Days of Diamonds, and Rust

From Kapil to Kohli, from Doordarshan to Disney+, the journey of Indian cricket has been both epic and intimate

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GEOFF Boycott travelled to India in 1981-82 needing 230 runs to equal Garry Sobers's record for the highest aggregate in Test cricket. A fortnight after he crossed that mark, he went missing from a Test, choosing to play golf instead, and was sent back home. He was probably relieved.

I had just started out as a reporter then as a second to the main cricket writer, doing features, interviews, profiles. Boycott's attitude didn't surprise anyone in the press box—then rows of wooden benches with desks for the endlessly rattling typewriters and where everybody smoked incessantly (it didn't matter because it was open on three sides).

The received wisdom was that India was a terrible place to tour—the heat, the dust, the spin-friendly pitches, the traffic, the accommodation, food, poor umpiring—there was a long laundry list any player could reel off, and usually did, unprovoked. Only six countries played Test cricket, and India hadn’t played Pakistan since I had learnt the alphabet.

India’s infamy had been built over decades. England’s Phil Tufnell once said he had “done the elephants, done the poverty,” and was ready to return. The Australian opener Gavin Stevens had nearly died in Chennai after an attack of hepatitis. His biography was titled Near Death on the Sub-Continent.

For visiting teams before the 1990s, a tour of India was less a sporting event than a spiritual test. Before the dawn of flush toilets in every dressing room and the comfort of chain hotels, cricketers arrived armed with anti-diarrhoeal pills, mosquito nets, and their own supply of beer. In Kanpur, you could lose your off-stump and your luggage within five overs.

The pitches spun, but the people smiled, yet most visitors didn’t take the trouble to engage—they met more cockroaches in their rooms than people across the country.