Writing cricket

Mihir Bose’s areas of expertise reach far and wide into accountancy, engineering, football, Bollywood and, surprisingly, Memons. Born in Kolkata in the year of the Partition but raised in Mumbai — the city he calls his hometown — Mihir, author of over 20 books and winner of many awards, shares his thoughts with Books & Authors on cricket, the history of the subcontinent, his desire to be a ‘great writer’ and becoming the first sports editor at the BBC.

How did an interest in journalism and writing develop?
MB: Despite belonging to a business-minded family, I’d always wanted to be a writer even though my father thought there was no money in it. I was growing up in an independent India which was heavily influenced by Nehru, so it had to produce engineers and scientists. I came to England to become one too, but switched to accountancy since it would give me time to write a novel that would make me famous. It didn’t quite work out that way but I broke into journalism via commercial radio after qualifying as an accountant.

I went back to India a couple of times, worked as a stringer for the Sunday Times and even got commissioned to write a book on Keith Miller. However, there came a time when I decided that if I wanted to become a writer — and I couldn’t become one in India — I had to resign from my job as an accountant. By then, I had also gotten a contract on a biography on Subhas Chandra Bose, an Indian nationalist who was termed a traitor. That was that. I’ve never looked back and I’ve been a full-time writer since October 1978.

What problems did you face in England while pursuing your dream?
MB: Though I was very aware of my colour and race, it took me a long time to get used to standing out. I came from quite a well-off background, but suddenly found myself not only doing my own dishes but made aware that I was different. Despite that — and the fact that I felt India was imprisoning me — England was a liberating place for me.

It was the place where I thought of becoming a great writer and where I would go to Soho and proclaim my genius. However, I realised that nobody wants to know me and to them I had come from a poor country and had a terrible name. I got assaulted while reporting on football and was chased down a train by a gang of hooligans. Even with all that, England gave me opportunities and the world we live in is a western world, which I’m very happy to be a part of. I prefer living here and am quite comfortable as the country has been very good to me.

Why the interest in sports, especially cricket?
MB: I read a lot about cricket. I’ve loved it as a kid and my father would let me practice as a radio commentator in front of guests so I grew up living cricket. Though I went to the same school as Sunil Gavaskar, I never played the game that well and wasn’t encouraged either. Because of my interest, I have written three books on cricket, including the only history of Indian cricket, as well as Maidan View, which examines the influence of cricket on Indian society. I’ve never seen a distinction between sports and writing.

If you write about sports, you’re not writing about kindergarten, you’re writing about life.

What books and authors have managed to influence you?
MB: I wanted to be a writer like V.S. Naipaul or Graham Greene, people like that were my heroes. I also wanted to be like Neville Cardus, a cricket writer. I was also influenced by books like C.L.R. James’ Beyond the Boundary in which cricket is used to describe West Indian society. I’m also fascinated by biographies and history books. I believe they take a certain thing about society and use it to explain the society itself.

You mentioned your love for history. What is your take on the history of subcontinent and why there exist major gaps and discrepancies in the scripts?
MB: The history of the subcontinent motivates me as it is the history of my people. You pick up a book on the great events of the world and you’ll find that they are all western events. It’s a fact that conquerors write history and hence there is no mention of any battles of Panipat.

There’s a dearth of great biographies, especially ones written by locals. For instance, most of the biographies of Gandhi are by non-Indians, and the only well-known biography of Jinnah is written by an American professor. The subcontinent retreats into fiction because it doesn’t want to confront reality. We either love people or hate them. An assessment of Jinnah can’t take into account that he was the most unlikely Muslim who drank whiskey and ate pork. However, he was a great leader, in fact one of the greatest leaders of the subcontinent, the man who created a country.

There is a fear of recognising, it’s an irrelevant way of thinking. It shows a lack of maturity, an almost-adolescent behaviour that your heroes have got to be gods. This is saying that all you write about the great man is the speeches he delivered and great letters he wrote, but not the man who lived his life.

India and Pakistan are like two Siamese twins trying to separate themselves but not quite managing to. Pakistan needs to stop comparing itself to India and thinking that India can’t go ahead of them. Pakistan has a greatness that the Indians don’t have and that is not accepting defeat. In cricket, Pakistan won a Test in England in 1954. It took India 17 more years to match that.

What projects would like to do in the future?
I would like to write a couple of novels and a major book about the subcontinent, particularly about India. I’d also like to write a book tracing my father’s journey which started as a young man in a village in Ramchandrapur (West Bengal) who gave up his job to join the freedom struggle and moved to Mumbai.

I also want to write a biography of Gandhi and Jinnah, especially as I was brought up to hate Jinnah but have come to admire him as a politician. We need more books on the communities living in the subcontinent and how they are progressing.

© Faras Ghani 2009
Published in Books & Authors (DAWN newspaper) June 21, 2009