When a tireless bowler obliges and other moments in cricket
“Theek hai yaar, pucch le jo pucchna hai (Okay buddy, ask me whatever you want to ask),” his eyes sparkled as he told me that. That moment was my prize. Like the joy on a bowler’s face when he finally kisses the edge of a master batsman’s willow. Yes, I finally had Saeed Anwar! I was over the moon. But I did quite well to hide the feeling because my job was only halfdone. I needed to forget all the pain I endured on that winter morning in the year 2004 in Delhi’s ITDC Ashok Hotel when Saeed Anwar dismissed my first request for an interview without even looking at me.
“I am leaving for the airport now,” he snarled as he waited for the taxi. “You should have come earlier.”
But his cab was probably stuck somewhere in Delhi’s traffic. With each passing minute, I sensed an opportunity, and he knew that I was still lurking like a tireless bowler ready to pounce on a mistake outside his off-stump.
He pretended he hadn’t seen me as he began bantering with teammates from the Pakistan veteran’s team who had joined him at the hotel entrance. His teammates were waiting for a bus to take them to a market. They wanted to buy gifts for their families in Pakistan. One of them even asked Anwar if he got anything for his family. “Yeh shopping-wopping mere se nahi hota hai (I am not this guy who loves shopping),” the bearded Anwar replied, his voice a mix of politeness and restrained anger. Perhaps he had yet to cope with the loss of Bismah, his three-year-old daughter in 2001.
There were still no sign of his taxi. It was a bright morning and you couldn’t feel the chill in the air. The warmth of his teammates began to work its magic on Anwar. His face broke into a smile every time someone cracked a joke. I will forever be grateful to them for lighting up Anwar’s face. Buoyed by the change in his expressions, I went for the kill.
“Sir, five minutes. I will just take five minutes of your time,” I pleaded, an hour after I arrived at the hotel. It was then that he said, “Theek hai yaar, pucch le jo pucchna hai!”
And so I began my interview with an iconic Pakistani cricketer who terrorised a billion Indian souls with a bat in hand.
That morning Saeed Anwar could have continued to ignore me as he chatted with his friends. Someone of his stature doesn’t need to oblige a random Indian journalist. But his agreeing to give me some of his time was the sweetest thing I have heard in my life as a sports journalist.
I could have asked him uncomfortable questions — how he was never the same player after the death of Bismah. I had seen interviews in which he was asked about a phase in his life that brought only unspeakable pain. But I would never have asked him that even if I had to wait an eternity to get that interview. Moments like these remain with you for life.
Like when Rahul Dravid gifted his bat to Tamim Iqbal after the batsman played a stirring innings to script Bangladesh’s stunning win over India in the 2007 World Cup. Dravid was India’s captain and he invited Tamim to his room minutes after fielding uncomfortable questions at the post-match press conference.
All world-class athletes are obsessed with victory. And who can blame them?
The joy of Andrew Flintoff’s teammates knew no bounds after England won an Ashes battle by two runs in 2005. But Flintoff, after having played the biggest role in that victory with two half-centuries and seven wickets, was not among the English players jumping for joy after the fall of the last Australian wicket. Instead, he went up to a crestfallen Brett Lee to console the Australian whose valiant last-wicket partnership with Michael Kasprowicz took Australia to the brink of an improbable victory.
But my favourite sports moment is from a man who died in 1915.
Victor Trumper, the Australian cricketer, was that man whose batting inspired Neville Cardus, cricket’s most famous writer, to write some of his finest prose. But it was what Trumper said to rookie leg-spinner Arthur Mailey — who was picked by Redfren to play against Trumper’s Paddington in a club game — that would remain etched in memory. Mailey wrote in his autobiography 10 for 66 and all that, on the excitement of playing against a player he grew up watching.
“This was unbelievable, fantastic. It could never happen — something was sure to go wrong. A war, an earthquake, Trumper might fall sick. A million things could crop up in the two or three days before the match.”
No war or earthquake happened and Mailley couldn’t believe his luck when he was given the ball by his captain after Trumper came in to bat. Mailey’s second ball was a perfect leg-break only for Trumper to play a sublime cover-drive.
But then the unthinkable happened. In the next ball, Mailey bowled a beautifully disguised wrong ’un, beating Trumper in flight and the wicketkeeper did the rest.
The wide-eyed teenager had just taken the wicket of the world’s greatest batsman.
“As he walked past me he smiled, patted the back of his bat and said, ‘It was too good for me’. “There was no triumph in me as I watched the receding figure,” wrote Mailey who went on to take 99 Test wickets for Australia.
“I felt like a boy who had killed a dove.”