Media Sports and Leadership

[Music]

you know i’ve had

the pleasure of hosting sauron gangly

when he was the captain of the indian

cricket team he was kind enough to give

me so many interviews

and once he uh left cricket he

worked as a cricket expert uh with our

group the indian today group by staking

india

for so many years you know i was

listening to uh

your speakers and i think it’s a very

good thing that

uh she just said it’s not bouncing back

we have to go forward and in terms of

life when the pandemic started you know

this was mid-march

and being a sports journalist obviously

my livelihood is uh

sports on television all of a sudden i

think for the first time in

our living memory there was no sporting

action

around the world no place no country

no city was playing sports not even

at the recreational level and

uh you know that was also a period then

when

when people were worried about their

lives about their livelihoods

and somebody said sports is not the most

important thing in life

it’s a very famous quotation sports is

actually not the most important thing in

life

but among the slightly slightly

lesser important things it is the most

important

you know i was talking to the industry

uh people and they said because of the

ipl

the uh economy is looking up because of

the ipl the general mood is looking up

uh you know because of the ipl people uh

go back home in the evenings they’ve got

four hours to spend

and they’ve got four hours to look

forward to it i think that’s what

sport does to us

but can we participate can we

can we do something on our own uh yes

the ipl is on

yes the international cricket will start

soon yes the international sports will

start soon

but i feel that sports will well and

truly be back only when

uh we uh start uh playing sports at our

own level the recreational level

uh the youngsters uh the the the 12 year

olds the 14 year olds the 16 year olds

if it is safe for them to go out and

play in parks or in academies you know

that is when we will say

that we’ve beaten coronavares it’s a

different

world look at the way cricket is being

played you you’ve got

bio bubbles and the players the indian

cricketers who are

playing in the ipn they’ve been in that

bio bubble they will be in that buyer

bubble for about 70 days

and then they fly off to australia where

they will be in another bio bubble

for about uh 80 more days so 150 days

at a stretch in a bio bubble can be

mentally torturing and gradually just

said yesterday

but again when the chips are down

uh when there’s uh uh there’s a

hardship sport teaches us uh

you know i’ll just tell you something

about myself thank you for all the

praise akko but uh

i was actually an accidental journalist

i used to play cricket

my father was a ranger trophy player in

punjab my father and bishop madi

they were in school then college

university raja trophy they started

working together

and obviously uh i wanted to follow in

my father’s footsteps

cricket was the only thing in my blood i

played

all the age group tournaments for punjab

i was in the punjab range trophy

team for a couple of years i did not get

to play any game i

played the university qriket i was the

captain of punjab university team

and we were the rohington barrier

runners-up under my captaincy

but all of a sudden one day because

punjab were very good

this was early 90s in indian cricket at

that time i realized that i wasn’t good

enough

so i was doing a masters in english from

the punjab nurse in chandigarh

and there was a friend of mine who was a

hostler and

he said can you take me to the admin

block on your scooter

i said okay i’ll take you i said what

happened so this was the second year of

our post graduation in english we said i

have to buy a

form an entrance form for a mass

communication so i did not know then

what mass communication was even though

the mass communication department was

right next to the english department

where we were studying

so we went there and incidentally

i uh was ahead of him in the queue

so i went to the uh person at the

counter asked for a form

for mass communication he said hundred

rupees so i thought maybe they were

distributing forms for free

and since there were two beautiful women

behind me so i was a little embarrassed

to say no to the form

i paid 100 rupees this was 1996 and i

got the form

i wrote my name and then i applied i got

through

i was picked up by the indian express so

journalism just happened

but one thing i realized was that even

though people can say oh you are very

lucky

you never wanted to be a journalist but

you you became one

but maybe the almighty had been

preparing me for that

because i was playing cricket today i

earned my livelihood through cricket

and when i was seven or eight or nine i

was reading newspapers

never realizing that you know one day

i’ll become a journalist i was reading

newspapers i was reading the magazines

so i was following cricket like anything

so my point is that uh

in sport you’ve just got to be there

i’m sure football is so popular in

bengal and i can’t teach you guys

football but

you know for a good striker it is

important to be at the right spot

at the right time but i have another

thing

