Goodbye Greats!

GOODBYE, GREATS!

By Ajit Chaudhuri – 21^st May 2017

It’s a sentimental time for ageing sports lovers! I watched the last Test of the West Indies-Pakistan series (10-14 May 2017, Pakistan winning the Test by 101 runs and the series 2-1, its first ever series win in the Windies) that saw the retirement of Misbah-ul-Haq (43) and Younis Khan (39) from cricket. Last night, I watched the Bayern Munich vs. Freiburg game (4-1 to Bayern, who had already won the Bundesliga title) that saw Xabi Alonso (35) and Philipp Lahm (33) bow out from football. And finally, we have Francesco Totti (41) hanging up his boots after next week’s Roma vs. Genoa game, with Roma needing a win to be sure of second position in Serie A and automatic Champion’s League qualification for 2017-18.

Five greats going out over a 20-day period, all quiet, self-deprecating men who brought dignity to sports, has to be worth a few words. And, given the reams of information available on the Internet, I will stick to my own relationship with these five men, why I think they are special, and why they will leave huge gaps behind.

I will begin with a joke about Helmut Kohl, the leader of Germany at the time of German reunification and European integration, who was known for his love for good food. It was said that ‘there was something comforting about an all-powerful German Chancellor who wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about raiding the refrigerator rather than re-drawing the borders of Europe’. There was something similarly comforting about Philipp Lahm, a World Cup (2014) winning German captain who was 5’7’’ and spoke only when he had something to say[i].

I first saw him as a young kid in the 2002-03 season and must confess that, good as he appeared to be, I felt for his future – here was a wingback trying to break in to a Bayern team that had the Frenchmen Lizarazu and Sagnol (the former a star of the 1998 WC-winning side who I humbly confess to having met at a match between Chelsea and Marseilles in London in 2010 – he had long retired – and the latter a fixture for France at the 2002 and 2006 WCs). The Bayern coach obviously felt similarly, because he was farmed out to Stuttgart on a two-year loan spell, returning in 2005 as first choice in his position for both club and country. He went on to win almost everything there was to win (a European title eluded him) in a career that spanned three WCs. He will be remembered for his versatility, playing at both right and left wingback through his career and also moving to central midfield as per the demands of the then-Bayern coach Pep Guardiola. He will also be remembered for his sense of calm, and his subdued and low-key leadership style.

The 2002-03 football season was memorable (to me) for another reason – Real Madrid’s expensively assembled Galacticos (the best players in the world; Zidane, Figo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, et al) were chased to the title by …. not Barca, not Valencia, not Sevilla, but a team called Real Sociedad from Spain’s Basque region. It was a fascinating chase for neutrals like me – the little club simply did not relent, and ended up only two points behind Real in a race that was decided only on the last playing day. The stars for RS were its big-man-little-man strike force of Kovacevic and Nihat, who were played in by the youngest ever captain of a La Liga side – Xabi Alonso. Alonso went on to play for Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and won everything there was to win at both club and country. Such was his influence at each club that, had his final game been played at any of the four, the home supporters’ respect and sense of loss would have been the same.

This was because of his game; he combined the ability to sit in front of a defence and protect it (the defensive midfielder or the ‘Makalele’) with being able to set up moves from far back in the field (the deep-lying playmaker – one of only two exponents of this art that I have seen). This was also because of his demeanour; fans would remember De Jong’s kung-fu kick on his chest in the 2010 WC final that was not punished by the referee, and the way Alonso smiled it off and played the remaining 60 minutes of the match in pain to earn his WC winner’s medal.

Let me now move to cricket, and to the Pakistanis! It is something of a surprise to me that Indian cricket fans (the genuine ones, not the tools who infest stadiums these days for social reasons and/or as an outlet to their patriotic fervour) haven’t made a bigger deal about this. The Guardian in England said that ‘for all their records, their achievements are not of the kind best expressed in numbers or on lists. Between them, they carried Pakistan through the hardest, darkest years and, in doing so, they did not just serve their country but also the sport and all of us who love it.’[ii]

Misbah-ul-Haq was a late bloomer – my first memory of him was that paddle scoop that he played in the T20 WC final in 2007 that handed India the title. He took on Test captaincy in the aftermath of the 2010 spot fixing scandal, and dealt with the public opprobrium, the difficulty of not playing Tests at home, the inability of the Pakistani cricketing authorities to extend vision beyond their noses, and the considerable abuse from past players, to take Pakistan to a no. 1 rank in 2016 (albeit for a short while) while restoring dignity, integrity and respect within and for the team. He has the honour of even being criticised by the Taliban in a rare intrusion by those luminaries into sports punditry – they called him a ‘pathetic player’ in 2013[iii].

