da betsul： In exploring his own micro-obsession the author hopes to throw light on the macro-obsession of world cricket’s most powerful nation, a place where SachinTendulkar bats and an audience the size of Europe watches
da bet7： Paul Coupar18-Sep-2006
“Death penalty to those who have raped Indian cricket.” No, this is notCMJ in the but graffiti in Kolkata after India’s moderate start to the2003 World Cup. In terms of hype, hoopla and howling obsession, Indiancricket makes the Premiership look like crown-green bowls.This intense love affair is explored here with a devotee’s enthusiasmby Soumya Bhattacharya. A Kolkata journalist, he began his courtshipas a boy listening to TMS in a Bengali backwater and ended up as a manwho, when asked his daughter’s birthday, replies, “Um, well … she wasborn the year India beat Australia after following on.”The book mixes personal reminiscence and wider analysis – , right down to the obscure musical referencesand the self-loathing that is the flipside of addiction. In exploring hisown micro-obsession Bhattacharya hopes to throw light on the macro-obsessionof world cricket’s most powerful nation, a place where SachinTendulkar bats and an audience the size of Europe watches.He succeeds best when the real world gets a look-in alongside the24/7 cricket. Only then do we get a true sense of what Matthew Engelcalled the game’s “importance and unimportance”. Most movingly heexplains the shame and anger his parents felt after India’s disastrous 1974tour of England. They were on a working trip to the UK and never againspoke to English people about cricket.Moments when the author takes a step back from the boundary arefascinating. Some mouldering clichés are chucked out. Cricket is not like areligion in India (“Religion has led to some of the deepest scars that Indiacarries in its heart. Cricket is the balm that heals.”) And there are warningsof the amount of cricket even an obsessive can stomach. “The surfeit,”writes Bhattacharya, “has killed the sharpness of our memories.”The fan’s-eye enthusiasm is the book’s great strength but can alsobe a weakness. The breathless observations never quite congeal into athesis. And the long stretches detailing the minutiae of one-day gamesamply demonstrate that the man in Kolkata is far more interested in onedayersthan the man in Corby, without ever quite explaining why.The book is lovingly written and often entertaining but in the endBhattacharya, like a man with his nose to a skyscraper, is perhaps a littletoo close to his subject to be able fully to explain it to others. That is thenature of obsession.