'For want of a shoe, the horse was lost...'

Prem Panicker

I don't remember the exact words -- but lines read a long time ago came flashing back, albeit imperfectly, to mind when the morning newspaper brought the news of the demise of Pankaj Roy.

'Every man's death diminishes me, for I am part of Mankind', John Donne, once said, in more or less those words.

Cricket -- Indian and, by extension, world cricket -- today, stands that much diminished by the loss of a player of stature and skill; and by all contemporary accounts, a gentleman to the core. Yet, the sadness occasioned by this individual loss, I find, is overshadowed by a larger sadness.

I have never seen Pankaj Roy play. Have you? We have heard of the greats of the past -- the Ranjis and the Duleepsinghjis and Vinoo Mankads and Pankaj Roys and Lala Amarnaths and all the rest of them. But to us, they remain names that pop up occasionally in quiz shows, and in obituary notices -- no more, no less. We hear of their doings -- of the famous Mankad Test when he single-handedly took on the might of England; we hear of Ranji's silken wristplay, we hear of Pankaj Roy's role in the famous 413-run opening partnership with Mankad, we hear of Durrani's derring-do and Amarnath's courage and....

...and, it all means nothing to us, because we will never get to see these giants, even through the grainy medium of archival videotapes.

How and why, then, would we be able to develop and instill in our young ones a pride in India's cricket? Steve Waugh got it right -- without a knowledge of tradition, the present doesn't mean anything to anyone.

Consider this situation: 25, 30 years from now, you try to tell your grandkids about Vishwanath and Gavaskar and Bedi and Prasanna and Chandrashekhar and Solkar and Tendulkar and...

... and they stare at you blankly. Because you have nothing to show them. And why not? Because the Board of Control for Cricket in India has not, during the period of its existence, had the sense to build and maintain a cricket archive.

Imagine this situation: When the BCCI gives permission to any particular broadcaster to produce a cricket match or series involving India, it writes into the contract a clause which stipulates that at the end of the match/series, copies of all footage generated therefrom should be given to the Board.

The Board then maintains said footage in a national archive, along with all other available cricket memorabilia.

Sitting in Bombay, I wish -- for my own pleasure perhaps, or perhaps because I am a coach and wish to use it as a teaching aid -- to get hold of tapes of Prasanna in action. I write to the Board's archive, stating my requirements. An employee of the archive goes through the tapes to pick the games I want, makes copies, and couriers them to me, for a fee.

Easy to set up the system and simple to make it work, right? So why, today, do we have a system wherein, for instance, a Faisal Shariff, my colleague here in Rediff, asks me in wide-eyed wonder: 'You mean you have actually seen Prasanna and Bedi bowl in tandem? I wish I could...'

Why do we have a situation wherein a coach tells a budding off spinner about Prasanna's control of flight and loop -- but cannot show it?

Why do we have a situation wherein we call Ranjitsinghji India's pride -- but do not have even a one-second clip of him in action to immortalise his genius with?

Why don't we give a single, solitary damn for tradition?

Pankaj Roy is dead. And with him, his achievements. Lala Amarnath died not so long ago -- and with him, was lost his abilities, his achievements. Does the BCCI have a single clip of these players in action? Did the Board generate videotaped interviews, through which these and other giants could talk to generations yet unborn? No.

'The good that people do lives after them', Shakespeare once wrote -- but then, he wasn't talking of Indian cricket, was he?

That Pankaj Roy is dead is sad. That there is nothing left to remember him by, sadder.

Not so long ago, the BCCI found itself in a situation where, in order to deflect the attentions of the Government of India, it was forced to come up with a vision statement.

"To build and maintain a national cricket archive" was one of the items set out in that statement. The malcontent might crib and say that this should have been done almost from the day the BCCI came into existence -- but never mind that. Can't it be done now, at the very least?

The idea exists on paper. The paper exists as a smokescreen, to fool the government into thinking that the Board is in fact serious about administering the game in all its aspects. Meanwhile, the giants that once dominated our cricket continue to die -- and with them, die memories that should, rightfully, be our legacy to future generations.

And all for want of a little will, a little application, a little hard work by the officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Never mind the emotional need for an archive -- look for a minute at the practical one.

John Wright and Geoff Marsh are now in Madras, preparing for the coaching camp. They have acquired software to help in the preparation. Superb stuff it is, too -- you take videos of games played between India and Australia, home and away, and run it on your computer. The software reduces every moment, every ball, every run, into stats. Then you sit down to analyse.

Want to know what a good line to bowl to Mark Waugh is? Simple -- get the package to throw up all Mark Waugh's innings played in India, broken up into line, length, pace or spin, runs scored, how out, etc. You get a graphic picture that tells you how successful he has been against each particular line -- short on off, short outside off, good length off cutting in, good length off going away, whatever...

The national players are devotees of the gadget, they believe that with this to aid them, they can do their pre-game preparations, think up strategies and tactics, and be more prepared for the coming series than they ever have been in the past.

There is only one minor problem -- the Board doesn't have videotapes of India-Australia games (actually, the Board doesn't have videotapes of any games) to load into the software. Officials from Muthiah's office have in fact been making frantic calls, these last couple of days, to various sources asking if they can help get videos of a few games to load, so that Wright and Marsh can begin their work.

Remember that old one, that goes 'For want of a shoe, the horse was lost...'?

Design: Devyani Chandwarkar
Illustration: Dominic Xavier