How Sachin Destroyed My Life: but gave me an All Access Pass to the world of Cricket

by Vikram Sathaye

  Soon after I completed my MBA, which I had to do to overcome my middle-class Maharashtrian guilt and get my family off my back, I headed straight to Mumbai. Here I met Harsha and shared with him my vision of becoming the Jerry Maguire of the cricketing world. I tried to impress him with my insights about the game and how I could change the way cricket was run in the country. I was hoping that he would notice the glint in my eye and predict my greatness. That did not happen. He just gave me one simple piece of advice, he said, “Your ideas seem interesting but I think you should get a real job.”

  Harsha’s advice seemed to have no effect on me and like him I went on to pursue a career related to cricket after a corporate stint. However, neither of us would have predicted that 9 years later we would be in the commentary box together. Watching Harsha in the commentary box during the 2006 South Africa series was like doing an Executive Programme in Sports Broadcasting at a premier institute. It also made me realise the fact that commentary is not as simple as the world thinks it is. For millions, their opinion of commentary is that one just has to sit there, talk and then hang out with the cricketers. Sadly that’s not the case. A cricket commentator, especially someone who has not played the game at a certain level, is naturally looked down upon by the cricketing fraternity and completely not welcome. So Harsha’s greatness lies in the fact that he honed his craft braving the toughest of conditions. People don’t realise that players also hate commentators till they become commentators themselves. I haven’t seen a single player ever have a heart-to-heart conversation with a commentator; even if he has played 100 Tests. The most significant learning for me was that a sports presenter, however tough the conditions might be, still had to endeavour to make the expert sitting next to him look good along with executing the mandatories well. That is why he was the only person who could handle Sidhu and Boycott equally well at the same time. Harsha says, “Live telecast is the ultimate team sport. You have to feel good about what you are doing, but sometimes it can be taxing during long tours. You see everyone chilling around you while you have been told to fill in for another hour. Sometimes I wondered why I was the only one to come first and leave last. But then I had to make peace with the fact that I had to work the hardest as my route to this profession was different.”

  Just like the director is all-important for an actor unless you are a superstar, the most important person in the broadcast room is the producer who the commentators revolve around. A typical day would have the commentators come into the box and check the roster which will tell them their various slots. I have always felt the senior players are not worried about what is in store because as an expert commentator they more or less know what to expect in a game. One person though would come before the rest of the gang and make sure he knew the surroundings well before the game started. That was Harsha.

  The commentary box is for some strange reason, one of the most uncomfortable places to work in; whether it’s the SCG or the Centurion. It is almost modelled on the anda cell at Arthur Road jail, possibly smaller than Mandela’s Robben Island cell where he spent 17 years. Harsha sits there along with ex-cricketers like Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, Ian Chappell and others who between them have played millions of Test matches. Besides those physically present, he has an ear piece that helps him listen to four different people including the producer who is instructing him on the flow of the broadcast. Whenever his wife Anita complains about Harsha not listening to her, I wonder if it is true because in the broadcasting room he has the ability to listen to eight people at a time whilst watching the proceedings. To me this ear piece is the most irritating piece of equipment because it blocks your thoughts. But he somehow manages it with consummate ease. While the experts are giving their opinions, the producer may say things like, “Ok now change the conversation to Sehwag’s batting and we will follow it up with a package on Sehwag’s boundaries”, in his ear piece. Just as he is about to cue the boundaries he would get instruction that the tape was not functioning and so he would need to talk about Kumble’s bowling and Harsha would ease into the Kumble package without making the expert feel that he had been rudely cut off. This he would do continuously for hours with a smile which was as pleasant as Aishwarya Rai and Vidya Balan’s put together. While doing this he would be the only one following the game at all levels and paying attention to all the developments around the match.

