Read Online You Must Like Cricket? by Soumya Bhattacharya - Free Book Online Page B

the ground for the first time, I had always watched cricket in the isolation of my home. It did me good to see this mass hysteria; it was the first real indication I had ever had that my obsession was not unique.
    But the main impression that first visit to the Eden Gardens left me with was how
unreal
the whole spectacle seemed. It was not like the game I watched on television. There was the distance, of course, and the distortion – or obfuscation – that distance breeds. But there was something else too: the vast number of people all around (I had never seen 100,000 people together in one place before), the roar, the glint of sunshine on an angled bat, the heat which made you feel dizzy, the hovering cloud of cigarette smoke and the sound of crackers.
    In a curious inversion of the reality-illusion paradox, the actual game in front of my eyes was only a reflection – immensely enlarged in scale but diminished in terms of individual components – of what was borne to me at home across the airwaves. The TV pictures were more real.
    I don’t remember much of what I saw. The West Indies had come to India with Alvin Kallicharran as captain (Kerry Packer had taken away the best of the best for his WSC series). The first two Tests at Mumbai and Chennai had been drawn and the Windies came to Kolkata more with the intention of avoiding defeat than snatching victory. That day, after the West Indies had reached 143 for 4 at tea chasing 335, the match suddenly opened up. The Indian new-ball bowler Karsan Ghavri snapped up three quick wickets but a dropped chance (Viswanath let Marshall – and probably the match – slip through his fingers) and fading light combined to rob India of victory.
    None of this has stayed with me (I had to look it up). I can’t really say why. Had India won, perhaps, it would have. (Winning is terribly important for a nine-year-old. Draws are never honourable or fair; they merely seem inconclusive, they merely seem like
not
winning.) Had I watched it on television, perhaps it would have.
    My most enduring memory of that Test is of the Indian scorecard on the fourth day. It read 361 for 1 – Gavaskar 182 not out and Vengsarkar 157 not out.
    â€˜Look at that scoreboard,’ my uncle said (we were watching television together), ‘and never forget how pride makes your heart swell when you see something like that.’
    He was right. I have never forgotten it. But the memory comes to me courtesy of the TV, not from my day at the Eden.
    * * *
    Actually, I do remember one incident from that day. And the emotion that accompanied it is still fresh: it was a sense of cringing shame.
    On his way to a debonair forty-six, Kallicharran developed some sort of a problem with his box. The Indian fielders clustered around and, through the crack of space left between the men in front of me and then through the space between the loose circle that the fielders formed around the batsman, I saw the West Indies captain drop his trousers and fix his box.
    I wanted to place a hand over my aunt’s eyes. It seemed bizarre that no one else at the ground thought of it as anything but a minor stoppage in the run of play.
    I looked down at my shoes. My aunt thought I had dropped something.
    â€˜How can a grown man drop his pants like this in front of so many people?’ I squealed. My aunt smiled and ruffled my hair.
    Clearly, I had a lot of growing up to do.

4
‘Could I touch your hand just once?’
    E very fanatic knows this – it’s the moment he lives for. It’s the moment I live for. It’s the moment when the bass line kicks in, the instant when the drink has begun to take hold, the moment of sharp-edged clarity between feeling a little tipsy and losing oneself. It’s the moment when you are floating, weightless, riding the high.
    These moments are at the heart of our addiction. They are repeating, repeatable motifs we pursue in every binge. When these