in terms of life so i say right place

right time every time because messi

would not know that the past would come

at that spot in the 52nd minute he’s got

to be ready in all 90 minutes

similarly in life if you’re ready uh

i think opportunities will come and

there will be different opportunities

for us uh while there was no cricket

there was no sport

i started doing instagram lives from

home

a couple days saw of ganguly uh did one

with riddhi mansaha irfan patan her

bhajan saying

raj singh suresh everybody and then

they also started speaking out because

maybe

you know they were reflecting on their

lives sitting at home and they were big

headlines

so all of a sudden i was i was back

i was uh relevant and

another thing that sport teaches us all

of us is

the meaning of victory and defeat you

know even now i play every sunday

and and since i’m a batsman i go every

sunday

uh telling myself that this could be the

last sunday ever

but i go there and i open the innings uh

i fear that one ball that one ball which

will get you out

and for batsmen regardless of you

playing uh

mahala or international cricket that is

like death for 10 seconds

so you know you try to cheat death but

the meaning of victory and defeat

in life we get dejected when we

don’t succeed and we get overjoyed when

we uh succeed

but i think sport teaches us different

things

when you win when you win that is when

you stop learning

only when you lose do you realize your

uh mistakes like uh

mumbai and delhi played the ipl game

yesterday

and delhi lost so they would have gone

back to their

hotel thinking about the mistakes they

made mumbai

if it is a good side would also look at

the mistakes they were making even

though

they were supreme so i think uh

my only point is that the media of

course has a large role to play and i’m

not

going to delve into what is happening

within the media in our country because

that’s not

my prerogative to be very honest you

guys can see for yourself what is

happening and

whether or not not everything is right

but the fact is that

when when i became a journalist in 1996

i thought i i had that responsibility

towards the society

not that i was going to change it but

through sports

i knew my job was to bring joy

to every indian uh you know i’ve been

to almost all the cricket playing

grounds

uh in the world and i have seen moments

uh when

sachin tendulkar would get 100 in sydney

or lakshman would get 100 in adelaide

and people would say oh you are from

india

india the land of sachin tendulkar india

the light of

sort of gangly that is what

made us all proud and it was my job to

report the same sense of joy

back home you know uh one thing i

learned from sorrow and i think it’s for

everybody to follow

one one example i give from sorrow and

one from sachin tendulkar

in 2005 i was very close to dada

he was the captain and we had a contract

uh ajak had a contract with dada

so every game we would interview him

this was in pakistan had come in zamam’s

team and india lost that bangalore test

and all of a sudden sora wasn’t scoring

runs his captaincy was under the scanner

and then india went to uh zimbabwe where

that famous

infamous great chapel sorrow gangly

incident happened and sort of captaincy

was taken back

you know dada had an option

of giving up cricket like his father

said because

he had achieved a lot and i think uh

i could also see the pain because he

felt betrayed

by his own teammates but he

chose not to retire he went to uh play

county cricket

he went to play ranger trophy games in

siliguri he went and played a club game

in

chattanooga because he wanted to fight

and when he went

in 2008 he had his back and his head

held high because he never gave up

another example

sachin tendulkar for 24 years master of

the game but

even now when you speak to him he would

always say i’m not a master of the game

just a student of the game you’ll be

surprised the last

day of sachin tendulkar’s international

career the last day

when everybody knew that there was no

chance that india would get to bat

again because the west indies would lose

the chess match by an innings

sachin was the first one at the nets

that morning

he batted for an r then you know west

indies lost the test match and that

famous speech and i interviewed him

the next day i said

you know you knew it was going to be an

emotional day after the practice

he said no i wanted to prepare myself i

said prepare for what you knew that

you’re

more than the media i have learned so

much

from from the sporting uh icons in india

having traveled with them seen them a

sense of preparation of a rahul gravitt

or a vivious

absolutely no doubts in his mind i think

that was my big takeaway and i think for

the society all of us we need to

go the sporting way yes we aren’t doing

well as a nation right now

as a society night right now but our

time will come

like in a test match you’ve got two

innings maybe

in life also there will be a inning

after the corona virus

in life we say tell us

it is moving around and then when the

sun comes out

we could drive

right now all of us in our lives let us

not throw away our wicket

we’ll start scoring runs very soon and

i’m very sure about that