People -- friends, acquaintances, whoever -- think my life is all jam. And are constantly asking me about my interactions with cricketers.

Each time I am asked the question, I can't keep a wry smile off my face -- reality is far different from the fantasies I entertained, of being on buddy terms with cricketers, before I actually became a sports correspondent.

Reality is sitting around in hotel lobbies for endless hours, feeling increasingly conspicuous, and progressively embarassed, while I wait for a cricketer to have the time to talk to me. Reality is trying to pass the time by counting the number of bulbs in hotel chandeliers. Reality is that sinking feeling I get at the end of a long vigil, when I realise I am going to go home with nothing to show for all the hours wasted.

Take, as just one example, the time I tried to interview Saurav Ganguly when the latter took over the reins of the Indian team. This was in Bangalore, during the second Test of the India-South Africa series.

On day two of the Test, I managed to get in touch with him over the house telephone in the team hotel. “Let’s speak this evening at five," he told me.

This evening became the next, and the next. And finally, the last day of the Test dawned. And ended, with India ignominously surrendering its cachet of never having lost a home Test series in 13 years.

I went back to the team hotel after the match. By now, I was beginning to know the geography of the place better than the hotel staff themselves. Having got there, I hung around, for three hours, in the corridor outside Ganguly's room, waiting, whiling away part of the time watching Sachin Tendulkar do a photo shoot.

Finally, Ganguly came out. By then, it was time for the team to leave for the airport. So I was hustled into the team bus, and the captain-elect shared a few moments, a few words, with me.

That is the reality of a cricket correspondent's life. When I signed up for this job, my editor told me journalism is not about how well I can write, but about patience and perseverance. Now that I have a year's experience, I suspect my editor was understating the case. And it is not just Ganguly, mind -- Azhar, Cronje, Kirsten, these and many others have made me at times reconsider my career options.

Then, the other day, I went to Karad, near Satara. I was on the track of a sports story, this time. Specifically, to find the family members of Khashabha Jadhav, bronze medallist at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and India's first individual medallist of any hue (in all of our history, there have only been two -- the other being Leander Paes in 1996).

As it turned out -- my colleagues here keep saying I have the luck of the devil -- I landed there on the day the little village was celebrating Jadhav's 16th death anniversary. Jewella Miranda, our photographer, and I, walked in to that village, asked a question -- and had our minds blown.

Before we knew what was happening, we were being feted, treated as visiting royalty. At the function the villagers had that evening to honour their most famous son (they do this every year), Jewella and I were installed on the dais as chief guests, garlanded, made the subject of laudatory speeches....

It was embarassing, sitting there, the cynosure of the entire village, being fussed over.

And it was strangely touching.

Time and again, people came up to the two of us and asked, 'You have actually come all the way from Bombay only for Kashaba dada?'

I realised then that this is where India's sporting spirit really lies. In these little villages, that honour their champions long after their names have faded from the collective memory, long after their records have been broken, long after they are dead and gone.

Khashbha Jadhav is a name not familiar to most of you. Yet to that village, he was a source of pride, an inspiration, an icon, an example to hold up to successive generations of their children.

In that village, thanks to the deeds of a man long since dead, the Olympic flame burns bright.

Later that evening, I got to hold, in my hand, the bronze medal Jadhav won at Helsinki, so long ago. It was at the same time both exalting and humbling.

And as I walked away from there, I thought -- do any of us remember how many Pepsi Cups the Indian cricketers have won or lost? Increasingly, do we even care?

I know one thing for sure -- nothing could give me the same sense of awe as I felt when I held that Olympic medal in my hand. To win a cricket cup, you have to be merely one team in ten. To win an Olympic individual medal, you have to be a man in several billion.

God must have directed my steps to that village, that day. For that chance encounter with a sporting legend helped wipe away the angst of a year of chasing after our pampered darlings of the cricket field.

And, more importantly, kindled afresh the love for sport that was ebbing within me, under the constant onslaught of CBI inquiries and IT raids and stories of how many crore our players had made, licitly and otherwise.

FAISAL

Meanwhile, on our cricket site today, the usual rush of stories. Plus a superbly written mood piece, capturing the excitement of the Colonial Stadium as cricket history was made. Plus Anant Narayanan, taking his usual statistics-centric look at the game we all love to debate endlessly.

And in sports, what can I say? There's such a flood of Olympics stories from round the world (merely the beginning, stand by as the pace escalates in the coming days), that I'll cut this email short for now, and go there and read the ones I haven't seen yet.

Meanwhile, take care all.

Mail Cricket Editor