Land of Lime

My friend Manu Chakravarthy offers an emotional tribute to Budhisagar Krishnappa Kunderan, that charismatic wicketkeeper batsman from the 1960s. A hardhitting batsman, mercurial wicketkeeper and a proud man, Kunderan had a checkered career thanks to the powers that controlled Indian cricket. After he retired (?), He left India and settled down in Scotland never to return home or even to benefit from the riches that the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) had earned since the 1980s.  His death was the occasion for Manu to remember this great cricketing personality from the past.

THE news that Budhisagar Krishnappa Kunderan passed away in a distant land is much more than a piece of information for many of my generation. It is, in fact, a reminder of a great tragedy that struck an exceptional individual nearly four decades ago, and it, also, transports many of us back to the 1960s evoking extraordinarily strong memories of a daring, blazingly brilliant spirit that was a great inspiration to a generation that celebrated virtues of courage, innovation and native talent. Not many today, given the “professional” and “scientific” attitudes that mark the world of sports, would be able to appreciate the spirit of adventure that goes beyond mundane preoccupations with statistics, individual records, personal success and huge monetary gains. Kunderan symbolised the best of native genius that, more often than not, challenged authorities, bureaucrats and clinical professionals and experts for whom timidity, pathetic obedience and meek survival are the prime values.

Read Manu’s essay for a description of what this daring, intrasigent, passionate cricketer meant to his admirers. He concludes by saying:

Budhi Kunderan left India with a very heavy heart. He had been brutally martyred. Today one must regard it as unjust diaspora inflicted on a man who had so much more to give. Budhi went to Scotland seeking a decent life — quite unlike those who, as overseas players, sign hefty contracts with counties these days. He left as a martyr, never to return.

For thousands like me the injustice done to Budhi Kunderan, then, has created a deep wound that refuses to heal — even after nearly four decades. The wound hurt us even more when the BCCI never gave him a benefit, and did not even have the courtesy to invite him for its Golden Jubilee celebrations. His death, in a fundamental sense a martyr’s death, makes many of us bleed and shed tears in a real profound manner without any sentimentality.

ASIDE 1: Here are links to more tributes to Kunderan: Cricket Scotland, The Rampant Lion and Wikipedia.

Aside 2: I can not help myself but add the following. In the same Sunday magazine of the Hindu, well known cricket writer Ramchandra Guha writes a column entitled The good man and greater man.

May I ask you, gentle reader, to compare both and say what’s wrong with cricket writing. I only want to say the following: if it was me, I would write Manu’s passionate tribute slightly differently but I wouldn’t write Ram’s piece at all. Ram is a dear friend and someone I admire. But here and in general in his cricket columns, me have no idea what’s going on.