The Great Tamasha, by James Astill
James Astill’s The
Great Tamasha is a real tour de force.
A tamasha is a Hindi word
meaning an entertainment, a performance or a show; and the book is about what
Astill calls the conquest of India by the
tamasha that is modern Indian cricket.
The book’s sub-title is Cricket,
Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India and the author, as the
political editor of The Economist and
previously their South East Asia Bureau Chief, is well placed to paint on a
large canvas in covering all of these topics and more.
What makes the book so readable is that Astill is able
to cover the broad sweep of history whilst at the same time creating all sorts
of fascinating vignettes along the way, bringing to life the personalities and
incidents behind the names. Consider,
for example, the Maharajah of Vizianagram (known as Vizzy) who captained the
1936 tour of England, arriving in the country with 36 pieces of luggage, two
personal servants and a team that already despised him. His later career as a broadcaster is dealt
with in equally damning terms – he allegedly hunted tigers by placing a radio
in the jungle and boring the beasts to death with his commentary.
The book links the growth of cricket in India to the
rise of the independent Indian nation.
Astill tackles the religious sensitivities between Muslims and Hindus,
which takes him into the topic of relationships between India and Pakistan,
both on and off the cricket field.
He touches also on the delicate subject of caste in
India, describing the influence this has had on the nation’s cricket, from the
Palwankar brothers a century ago, now largely air-brushed out of India’s
cricketing history, to the sad tale of the massively talented Vinod Kambli. His career could have rivalled that of Sachin
Tendulkar but for his personal frailties and also, maybe, some ancient and
hidden prejudices against his lowly caste.
Astill charts the rise in the financial fortunes of
Indian cricket and of the players. The great spinner Bishan Bedi tells Astill
that he was a Test cricketer on a bicycle because that was the only form of
transport he could afford at the start of his Test career. Much of the change of fortune since Bedi’s
heyday in the 1970s is related to television and the deals that have been struck. In 1982, there were around two million TV
sets in India. By 1992, this had risen
to 34 million; and now the figure is around 160 million. Largely through television deals, India now
generates 80% of cricket’s worldwide revenue.
Tellingly, Astill points out that, from its vast revenue, the Indian
Board of Control, the BBCI, spends a paltry 8% on the development of the
game. That, if nothing else, explains why
India on the field is not the overwhelmingly dominant force on the
international stage that it is off the field.
In India, corruption seems endemic in life, not just in
cricket. As Astill points out, Indian
cricket is badly run but India the country is run even worse.
In cricket, there is corruption even at a junior level
where, for example, in Delhi, a selector was alleged to be demanding sex from mothers
in return for their sons being selected for age-group teams. One father is reported to have hired a
prostitute to masquerade as his wife and provide the requested favours.
It is not just in the administration of the game that
corruption is rife. There is the whole
issue of match-fixing. Astill gets to
interview a young bookmaker in Mumbai who claims, in what one can only hope is
a wild exaggeration, that 99% of international matches are fixed. Fingers are pointed in the direction of
Dawood Ibrahim as the mastermind of corruption and fixing. This is hardly a revelation in that Ibrahim
is currently on the run from Interpol and is number three on the Forbes World
Top 10 most dreaded criminals. This is
maybe the weakest part of the book, in that the evidence of the extent of
match-fixing is contradictory and inconclusive.
And so we get into the messy history of the last few
years, with the rise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the juggling and
jousting between the key power figures, with Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar, in
particular, looming large.
Modi is presented as a modern-day Phineas Barnum. Barnum created a travelling circus filled
with freaks and frauds. Modi created the
IPL. Like Barnum, Modi is obviously a
brilliant entrepreneur, with a fantastic ability to pull off unlikely
deals. Unfortunately, unlike Barnum, he
seems to have a unique capacity for upsetting people and creating enemies. His downfall was inevitable when he achieved
the unique hat-trick of alienating the BCCI, the Indian government and, maybe
worst of all, the Mumbai mafia.
Nevertheless, before he retreated to London in disgrace, he managed to devise
and launch the IPL, a massively successful, if precariously financed, cricket
tournament.
The IPL, based on Twenty20 (T20) cricket is the ultimate tamasha, a brash mix of sport and
entertainment. Whether a game based
around a constant barrage of fours and sixes is good cricket is another
matter. Those interviewed by Astill who
are involved with the tournament are understandably reluctant to criticise the
quality of the product. It could be that
the closest we get in the book to an honest opinion is from ex-Indian cricketer
W.V. Raman, who says: “T20 is like a porn movie. I mean, it’s OK for a bit, but how long can
you watch the bonking?”
Astill is clearly a perceptive and probing interviewer,
getting more from his subjects than maybe they wished to reveal. Sharad Pawar, government minister and top
cricket administrator, skilfully
manoeuvres his way around his interviewer’s questions, speaking out of the
corner of his mouth because his face has been half-frozen by cancer. He deflects the issue of whether or not he is the
richest politician in India, but merely succeeds in creating the impression
that he might be. The reader is left to decide whether “richest” is a euphemism
for “most corrupt”. Astill knows his
boundaries.
At a much more humble level, Astill interviews
cricketers playing in the slums. And next time Chintu Pujara scores a hundred
for India, spare a thought for his proud father Arvind who taught the game to
his son. More than that, for the last
twenty years he has coached the young cricketers of Rajkot, not just free of
charge but at his own expense, paid for out of his modest salary as a railway
clerk. Astill’s portrait of him provides
a moving insight into the selfless dedication that keeps the game alive. Maybe Indian cricket has needed the likes of
Pawar and Modi to take it to its current dominant position as the financial
powerhouse of international cricket. But
it is the likes of Arvind Pujara that keep the game alive and healthy on the
field despite all the corruption and in-fighting off it.
As for the book, it manages to be both a tamasha in itself, a great
entertainment, and also a deadly serious work, carefully researched and
lovingly compiled. Because of India’s dominating influence over the
international game of cricket, even the most parochial and partisan supporters
of the game outside India should read it. Its message is clear. In the world of international cricket, India will
be supplying most of the money to pay the piper and so will be very much
calling the tune. It is a tune that the
rest of us will have to dance to, whether we like it or not.
