well, I think it does all over the world in pockets and the attempt of this blog is to get people from across countries, languages, ages to comment and share their anecdotes. Maybe one day in the not too distant future we can all meet under one roof to celebrate this brotherhood. Maybe the Bernebaeu or Old Trafford or Eden Gardens Kolkata or wherever we can find space to accommodate all of us brothers and sisters.

Before I leave let me give you a sneak peek into my life. I will wake up at any time of night, anyplace to watch a live ManU game. I have brought a hotel down in Singapore at 2 a.m because they did not show a champions league game live and the TVs broke down.  I have knocked on friends doors at 2.30 a.m. to ask if I could watch a live game with them.  I mean come on.

But guess what, I am happily married to the same woman and credit more to her than to me and have  a 10 year old daughter who is also training to be a Man U fan !! I have left the choice of being a sports addict or not to her, that is the least I can do. I am a new age parent you see who wants to give his daughter the freedom to do what she wants as long as it is around sport !! I wish.