Harbhajan sees red, Hayden see dollars!

The life and times of a modern cricketer, especially the high-profile ones

 

The life and times of a modern cricketer, especially the high-profile ones, is as glitzy as some of the folks in the tinsel world. Wining and dining with the rich and famous, brushing shoulders with the bold and the beautiful and leading a life that most people can only dream of brings with it has a certain mystery that the world outside is not privy too. And breaking the unwritten code of silence could mean exile into the world of mere mortals.

 

Anything that is salacious – perceived or real – and mysterious, is much sought after. The time to spill the beans, so to say, and make capital is when there is nothing to lose. That moment comes post retirement. That’s when a cricketer seeks a publisher – or vice versa – to reveal it to the world. The money that the cricketer gets for providing juicy tales is a neat cheque; it’s like a fat VRS package!

 

The cricketer, much to the delight of the cricket lover, gives insight into team mates, oppositions, strategies, anecdotes… The publisher pays the cricketer not for goody-goody stuff but for all the juicy stuff that was till know not known or unclear. And the publisher pays this amount so that he could strategically promote them to the ever-hungry media to lap it up. The human nature is such that only controversies sell.

 

Case in point is Matthew Hayden’s latest book, ‘Standing My Ground‘. The Australian flew to India to promote his book and promote it in a big way across many cities.

 

A passage from the book expectedly enraged Harbhajan Singh. The extract that angered the fiery Sardar: “When Ganguly and Harbhajan went out to see the deck a couple of days before the game, they looked like farmers inspecting crops after a hail storm. We predicted neither would play, and they did not. We put their ailments down to acute cases of ‘greentrackitis’, where you develop a severe intolerance to green wickets likely to give you nothing as a spin bowler and plenty of headaches as a batsman.”

 

Harbhajan promptly hit back saying that this was a “nice ploy” to promote his book. Little did Harbhajan realize that his comments got Hayden far greater mileage, which in turn would have increased the sale of the book!

 

Hayden is almost an honorary Indian, like many from his country who earn a bomb after their playing days. He obviously had to say many good things that will also make the Indian cricket fans happy.

 

Here are a few such extracts:

 

On Sachin Tendulkar: “A significant part of his (Tendulkar’s) game was his fierce body language. For a little man, he had a huge stature. And he exuded a cool nonchalance at the crease. He may have the occasional crack, but generally he let his bat do the talking. He was so fearless and (ridiculously) skillful.”

 

On Rahul Dravid: “They called him ‘the Wall’, and he was well named. Great mental toughness, watchability and the capacity to inspire … Dravid has all these. Others might have quickened the pulse of spectators more, but with his textbook purity and great concentration, Dravid was still absorbing to watch. In my era, he was the Bjorn Borg of cricket, absolute ice under pressure. As the chaotic forces of Indian cricket swirled around him, he was a beacon of serenity.”

 

On Virender Sehwag: “But there is something magnetic about Sehwag. The core of his appeal to me is his natural aggression and his cool demeanour: He’ll smoke one through the covers with imperious timing, then look up with total nonchalance as if to say, ‘What was the big deal about that. I do it for a living, you know’. “The crowd will be going crazy, yet he shows about as much emotion as a man who’s just licked a stamp and put it on a letter. A great player can suck you into bowling where they want you to, and Sehwag was always a very difficult man to plan for. On our 2004 tour of India, we spent more time talking about him than any their player — Tendulkar included.”

 

On Harbhajan Singh: “But I will pick Harbhajan for his superb skills. When he bowled his doosra – the ball that spins away from right-handed batsmen – to go with his conventional off-spinner, like Murali, he lifted his game to a level beyond the reach of conventional off-spinners. The doosra was a priceless weapon – it made his other balls so much more dangerous as well, as batsmen asked themselves whether or not to play.”

 

I’m sure those who haven’t read the book would not know anything about the above extracts simply because the media loves to print what sells – controversial extracts like the one Hayden wrote on Ganguly and Harbhajan.

 

If only the good had been projected, the mutual respect would have grown. Instead, in the zest to gain extra publicity, to ignite a negative fire, the ‘not-so-good’ has been projected in a bad manner to only make things worse.

 

A little more responsibility from our media and publishers of such books would be highly appreciated.

 

(Harsh Lapsia, an incorrigible optimist, lives life each day as it comes. He derives happiness from every moment and learns from every opportunity before him. He is a proud Indian, natural cricket lover & a football maniac – A Red Devil through & through. He loves expressing his views, be it sport or politics, local or global)

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