I first came across Younis Khan in 2005 – he had scored 147 in Kolkata and 267 in Bangalore – and I knew that there was something here. And there was! Of the 30 men who scored 4,000 plus test runs in the 2000s, he was the only one continuing to ply his trade in 2017 (Gayle continues in franchisee cricket, and Jayawardene and Sangakkara still play counties). He went on to break every Pakistani batting record – the first to score 10,000 test runs and 30 test centuries, has a 50 plus test batting average and a world record five centuries in the 4^th innings of a test match. He too had issues with the authorities, including being ‘banned for life’ in 2010, and yet the only time I ever saw him react was when he refused the Pakistani captaincy in 2007, saying that ‘when our families get threatening calls, our effigies are burnt, and our pictures are put on donkeys, I can’t lead the team in such circumstances.’

But it was what they did together that is irreplaceable. On the field, they had the third highest ever runs scored in partnership together (after Hobbes-Sutcliffe and Langer-Ponting). They also brought Pakistani cricket back in from the cold.

I now return to football, and to Francesco Totti. I first saw him as Serie A’s youngest ever club captain in a madly attack-minded Roma side in 1998-99, and then combining the roles of a ‘media punta’ and a ‘false 9’ (more than 10 years before either position had become fashionable) in the Italian team that did surprisingly well in the Euro 2000 (Totti was the man of the match in a pulsating loss to France in the final). He went on to a winner’s medal in the 2006 WC, starring again as a between-the-lines playmaker who would turn up as centre forward at critical moments, signifying most of what was worthy about the team (along with Cannavaro’s defending and Buffon’s goalkeeping) and none that was bad (like the abuse that resulted in the infamous head-butt in the final that won the WC for Italy).

He is irreplaceable for two reasons. The first is that he is the last one-club man in the upper echelons of football – he never left his boyhood club, where he retires next week. The second is for his handling of that fatal combination of Roman God looks, inert shyness, and a reputation for stupidity (from some minor gaffes on television and a strong Roman accent), and the jokes that resulted from it. He went about collecting the jokes himself, with two stipulations; they could reflect badly on him but not his family, and they had to be readable by children. The book “All the Totti Jokes” was published in 2003 with a third stipulation – the proceedings from its sales had to go to a charitable project to help the elderly in Rome and to a UNICEF project for homeless children in DR Congo. It was a smash hit!

My favourites –

‘The three hardest years for Totti? Class 1 in elementary school.’

‘A tragic story in the newspaper: Totti’s library had burnt down. Totti is inconsolable. ‘No! I hadn’t finished colouring the second one yet.’

‘Totti and Del Piero came out of an exam at the CEPU (a remedial school for high school drop-outs and losers).

Totti: Alex, how did it go?

Del Piero: Not so well, Francesco! I handed in a blank sheet.

Totti: You too? Now they are going to say that I copied.’

You just have to love a guy who can do this!

To conclude – thank you, all five of you, for the wonderful memories and for reinforcing in us why we love sports so much! I for one will never forget you.

---

[i] And when he spoke, it was powerful stuff! He received a record Bayern Munich fine for criticizing the club’s transfer policy and its lack of a footballing philosophy and strategic plan in 2009. And when regular captain Ballack wanted his armband back after the 2010 World Cup (Ballack was injured, and Lahm was chosen instead to captain Germany at the tournament), Lahm said he saw no reason as to why he (Lahm) should relinquish the captaincy. Coach Jochi Lowe agreed, and Ballack never played for Germany again.

[ii] “Misbah and Younis did more than serve Pakistan, they served cricket”, The Guardian, 16^th May 2017.

[iii] “Taliban urge Pakistanis to ‘stop praising Sachin Tendulkar’, BBC News, 28^th November 2013.

The Things I'll Never Say

The Things I’ll Never Say

A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri – May 2017

I moved from Delhi to Mumbai in 2014! This is not exactly New York to Jhumri Telaiya (or, before I offend anyone, the other way around) – nonetheless, it takes some getting used to. Looking back, the three biggest culture shocks I faced were 1) I have to refrain from questioning the virtue of my opponents’ female relatives while playing football, 2) the right to scratch my testicles in public places has ceased to exist and 3) in social sector meetings, I am invariably the jholawallah in the room.

