In a sports journalist’s life there are cricket tours and then there are cricket tours. Ones that leave lasting impressions, ones that change your outlook towards life and ones that leave you with lifelong lessons. To begin with, the Anderson-Tendulkar trophy was one such cricket tour. Two months on the road, meeting new people everyday, finding a daily but temporary life in foreign cities, where some cities feel like home and some make you want to never go back there. No day is the same and every day is filled with experiences unknown, like walking around the stadium to find a coffee that will finally satisfy your soul, getting lost in the grocery store aisles, or watching a bowling or a batting innings from the press box that inspires you to no end.
When Mohammad Siraj spun magic with his bowling in the final 58 minutes of the last Test match of the five-match Test series between India and England, he gave the entire country a dream to rally behind. And when he achieved it, he showed the same nation the power of self-belief. Siraj spoke about it in the post-match press conference, he pulled out his phone, and showed the media his wallpaper, one that he had put only that morning. “I couldn’t sleep, I woke up at 6 and googled ‘Christiano Ronaldo – believe’ and found this picture. I put it up as my wallpaper.”
As a 24 year-old ambitious journalist sitting in the front row of that press conference, that moment meant more to me than anything taught in classrooms while growing up. Watching Siraj bowl his heart and soul out and then saying “I could have bowled till my body gave in” changed something in me, so did watching Rishabh Pant walking down the steps of the Old Trafford with a broken foot.
Cricket, as a sport, is usually confined, within a few countries, people and players. But the Asia Cup was an eye opener to the fact that sport is never isolated from politics and cricket in India is soft power. It reminded me why covering sport can never be reduced to just wins and losses. From Arshdeep Singh’s complaint hours before the final, to Mohsin Naqvi walking away with the trophy, to players celebrating with nothing but emojis in their hands, the tournament was a theatre of politics as much as cricket.
Together, these two tours showed me both sides of the game, the purity of performance and the murkiness of power. For a journalist, few moments stay etched forever, but these did, because they revealed that in cricket, as in life, victory is never just about what happens on the field.
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