The joys of writing about sport

Somewhere in the blue yonder, sports writer Ian Wooldridge will be holding a glass of  gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other and proclaiming loudly, ‘It’s been fun’.

That was the way the late Daily Mail writer always summed up his life. The death of Wooldridge has robbed sport of one of its finest writers, a man of integrity who was never afraid to speak his mind.
He did not like the ëyes men’ and time-serving administrators of sport. He cut down an entire generation of politicians, corrupt officials and football thugs with his scathing phrases.
Integrity and loyalty were very important to the man. He made many friends which included former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan and the late Dennis Compton.
Sportsmen always trusted him. Former England cricketer Basil D’Oliviera, who sparked South Africa’s ban from world cricket for apartheid, spoke only to Wooldridge.
One of the key moments of Wooldridge’s career occurred when he was covering the MCC tour of South Africa in 1964. He was told to give a one minute broadcast for ITV for their World of Sport programme.
It so happened that on the day in question in Port Elizabeth, black cricket fans were banned from the ground for a trivial reason. This angered Wooldridge.
The South Africans realised that he was angry and told him to stick to his conventional reporting and not stir up a controversy. But Wooldridge started his broadcast by saying, ‘The evil face of apartheid was shown here todayض’.
Though Wooldridge did not care for political correctness, he always championed for what was right. He thought that the Olympics, after the Ben Johnson drugs scandal, should have been stopped.
Such was the trust he gained from in the sporting world that the late Kerry Packer broke his rebel cricket tournament story to Wooldridge first.
Though Wooldridge started as a reluctant sports journalist, claiming that he only knew a little about cricket and golf, he turned himself into champion writer of all sport. He even expanded his scope to other fields including politics.
Wooldridge was part of a rich generation of cricket writers going back to the days of Sir Neville Cardus.
However, the Cardus legacy may slowly die with growing commercialism in sport.
There seems to be a shift towards former and current players giving their opinions, many through ghost writers. Some of them use it as forum to spit venom or cast aspersions on players or teams they hate. It may make a good read but the quality is lacking.
There are also many TV channels in the Sub-Continent who appoint pretty faces whose knowledge of the game is probably restricted to just the word cricket and nothing else it.
Luckily there are many good cricket writers still plying their trade and some of the new generation ones like Gideon Haigh and Peter Roebuck will keep the flag flying in the future.
Cricket is a sport which easily lends itself to prose. Cardus not only brought out the complexities of the game but also the atmosphere in which it was played.
Cardus was of the same generation as the legendary Sir Donald Bradman, Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond. Their superb skills as a player gave Cardus a chance to wax lyrical about their abilities.
The richness of his prose made Cardus special. He could describe a cover drive by Hammond or write at length about the restlessness of the spectators as a game meandered along at a slow pace with extraordinary skill.
The writings of Cardus bring alive the beauty and romanticism of the game in the days gone by.
Cardus set the ball rolling for a generation of great cricket writers which included Jack Fingleton, C L R James, Richie Benaud, Tony Cozier to just to name a few.
Former Australian captain Benaud, apart from being a top quality cricketer was also a journalist by profession, even in his playing days. Benaud is still widely respected for his astute knowledge of the game and his writings have always reflected that.
Cozier is now the voice of West Indies cricket and his writings, like his commentary, are precise, incisive and fair. Cozier will hope that his favourite West Indies will make big headway in the World Cup so that he can remove the tinge of bitterness which has crept into his writings over the last decade or so.
The last word must go to the great Cardus. In the mid-1900s, reports were often sent by cable and the telegraph office charged for every word.
Cardus sent his report along with the punctuations in the right places and this cost newspapers which took his report a lot of money.
Worried at the expense, an editor once sent him a return cable saying, ‘We’ll fix punctuations.’  Cardus replied, ‘I’ll send punctuation. You fill in words’!

Tribute to Ian Babu Kalyanpur