Many of you, my dear readers, would empathise with the debilitating effects of the first two shocks; it is the third that requires some articulation. Social sector meetings are typically meant for NGOs and left leaning academics to ruminate about the state of the world, where the opinion on the corporate sector is akin to what President Trump’s would be on a cross between North Korea and the New York Times. These are supposed to be alien spaces for the likes of me who represent large conglomerates; we are the barbarians at the gate, good only for signing cheques to make up for the harm that we inflict upon society, the ones subjected to whispered pejoratives when our backs are turned (and more voluble stuff once we leave the room) – you get the drift. In Mumbai, things are a little different – such meetings are genteel affairs attended mostly by middlemen (usually consulting firms masquerading as NGOs), where the corporate sector are the good guys and the discussion is focussed on money, returns and visibility. My opinions are solicited, and my jokes are laughed at. But not many people in the room have worked directly with the community, and critical (for me) questions such as ‘have you discussed the need for the project with the proposed beneficiaries?’ elicit responses similar to that of the Taliban when asked about the need for women’s agency. All in all, good fun!

More boring are my meetings with recent converts to the social sector (Mumbai for some reason has a lot of them) – usually people who ‘know someone’ and therefore who I am not able to politely fob off. Most of them have me glazing over within three minutes (my normal in meetings is ten), and scoring goals for Brazil or Real Madrid in my mind while waiting for the torture to end. The reasons for this are threefold.

The first is the predictability of the conversation, which is invariably a long and boring monologue in three acts; what I call ‘the great sacrifice’, ‘the grand vision’, and ‘the brilliant idea’ (in order of temporal precedence). In the first act, the person expounds on his/her qualities, qualifications, and corporate experience, describes the epiphany and subsequent move into the social sector while not neglecting to mention the likely exalted position and earnings s/he would be at but for this, and conveys how fortunate we all are that s/he has taken this step. The second act is an articulation of the need for extreme poverty to be eliminated or some other similar objective achieved, to which the person is going to devote him/her self towards. And the third act is a much more mundane plan by which all this is going to happen – often something like a self-flushing pre-fabricated toilet that my employers should pay for. Common across these are a focus on self, a declining level of detail, and no time left for me to respond with my thoughts (which is probably not such a bad thing).

The second is the liberal use of jargon during the spiel. ‘Bottom of Pyramid’ usually crops up in minute 1, often in acronym, and is then repeated every other minute. Other high frequency stuff is ‘optics’, ‘metrics’ and ‘impact investment’. More recently, I have been zapped with ‘adaptive leadership’ and ‘capital plus approach’.

The third is what is not said but is assumed, along with the erroneous presumption that I share the view – usually that the beneficiary community is just a dumb bunch of dole seekers, that the government does nothing, and that the sustainability of the proposed project will be assured by poor people paying for costly services once they see their efficacy – all of which are rarely supported by hard facts.

I am, however, occasionally, very occasionally, confronted with a neo-convert who is not an unadulterated waste of time; who is looking to learn rather than to teach, who sees the community as a resource rather than as a recipient, and who has an open mind on what it would take to make a difference. Official meetings are not conducive for giving unsolicited advice but, if I could, this is what I would say to this lot.

One – go to the ground, do something, and then talk! Nobody is interested in what you are going to do unless it has a basis in what you have already done. Learn about the communities you wish to work for, understand their strengths and aspirations, and base your proposed work on this. Don’t take short cuts! Test your assumptions!

Two – lose the halo! Within the social sector, it is a sure sign of a charlatan. If you really think that you are making a sacrifice, for God’s sake go back to selling soap or investing money or whatever it is that you are moving away from.

Three – work for the poorest and most vulnerable! If the poverty line is at 26 percent, work for those in the 0-10 percentile, they are the hardest to reach and effectively do something for, and are therefore the most worthy of your efforts. Leave the easier stuff to others. And know that market-based solutions do not work for this section.

Four – understand the importance of institutions! Widespread change doesn’t happen because an inspired individual takes on a system, this only happens in Ayn Rand novels and in the PR material of those with self-anointed halos. And recognize the role of existing institutions, governmental and others, in what you propose to do.

Five – know that poverty is more than the lack of this or that, it has a relational element and is also about access to rights. Giving someone a cow does not convert him/her from poor to non-poor (as the government’s flagship Integrated Rural Development Programme discovered in the 1970s). Addressing the structural aspects of poverty, the barriers caused by caste, gender, et al, is far more difficult than doling out benefits, but it is this that may bring about lasting change.

I would like to benignly conclude by stating that Mumbai is a great place, dynamic and inspiring, but its NGO sector is not. And don’t feel too bad for me, I am paid reasonably well for the time spent being bored by these guys. But I have a darker set of alternative conclusions – that the world is changing, and I am that dinosaur from Jurassic Park expecting discussions with NGOs to focus on the community, rights and participation, that the people described here and their new age rubric is the way of the future, and that maybe I should learn from instead of laugh at them.