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SPORTS: CRICKET
TV Liberates Small-town Players
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MOHAMMED KAIF 20 Allahabad
Left
home at age 12 to join a sports hostel
Never
mind the infamous power cuts in Uttar Pradesh. Keetgang Mohalla
in Allahabad now has its own street light. Even as Junior India
captain and middle-order batsman Mohammed Kaif tries to find his
way in international cricket, he has already raised the bar for
his state players a little higher. "I sometimes take it to
heart too much-that I must do well for Uttar Pradesh cricket,"
he says. The youngest of three sons born to Uttar Pradesh Ranji
Trophy player Mohammed Tarif, Kaif left home at age 12 for a sports
hostel in Kanpur where he spent eight years. The coaching there
was far from modern and his predecessors were easily satisfied after
playing Ranji Trophy. "I tried to spend as much time on the
field as I could and make the most of every opportunity." Today
the fittest cricketer in the Indian side, Kaif has grabbed every
piece of advice he could get. Allahabad's cricket is still divided
by a faction fight amongst officials. The town does not have a single
professional cricket coach, there is no infrastructure for coaching
or a proper net. What they do have though is an ambitious young
man called Mohammed Kaif and for some it's a good enough place to
start. Kaif says, "I used to wonder what we lack in Uttar Pradesh
but now attitudes among youngsters are changing. They know how playing
good cricket can get you respect in life."
"I must
do well for cricket in UP."
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The quality and
quantity of cricket on television has liberated small-town India from
its limitations. Cricket writer and historian Ramachandra Guha says, "If
by the age of seven or eight you know the basics, and if you do have real
talent, you do not have to be in Bangalore or Mumbai to 'make it'. You
do not have to be somewhere where you will be taught by trained coaches
at a relatively early stage."
What distinguishes these cricketers is not their
all-consuming love for their sport, which they share with their peers.
Love can, equally easily, be over-valued or undermined but the men from
the fringes have used it to carry them to the furthest reaches of their
inner and outer worlds. To find their way in "big cricket" they
have been ready to move mountains, one boulder at a time.
Khan loved pace bowling so much that when he
heard he had missed out on an under-19 selection trial in the district
because a friend forgot to tell him in time, he cried as though he would
never stop. After he had finished devastating local batting line-ups in
tennis-ball cricket, he begged his father Bakhtiyar Khan to take him to
Mumbai. One summer they came to the big city looking for a guru. Every
morning, father and son went from club to club and maidan to maidan until
they ran into former Test player Sudhir Naik. Naik took one look at the
stringy 17-year-old's pace and said, "Don't touch that tennis ball
again."
Mohammed Kaif left home in genteel, never-changing
Allahabad as a 12-year-old and spent eight years in a sports hostel in
Kanpur. He was the youngest of three cricket-playing brothers who had
to learn to do household chores and eat institutional food. Harvinder,
who comes from Chheharta, an ailing industrial suburb of Amritsar, was
once told that rustics could never play cricket and made to stand behind
the nets. "It hit me like a bullet and since then I have always wanted
to prove that somebody from the villages can also play cricket."
When he played for India in the Sahara Cup in 1997, Chheharta kept its
shops open way past midnight so that even people without televisions could
watch the match live from Toronto. As a precocious teenager, Harbhajan
practised landing the ball until his fingers bled, asking friends to switch
on scooter headlights at sundown so that he could practise some more.
Every coach who runs into a talented cricketer
spots desire as easily as a naturally correct technique. Bangalore's V.
Jagannath, who has helped cricketers from outside the city (including
Sunil Joshi) find their feet for over four decades, says, "These
boys have an abundance of natural talent but they're also physically fitter
than the city boys, incredibly focused and willing to work harder."
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VIRENDER
SEHWAG 22 Najafgarh
Travelled 84 km by bus every day for cricket
 Najafgarh
Ka Tendulkar. It's a presumptuous nickname bestowed upon Virender
Sehwag by Delhi's club cricket maniacs but today he is his locality's
calling card for the rest of the country. Old men stop him in the
street to give him their ashirwad for making Najafgarh known as
more than just an area on the fringe of Delhi where rural gangsters
seek shelter. Allrounder Sehwag, son of a flour-mill owner, was
known as the boy always ready to play cricket matches against any
opposition. He switched schools at the age of 15 for cricket. The
school coach A.K. Sharma taught him the rudiments of the game: the
copybook cover drive, how to tackle a regular cricket ball. In college,
he travelled 42 km by bus-one way-to Jamia Millia Islamia University
as it would help him leapfrog into inter-varsity tournaments and
from there into the India under-19 and the Delhi teams. After Shoaib
Akhtar cleaned him up one time, he cranked bowling machines as high
as they would go (160 kmph) so he could be ready for fast bowling.
Before any match, for club, state or country he prepares himself
mentally, sorting out the bowling in his mind-whom to respect, whom
to rip apart. "I have never doubted myself. Everyone I met
told me I could be a good player-whether my coach or my teammates
in Delhi or India. They believe in me and I play to justify their
confidence."
"I
have never doubted myself."
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