A TOAST TO CRICKET NOSTALGIA ON A QUILTED WINTER MORNING

pany of my maternal grandfather, a cricket buff who had honed his passion through radio commentary but who wisely offered little in terms of insight when the likes of Richie Benaud and Bill Lawry were in the commentary box. It was this dogged quality of making sure I woke up with him, but not overburdening me with his own opinions on the bouncing ball (being a former political journalist, he had strong views on plenty of other subjects) made him a perfect first-session companion.

Those mornings were important for middle-class India, still a decade away from the effects of liberalisation, because it was our first immersive experience of something familiar but different; for want of a better word, something ‘foreign’. The score was inverted – 2/5 rather than 5/2, though with India it wasn’t always clear which of the two depicted the correct runs-to-wickets relationship. Deliveries rose chest-, shoulder-, chin-, nose-, forehead-, sometimes even head-high. Weeping ducks walked back with the batsmen and planted themselves on scoreboards. And the sound of the ball hitting the bat was eerily different – with a greater punch, and as you got used to it over the season, almost mellifluous.

It was also a happy time for Indian cricket because the team was going through an international awakening. In the 1970s, India realised it could compete abroad by winning matches in England and West Indies, but the patchy run solidified a decade later through the game’s shorter version. If Kapil’s Devils on the Lord’s balcony in 1983 put India on top of the world, the champagne-drenched players taking a victory lap inside and on top of Ravi Shastri’s