Remixing ourselves to death

A couple of hours later, while I was still puzzling over the metaphysics of that one, I caught a match between England and Australian veteran Cricket teams on ESPN. The players included Allan Border, Dennis Lillee and Graham Gooch. What a star cast. Border held the world record for most Test runs for many years. Lillee was perhaps the greatest fast bowler ever, and once upon a time held the world record for the number of Test wickets. Gooch, Wisden magazine discovered last year, scored more runs — league, county and international matches combined — than any batsman in history. Three world record holders.

Every line between seriousness and frivolity has been blurred, no, has vanished. Of course, all these men have the right to make money any way they please, as long as it doesn’t break the law. Absolutely. But surely they owe something to the millions who have respected their achievements, and even idolised them? Negi is a man whose story should be in every school textbook. Humiliated and forced to give up the game after India’s 7-1 defeat to Pakistan in the 1982 Asian Games final (just one measure of the public venom directed at him: at his wedding, rowdies cut off the power supply to the venue), he returned 20 years later to coach the Indian women’s hockey team to the Commonwealth Games gold. Screenwriter Jaideep Sahni read about him in a newspaper item and was moved enough to write Chak De India. And then the makers of the film insisted that it had to be Negi who taught the actresses hockey. Negi had just been devastated by the death of his 19-year-old son, but he rose to the occasion , especially given that most of the actresses had never touched a hockey stick in their lives. Perhaps I’m getting old, but I do feel that the stirring nature of Negi’s story could be slightly diminished in the eyes of many when they see him trying to do the salsa as hard as some TV actors whose names few of us would know.

... contd.