  What separates a great player and an average player is that a great player knows it’s a big day, and he has to perform on the biggest stage but pretends it’s just another day. — Nasser Hussain

  I used to always wonder how Harsha would be wired all the time and how the flow of events registered in his brain so beautifully. I remember being nervous doing a segment once because I couldn’t hear anything in the ear piece and was not sure how to react to the camera. He calmed me down and said, “On a live telecast your mind should be very sharp and clear and don’t get carried away by the occasion, consider it a normal day in your life.” He said that the worst days of his live TV career were when he got carried away by the occasion because he wanted to be at his best. Harsha explains, “I decided to do many things and over analysed the things I was going to say. It was during the 2007 T20 World Cup where everything went wrong that day — me, the TV crew, literally everything. I was about to cue a tape and then some wrong tape got played. Just as I was about to cue an interview, some other interview came up. The director’s instructions in my ear piece were barely audible so I had to rely on gut feeling and it just didn’t work out well. I remember Nasser Hussain telling me, that what separates a great player and an average player is that a great player knows it’s a big day, and he has to perform on the biggest stage but pretends it’s just another day. The moment you psyche yourself for the big day, you are taut; you are not thinking clearly and that’s when you lose the plot.”

  As a kid I remember there were times I used to give all the answers to my parents at home, then go for the exam and fail miserably. There is something about pressure that gets the worst of you whether in school or in real life.

  The ability to remain calm under pressure is very important in live television and this is something that Harsha always stresses on.

  He says, “Live broadcasting always happens on the move and more often than not, one is rushed into a telecast where one reacts to the situation at hand. But you know that in your subconscious mind, you know a hell of a lot more than what you actually said. If you are doing a certain match, what happened in the last three games should come to you as a throwaway line. But when you are rushed and too many things are happening around you and your mind is somewhere else, then you start searching for facts and it affects the way you are looking down the camera. The small pieces of information that you add to the commentary are what makes it look good and the ability to retrieve that information from your database is where you make an impact. If you don’t have a clear mind you may not be able to do it that well.”

  Well my throwaway line in my Trigonometry paper was always Sin2 θ + Cos2 θ = 1.

  On screen, Harsha appears to be one of the happiest people on the planet, but I know the effort he takes to appear so. Even if he is angry off camera, he would control it by walking out of the box just like a batsman walks towards the forward short leg fielder to relax before he takes strike.

  Informed Nothingness

  One evening when we were having dinner, Harsha emphasised the importance of preparation in live broadcasting. He said, “It’s important that one always has to have a go-to-line. Sometimes the producer is new and maybe stressed, so he forgets to tell you what the next tape is about, but you have to still go on and look natural and fill the time before he recovers and tells you what the upcoming details are. That is the time you fill in with things which are called “Informed Nothingness” where one is not saying anything profound but one has to make it seem interesting till things are back on track. You have to ensure that you don’t start a new point in this phase because then it would be dif
ficult to come back to the original point when the producer is ready. Most importantly the viewer should never come to know that things had gone out of control.”

  However in my opinion, in the case of Navjot Singh Sidhu, one can’t really tell the difference between commentary and “Informed Nothingness”.

  I always thought that one of Harsha’s biggest strengths was to bring out the emotion of the moment and that entire last session during Sachin’s retirement Test match was a moment to cherish. I don’t think anyone else would have done justice to the final lap as Harsha did.

  Harsha reminisces, “I remember distinctly that I was getting into that moment. When Sachin started the lap my emotions had started to show, my words were flowing, in a sense everything had happened in front of my eyes. Ian Bishop was next to me, I suddenly noticed him putting the mike down. I saw that and asked him to please pick it up and join the conversation. He replied softly, “No, you know the emotion of the moment, just carry on”. I hadn’t rehearsed those words, they just came. Till that moment happened I was a commentator but after that I became a fan. But you couldn’t lose the discipline of a commentator. The moment belonged to someone else. So I cannot fill that moment with my own words. It had to be measured with the right pauses. So every time the pictures were breathing I told the viewers a story. It was just a flow which wouldn’t stop. It was truly special.”

