Sportsmen dread the ‘R’ word. For most, retirement is the end of a vital phase of life, perhaps even life itself. It is difficult for the average cricket fan to fully comprehend this. One moment you are among the dozen best players in the country; next, you are looking for alternative employment.
You are in your late thirties, having travelled the world and been feted everywhere. People rush to be of help. All favours are just a phone call away. Politicians court you, and you are on first-name terms with your own heroes. You are given to believe you are special and that (despite knowing the truth) it will last forever.
Then suddenly the party is over. It is as if someone has switched off a light or dropped a curtain. The same politicians who were running after you expect you to run after them for a plot of land to start an academy. The same journalists who were respectfully publishing your every utterance now threaten you if you don’t give them an interview.
Someone seems to have done this last to Wriddhiman Saha, 37, who after 40 Test matches when he was probably the finest pure wicketkeeper in the world, now finds himself excess to India’s requirements. He may be fit still, and there may be no significant drop in standard. But he is not the future. He has to come to terms with that. Sport, like life, can be cruel.
The wicket-keeper being told he does not find a place in the team is only one part of the current Saha saga. The second is his tweet which has shown up a journalist who appears to have threatened him for not giving him an interview. Saha hasn’t named the journalist but twitterati have already decided who it is and have begun trolling him.
Measured response
The most measured and mature response has come from that gentle fast bowler Venkatesh Prasad. It is worth quoting him in full for it says something important about the relationship between a star and a critic.
Prasad writes: “While there are some exceptional sports journalists who love the game, are passionate and respect the players while (maintaining) boundaries, certain entitled ones, just because of proximity to big players have been bullies and sensationalise with no knowledge and substance.
“It is equally important for players who give these kinds of journalists a platform and access, to have a better sense of whom to be close to and have clear boundaries. I am afraid some top players have lacked that sense just because they enjoy the buttering up.”
When I was starting out in the profession, K.N. Prabhu, then India’s leading cricket writer, gave me some advice. “Don’t get too close to the players,” he said, “or you will lose your objectivity.” At least one India captain, Srinivas Venkatraghavan told his players, “Don’t get too close to the journalists.”
To say that journalists ought to be in the betrayal business might be putting it strongly, but as Janet Malcolm wrote in the New Yorker: “Every journalist is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”
On the other hand, every performer is a kind of confidence man too, preying on the journalist’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness…
Bonding
When the journalist is young, he tries to get close to the players. In later years, he finds that players want to get close to him. In both cases, the motive is usually selfishness. It is natural too, if you think about it. As a player evolves through the system, from being a promising schoolboy to a First Class player and then a Test star, the reporter often grows with him, especially if they are from the same city.
Thus cricketers from Bengal develop a bond with reporters from Kolkata, those from Chennai feel close to their city’s reporters and so on.
Some journalists like to give the impression that they run Indian cricket –— it gives them access to the players! Equally, some players are convinced they can put an arm around the journalist and enlist him to their cause. Both reek of arrogance, but often can be quite hilarious too.
I am not sure why the Board of Control for Cricket in India wants to hold an inquiry into this and maybe other similar cases. Will they check a player’s (or his agent’s) past messages to a friendly journalist begging to be interviewed? It is a two-way street, after all. Or will the governing body use this as a convenient excuse to further distance players from the media?
International players are adults, so are journalists. They do sometimes behave childishly, usually as a result of hurt egos. The BCCI has more important things to worry about.
