No Comment, No Fuss, Just Cricket

It has not been easy to choose to travel during the Covid-19 pandemic.

My work requires me to be on the spot to do the best job possible.

I realise I am not a surgeon or a fireman or, in these trying times, an epidemiologist.

To that end I do not provide an essential service, and could sit at home.

But, as a dear friend recently reminded me, being a cricket reporter is not just my job, not just something that pays the bills, it is who I am. 

It is an integral part of my identity and the only thing I have done since I took to it as a young adult at the age of 19.

All my adult life I’ve been someone who writes about a pastime that so many of us enjoyed as children.

The difference is, I write about those who took our backyard game and drove themselves to levels of excellence to such an extreme level in which they represented their country.

These are people who are incredibly skilled, inordinately dedicated and have sacrificed much.

So, when I had the slimmest of chances to go to South Africa to cover India’s three-Test tour, I was thinking of it not so much as a challenge as an opportunity.

Here was a glimpse of hope, a little space in which I could explore what covering cricket in the time of severe Covid would be like.

Not long ago, I had travelled to the United Arab Emirates to cover the Twenty20 World Cup, but there I had many friends and colleagues in the same corner.

We stayed together, ate together, travelled together and knew that we had the support of a serious contingent of Indian journalists who had made the UAE their home years ago, and would always be available to lean on.

In Centurion, South Africa, it’s different.

From my home in Bangalore I flew to Doha, Qatar, then Johannesburg and finally took a train to Centurion.

Door to door, the journey lasted more than 24 hours.

It was exhausting, but there was no cause for concern or panic at any stage.

All airports observed protocols as necessary but none put any impediments on travel.

Having reached Johannesburg, it was child’s play to get to Centurion via the Gautrain, something I had used on previous visits. 

Once in Centurion, it was a question of adapting to the new normal.

Not just because it was Christmas day, there was no chance or need to go to the cricket ground.

On tours past journalists would have watched the two teams practice and this would have been followed by press conferences.

One presser did happen, on December 25, addressed by Rahul Dravid, the former India player and captain, who is currently head coach of the team.

In a virtual interaction, via Zoom, Dravid took several questions but answered nearly none.

From his early days as a player, Dravid has been an expert at sussing out what the actual point of a question was. And, if he sniffed that there was potential for a controversy, a sensation, or even a headline, he would obfuscate.

No India player in recent times has spoken so many words or for so long, revealing nothing.

When he wants to, Dravid can speak his mind, but in his role in cricket, he chooses not to.

“As a batsman I always wanted to know what the opposition line-up was, so, while we have a good idea on what our playing eleven is, I’m not going to say anything now.”

That was Dravid when asked about team composition.

“I’m not going to talk about conversations that may or may not have happened between me and players or the Board.”

This was Dravid when asked if he weighed in when the Board of Control for Cricket in India chose to relieve Virat Kohli of the ODI captaincy after he had stepped down as skipper of the Twenty20 International team.

Dravid may as well have said: no comment. 

But he chose to do so in his own way.

In this, if not cricketing direction and vision for the team, Dravid is very different from his predecessor, Ravi Shastri, who calls a spade a bloody shovel.

Two coaches, two philosophies, and yet the rest of us on the outside, are none the wiser.

This is the beauty of Indian cricket.