  Somehow I had noticed that Harsha always delivered his best lines for Sachin, Rahul and VVS Laxman. When I asked him about this he said that when you know certain players as people and you like and respect them you want them to do well and when they do well you start to feel their happiness also and then the words that come out are laced with that warmth. With the new players it is a little different but the good part is that he finds it easier to be objective.

  Many readers would probably not know that Harsha has a huge following in Australia because of his radio stints there since the early 90s. There are many times during the Test matches that one will see a group of Aussies suddenly laughing loudly as they would be listening to ABC radio commentary where Harsha and Kerry O’Keefe would be having a whale of a time. I always wondered how beautifully he bonded with the international commentators but in countries like England there used to be a certain unfriendly vibe among the Indian and the English commentators. I witnessed that during both the English tours. At the Lord’s Test match in 2010 I really wanted to walk up to Michael Vaughan and reprimand him for the statements he was making about VVS Laxman. He claimed that VVS had applied Vaseline on his bat. I had taken that allegation personally and I wanted to tell him that VVS is such a nice and conscientious guy and that he wouldn’t even apply Vaseline on his face, forget the bat! Just relax! That was the time Indian and English commentators were fighting about Decision Review System (DRS) decisions. I distinctly remember the day in Nottingham when Sanjay Manjrekar, Harsha and me were having an hour-long chat on the DRS and technology in cricket over dinner followed by some Kishore Kumar songs. Thanks to Kishore Kumar our tempers remained under control. Also, having Sanjay Manjrekar with us is always a musical experience.

  When I pointed out the cut and dry attitude of the English commentators Harsha agreed with me and explained, “There are two styles of commentary, Asian and International. The Indian commentators are not liked in England, because our society is different. Our movies are dripping with emotion. In our commentary when we bring in emotion the English would say, “C’mon it’s a game, cut the crap”. What they don’t realise is that they are catering to their audience while we are catering to ours. So the best commentary team is when there is a mix of the two.”

  Harsha though says that his biggest learning was when he went to do radio commentary in Australia for the first time. The commentary there was way different from that in India where one described each and every ball. Here the focus was not on the delivery alone but on things outside of the game as well, though related to cricket. That was quite a change in perspective for him, he realised that one needs to know far more to do this kind of commentary and therefore the peripheral knowledge on the game requirement was higher than what was required in India.

  Harsha cites Ian Chappell as his work ethic compass. Harsha narrates, “It was a hot English summer in Bristol in 2002. The brightness and heat outside was so strong that they had to cover the commentary box with black cloth which made it feel like a green house. It was during this moment that Harsha mentioned twice in his commentary that it was hot and they were perspiring. After that session Ian walked up to him and said, “Mate can I have a word with you? If Kerry Packer was here he would have told you that he doesn’t pay you to tell people how hot it is, he pays you to tell people what’s happening on the ground. How does the viewer care?” That day I learnt a lot. Since then every time I feel like complaining about things going wrong; I hear Ian’s gruff voice in my head. I remind myself, that if the batsmen can’t crib about the conditions, how can I? I also remember Rahul Dravid telling me that every bad pitch is an opportunity so it’s important to enjoy tougher conditions.”

  Harsha explains, “Broadcasting has become difficult now as cricket has also changed with the newer shorter formats. Earlier you could sometimes get away with your analysis but now you can get battered on Twitter and this generation doesn’t hold back. But surely it’s a new challenge. Commentary entails a lot of hard work and time away from the family. In the last three months I have done nineteen 50 over games for the U-19 World Cup followed by 10 ODIs and then the Asia Cup final, the entire T20 World Cup and then 25 games in the IPL. The entire journey wouldn’t have happened without my wife Anita. How in all these years she never gave up on me is simply amazing. Everyone in their life gets one lottery in my case it’s Anita.”

