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Cricket Boulevard: Rajgopal Nidamboor
Murray Books, Australia; ISBN: 0-9580348-2-6; 220 pp; Price: Rs 495.00.

Reviewed By HARESH PANDYA

The book under review is as interesting as its title, Cricket Boulevard, and just about as fascinating as its author, Rajgopal Nidamboor.

Nidamboor has long distinguished himself as a sportswriter with a difference. An acknowledged “classical wordsmith,” Nidamboor’s style often reminds you of the irrepressible Neville Cardus.

Like the only cricket writer to have been knighted so far, Nidamboor also cannot be followed easily by the lay reader. Or, so it seems. Nidamboor’s writing, just like Cardus’, can seldom or never be without a fair amount of literary and other analogies. Apart from an aesthetic approach to his subject, this is also what sets Nidamboor apart from many other Indian cricket writers. But, then he always gives the impression of writing for a particular readership.

Nidamboor himself is as much an artist as the ones he writes about. There is no better proof than Cricket Boulevard which celebrates the willow game and some of its outstanding practitioners from different eras: from William Grace to Graeme Smith. A labour of love, Cricket Boulevard dwells more upon the minds, methods and manners of the players portrayed than on their all-too-well-known figures and feats.

Only a sensitive man with an eye for beauty and perfection and a strong faculty for imagination can write with flair, felicity and feelings that Nidamboor has exhibited most elegantly and eloquently throughout the book.

Nidamboor’s passion for cricket mirrors on the canvas on which he has drawn beautiful portraits of the legends of the game.

What lends special appeal and charm to Cricket Boulevard and the men eulogised therein is Nidamboor’s exquisitely vibrant prose and extraordinary, even unique, style.

Vinoo Mankad, according to Nidamboor, was the “bejewelled oracle,” Clarrie Grimmett “the Newton of cricket,” Graeme Pollock “the Frank Woolley of his age,” and Arjuna Ranatunga “the Napoleon of cricket.” C K Nayudu was “Indian cricket’s King Arthur,” and Frank Worrell the game’s “first apostle.” While Jack Hobbs was “the perfectionist,” Don Bradman was the “one-man nuclear taskforce.”

If Len Hutton was “the eternal stylist,” Denis Compton was “an entertainer beyond compare.” If Vijay Hazare was “a knight in white flannels,” Peter May was “a cricketer in shining armour.” While Kapil Dev “epitomised cricket’s conscious evolution,” Hansie Cronje was the “primaeval horseman who debased his own self.”

If Colin Cowdrey was “a blend of delightful elegance and aplomb,” and Mark Waugh “waved a magic willow,” Gundappa Viswanath’s vintage batsmanship was all “virtuosity and vitality.” If Herbert Sutcliffe “lapped up the whole idea of cricket,” Garfield Sobers “had nothing to declare except his genius.” If Vivian Richards was cricket’s “King Alexander,” Brian Lara's “[an] elfin genius with the merlin wrists,” Cricket Boulevard not only highlights the leading maestros of the willow and the cherry but also captures the essence of their play and individual brilliance.

However, omission of such renowned artists like Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, Victor Trumper, Ray Lindwall, Tom Graveney, Roy Dias, Lawrence Rowe, Alvin Kallicharran and a few others is a bit surprising. Maybe, the author had to stop somewhere for the fear of going on and on penning his impressions on one master after another! No doubt many writers have written on these wizards, but one would still have loved their portraits on Nidamboor’s canvas.

Cricket Boulevard is not all about the giants of the game only. It also features some thought-provoking, eminently readable essays on a variety of cricket subjects. “The Perfect Cricketer” sheds interesting light on what constitutes the perfect cricketer. The essay titled “Slogasm” highlights cricketers, especially batsmen, with buccaneering spirit. The subtleties of pace bowling are discussed in “In the Cerebral Line of Fire”. “They have a Different Charm” is all about the languid grace of the left-handed batsmen.

“The Murky Side of Cricket”, “The Mystical Quartet”, “A Question of Leadership”, “The Bodyline Dishonour”, “Human, No Less…”, “The Stunning Dynamics of Mind Sport”, “Sport as a Philosophical Construct,” and “Bending the Mind, Minding the Body,” are also not less interesting.

Elegant and stylish in content as well as appearance and production, Cricket Boulevard is one of the finest books written by an Indian sportswriter in recent years. A welcome addition to an already rich cricket literature, Cricket Boulevard is a must for the connoisseurs of quality sports writing.

Haresh Pandya is a noted cricket writer and journalist.