uncricket writing

have just discovered her. and am hooked. yeah baby, for sure. if you are cricket reader, yes, a fan who loves reading about cricket, you must must read her articles. the problem is, not many appreciate the fine art of cricket writing these days. i too cannot claim to be a connoisseur, but Siddharth Vaidyanathan, Sambit Bal, Peter Roubuck, Sir Geoffrey Boycott, Harsha Bhogle and Tony Greig have been my favourites. these are all sensible, clear-headed individuals who write about cricket with a touch of humane inevitability. but then, there arrives this lady and as i said, am hooked for all my worth ;) have a look at some bits of her writing, and then i'll give you the link to her work!

"I for one am glad that cricket has been democratised. Playing a sport isn't about which level of society you're from or how well you can handle the adulation. It's about talent and determination and a little bit of luck. And if a billion fools are entertained by it, then so be it. And as long as there are still batsmen who are willing to walk before they're given out, and fielders who only appeal for genuine wickets, I'm not going to worry about all those lost gentlemen."

"Critics called Chekhov's endings "zero" endings, because a lot of the time they were blurry and imprecise. He favoured the anti-climax over the climax, because in his view life wasn't about meaningful revelations; it was about realising that this is just how things are. KKR's future isn't blurry at all. Everyone knows where they're heading, but for the sake of McCullum and the rest of his team, and in deference to the spirit of Chekhov (coughing his lungs out quietly somewhere in the ether-world) I hope that tide changes."

"The IPL, which could have been a great platform for modern India to assert herself in an utterly unique way, has already chosen to take the path of commercial success over aesthetic glory. Fine. I understand that advertisers pay the bills. I'm willing to oversee those garish uniforms. I can tolerate any number of DLF maximums and Citi moments of success. But would it really have hurt anyone if, at the end of it all, there was a trophy worth its weight in gold to lift? To silence everyone just for a moment in a way that only something truly beautiful can?"

more of her writing (i think each one put up till now) can be found here. as you read on, you'll find many more observations like these, which make you stop and think, not only about cricket, but about life, lietrature, India as well. and i'm yet to read all of them.

her writing is about cricket, but then about so much more, that it's almost uncricket! why shouldn't i be addicted to a writer like that...