  I remember during the 2011 World Cup, Harsha was relentless in the commentary box for the entire 41 days. At a function hosted by cricket commentator Mark Nicholas just after the World Cup, he quipped, “For me the “Man of the Series” from our point of view is Harsha Bhogle.”

  10

  I Got An Exclusive

  Sourav Ganguly exclusively spoke to the Telegraph and said, “No comments.”

  This is a popular joke amongst the journalistic fraternity that signifies the desperation to get exclusive coverage. However it’s not the Indians alone but journalists from across the world who face the same pressure to get exclusive stories. Senior journalist Clayton Murzello once told me about an incident about a post-match press conference at Pietermaritzburg during the 2003 World Cup when India took on Namibia. This is one of the few cricket arenas with a tree inside the ground which the authorities have consciously decided not to uproot. A South African journalist who realised that not much had happened during the match asked Sourav Ganguly, “Sourav, did India have a specific strategy for the tree and can you share it with us?” Namibia may not yet be a great cricketing nation but giving the tree more importance than the team was a little harsh. But that’s the nature of the beast. Ricky Ponting once said to me, “It’s interesting that I once gave an interview three years back and I am still seeing newspapers in India printing parts of that interview as exclusive coverage.”

  Sometimes foreign journalists also play truant when trying to get headlines out of the Indian team. During a warm-up game in the Australian tour of 2011, a local journalist kept on asking about various cricketers caste and background. Unknowingly people told him where the cricketers came from and which state they belonged to besides other such details. The next day there was a big headline in the papers which read, “THE CASTE SYSTEM STILL EXISTS IN THE INDIAN TEAM.” It was completely uncalled for but that’s the way it is.

  As a student, I never imagined that someone could actually make a living out of sports writing and clicking photographs at sporting events. For some reason, one assumed these things got automatically printed. So when I finally met a sports journalist, I was shocked that such a profession actually existed. Get paid to watch and write about cricket! How unfair is that? But who kn
ew that in a way one day I would be part of this privileged club.

  I believe that even today more than 70 percent people read the newspapers backwards like an Urdu book, starting from the back page and working their way to page one. The right wing may misuse these stats to highlight the impact of the Mughal rule in India, but such was the effect of the sports page on many of our lives. It took me forever to accept that there was anything more important than sports. For years my parents and teachers tried to inculcate the habit of reading the editorial page but I just couldn’t go beyond cricket news. To me the scoreboard was my editorial which I would religiously digest. I came from a generation that collected centre-spread posters of cricketers from magazines like Sportstar, Sportsweek and Sportsworld. As a student, anyone who had a large collection of such posters was considered a dude. Inspite of my liking for cricket, I must confess that the number of posters I had of Gabriela Sabatini exceeded all cricketers.

  My first media experience was the 2003 ICC World Cup where an entire media contingent comprising of photographers, reporters, camera personnel and commentators was travelling to South Africa. It made me wonder why a cricket tour required so many people to travel and what was it that they actually did. Was this a paid party? Did they all get lucky like I did? Though getting lucky in this context had nothing to do with the opposite sex, the feeling was equally pleasurable. Imagine if there was media when Alexander conquered the world. Sometimes cricket media contingents are probably larger than Alexander’s army. In hindsight if 30 legislators from Karnataka could undertake a study tour to the Amazon jungle via a desert safari in Dubai, then we were surely on a mission of far greater national consequence.

  There are two kinds of cricket journalists, one is a devout fan and lover of the game and the other is a failed cricketer who thinks he knows it all and uses his pen to vent out venom that he has accumulated over the years, from playing ordinary cricket. The latter’s frustration is always bubbling on the surface and overflows especially when India is playing badly. This journalist like any other wannabe cricketer genuinely believes that if not for administrative politics, he would have played international cricket for India. Cricket as a sport looks very easy especially when one is watching it from the sidelines as it gives ample ammunition for one to criticise.