On Vizzy and Viv

India's Captains: From Nayudu to Ganguly by Partab Ramchand; Delhi: Penguin India; 2004; pp. 272; Rs. 250.Stadium'er Shai Addata Aaj Aar Nai by Dulal Mahmood; Okkhorbrikto, Dhaka; February 2005; pp.191; Tk. 125.

Ramchand's book is a comparative evaluation of all Indian cricket captains, men in the 'hot seat'-- since independence alone there have been eleven presidents, thirteen prime ministers and twenty-eight cricket captains. It makes for brisk reading, a sort of history of Indian cricket--from the early years of princes and seething politics to the present-day meritocracy of sorts-- seen through the prism of captaincy. The chapters on India's legendary first captain, C. K. Nayudu, Gavaskar, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Sourav Ganguly (adjudged the one with the most successful record and therefore to be leniently treated about stripping off his shirt and waving it from the balcony at Lord's) are quite good. For me, though, the best parts were, as always, the cricketing lore. As when, during India's farcical 1936 tour of England led by the sartorially dazzling, intrigue-ridden 'Vizzy' (the maharaja of Vizianagaram), while walking out to the pitch during a Test match Mushtaq Ali confided to Vijay Merchant that he had been 'instructed' to run him out. Merchant merely smiled and said 'Try it if you can.' Or when, after the West Indies were routed by Indian spinners in 1987-88 at Madras on what they believed was a deliberately under-prepared pitch, Viv Richards warned the Indians 'I have got a long memory, maaan.' He did. When Dilip Vengsarkar's men went to the Caribbean the next year, the waiting quartet of Walsh, Ambrose, Bishop and Marshall literally bouncer-ed them around the islands.

The two books offer interesting comparisons in terms of style, content and language in sports writing between the two countries. The obvious one is that unlike in Bangladesh, where book-length efforts by sports journalists remain confined to Bengali, Indians feel comfortable writing sports books, especially cricket books, in English. Stylistically speaking, (and here I confess that my familiarity with sports writing in the Indian vernacular languages is limited to Desh magazine), the Bangladeshi Bengali style of sports writing can sometimes veer towards the gaudily sentimental. As amply displayed in Dulal Mahmood's opening piece titled Raja Kadlo, Cricket Hashlo--about tears streaming down from King Viv Richards' eyes. It is the drippy-est piece on cricket/cricketers I have ever read, making me almost afraid of touching the wet page. Maybe it is a function of the language, I don't know, but this strain of cricket writing has got to go. In contrast, though by no means short on high-pitched lamentations about thrashings administered to various Indian teams on distant, and near, cricket grounds, though relying on prose that's first cousin to hack (the phrase 'leading from the front' for example, is used only about a thousand times), Ramchand's book rattles along jauntily. Lastly, it seems that in India sports journalists, especially those who publish books, tend to specialize in a single sport, i.e. cricket or football, while sports journalists here sally forth, even in book-length forms, on a wider range of topics.

At the end, however, one wishes sports writing in Bangladesh well, and especially that its cricket writing, side by side with its cricket team, matures and prospers. In both Bengali and English.

Khademul Islam is literary editor, The Daily Star.