In remembrance of cricket’s Dronacharya

For cricket aficionados, Sunday was a moment of self-flagellation with India losing tamely to arch-rival Pakistan in the final of the Champions Trophy. There was a sense of déjà vu — when Sri Lanka’s  Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharna hit the Indian bowlers all over the Eden Gardens and out of it in Calcutta in the 1996 Reliance World Cup final and of Javed Miandad hitting Chetan Sharma for a last ball six at Sharjah. A sense of shocked disbelief prevailed.

It was not the loss but the meek surrender that rankled, with only Hardik Pandya playing the boy on the burning deck. But a horrible mix-up between the two Gujaratis — Ravindra Jadeja and Pandya — dashed India’s hopes. Luckily, the other two Gujaratis — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP party president Amit Shah — have been able to avoid a similar mix-up so far.

The loss took place at The Oval, remembered for a magnificent double century by Sunil Gavaskar, a man who has been the subject of a Caribbean calypso: It was Gavaskar, De real master/Just like a wall, we couldn’t out Gavaskar at all, not at all...” 

Like the British Constitution, the game of cricket is said to have grown, so much water had flown down the Thames since that fateful afternoon in 1979. Unfortunately, all inspiration seemed to have deserted the Men in Blue on Sunday.

It was one of those moments that Rudyard Kipling wrote about: Then ye returned to your trinkets, then ye contented your souls; With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goal.” 

Kipling believed in the white man’s burden, a part of which was also to make the game popular in the British colonies. But he wrote this to question his country’s priorities, obsession with the game of cricket and rugby when there were other more pressing problems to attend to.

But Chandigarh has been home to a man who had his priorities right. Desh Prem Azad, the legendary coach who produced cricketing greats like Kapil Dev, Chetan Sharma, Yograj Singh, Ashok Malhotra and Harbhajan Singh, was clear about what he had to do.

The country’s first Dronacharya Award winner made his entry into the coaching arena from being a player at the National Institute of Sports (NIS), Patiala, whose chairman then was Raja Bhalinder Singh. Azad was possessed with the idea of producing genuine fast bowlers for India, a belief which received a boost while working with the likes of Leo O’Brien, who had played in the Bodyline series of 1932-33. KK Tarapore, whose jibe at Kapil Dev, spurred him on, was his batch mate at NIS.

The cricket stadium at Sector16 was pivotal to his plans. It is said that the stadium had a great role to play in the life of Kapil Dev because his parental home was also there. Had he lived in some other area like Sector 7, where there was an athletics stadium, cricket’s loss could have been track and field’s gain.

When Azad was first posted at the Sector 16 stadium, there was not much facility there. Till then, no player from the UT had played for Panjab University or Ranji Trophy. No college in Chandigarh had won the Panjab University cricket championship. It was from there that Azad went on to produce match winners.  He believed in the maxim ‘Catch ‘em young’ and later set up a cricket academy at St. Stephen’s School to groom budding talent.

Azad is also credited with popularising the game of golf and trying to make the sport shed its elitist tag. He was the driving force behind the CGA Golf Range and wanted golf to be a part of the Olympics. He tried to take the sport to schools and organised major tourneys, earning encomiums from leading golfers.

I once had the chance to meet Indian hockey legend Pargat Singh, now dabbling in politics. Pargat Singh made a very pertinent point. The former Indian hockey speaker said governments allocate resources to build hospitals. If it is done to create playgrounds, the need for too many hospitals would get reduced automatically with the population staying healthy and fit. With open spaces making way for realty boom and the urban jungle, the point is very relevant.   

Azad’s contribution has to be seen in this context, overcoming odds to create the facilities and making champions out of mere mortals. If Mumbai has its Ramakant Achrekar, the legendary coach of Sachin Tendulkar, Chandigarh has its DP Azad.

A hard taskmaster, who banished even Kapil Dev to the bench for his lack of punctuality, he was known to stand by his boys like when he supported the hapless Chetan Sharma after that Sharjah six and Harbhajan Singh when his bowling action was questioned.  The great cricket writer Neville Cardus said, “We remember not the scores and results after years, it is the men who remain in our minds, in our imagination.” By this yardstick, Azad is assured of a place in the annals of the game.