by Arunabha Sengupta
Maverick Commissioner by Boria Majumdar ,
232 pages, Simon & Schuster India
₹699 (Hardcover), ₹309 (Kindle)
UK £6.99 (Kindle)
Comfortably ensconced in the privileged confines of the inner sanctum of cricket, the inimitable Jim Swanton had once magisterially dismissed Kerry Packer as the anti-Christ of cricket.
Opinions such as these are aplenty today, in times of turbulent changes in modern cricket. This is especially so when thousands, blessed by proxy through imagined sanctum of a Swanton-like privilege, air their views relentlessly on social media, zealously protecting the purity of the pitch.
And Lalit Modi, the man who conceptualised, founded and kickstarted the IPL, has had such sentiments used against him often enough. Yet, he will go down as one of the most important and influential characters in the history of the game who has perhaps done more to change the landscape of cricket than any other.
In this context, the importance of Boria Majumdar’s book Maverick Commissioner cannot be undermined.
We may enjoy IPL or we may hate the way ‘bashball’, garish music and cheerleaders have taken over from the supposed pristine purity of the ‘gentleman’s game’ and the ‘traditional’ format of the five-day variety. Yet, no one can deny that it has caused enormous upheaval in the structure of the game and brought about extraordinary financial well-being to even the fringe-players around the world. So much so that currently cricket stands on the brink of changing from an international sport to a predominantly franchise-driven undertaking. Less than three decades have passed since the privilege of the self-endowed veto power was removed from England and Australia in the ICC, and India is already firmly ensconced as the game’s financial superpower.
We can always bury our heads in our beloved village greens, but the IPL phenomenon can neither be ignored, far less resisted.
Hence, it may make the purists shudder to read this, but an account of the rise and fall of this maverick entrepreneur is of paramount importance to cricket. In this reviewer’s opinion it is far more relevant to our understanding of the game’s history than the dozens of starry-eyed post-code-targeted books published every week about the life and times of yet another sub-par county cricketer.
In Maverick Commissioner, Majumdar goes behind closed doors. He takes multiple peeks behind curtains and smokescreens. He penetrates behind opaque boundaries. He takes us to the other side, in the midst of all the inner machinations of the high echelons and low underbelly of cricket that remain hidden from the casual and dedicated followers of the game. Details that remain secret even in the current age of torrential tweets. And he actually reveals quite a few genuine secrets.
The story of Modi’s first proposal of the 50-over IPL in 1995, the murky, acrimonious power tussle involving Jagmohan Dalmiya and Sharad Pawar, Modi’s meteoric rise in the middle of the 2000s, and his subsequent fall in 2010 – all these were known to anyone who followed the Indian, and the global, game in those years. However, the speciality of this book is that it allows us a ringside view of several clandestine battles. The manoeuvring of the media, the ways of the power brokers, the involvement of the top-brass of Indian politics are all provided in graphic detail. These are details that we might have had an inkling of and idle speculations about, but about which we never got to know the specifics.
With the help of interviews with his rather significant sources within the structure of Indian cricket, Majumdar pieces together the story that needed to be told. The story of the alliances forged by Modi with many well-known names of cricket and politics to turn the tables on Dalmiya and subsequently roll out his game-changing brainchild.
One such interview is with Lalit Modi himself, and it shows how much of a maverick the man is.
Finally, we learn exactly why Modi, after changing cricket forever and ensuring that such changes would follow through the subsequent decades, had that great and quick fall in 2010. The curious days leading up to his suspension are retold with a clarity that had hitherto been denied to all but the innermost circles. Why did Modi fall out of favour with the kingpins of Indian cricket, many of whom had been his former allies?
That is one of the several puzzling questions one can find answers to in the book.
It is essentially a book covering the 2005-2010 period. But that was one of the most important periods of the game, with reverberations around the globe that will keep being felt for a foreseeable future.
Some parts of the book could perhaps have been edited out. The author dwells perhaps a bit more on personal narration and reflection than really necessary. However, at the same time, some of the reflections ring true. One of which is “We in India don’t really consume cricket. Rather, we consume spectacle.”
But all in all, it contains a story that needed to be told.
To take up the Kerry Packer link yet again, many volumes have been written about the man and his revolutionary role in cricket. It was time that someone wrote one about Modi and the way he changed the landscape of cricket.