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