Yes, Harsha Bhogle has warmly accepted the setback cast on him by the imperious Board of Cricket Control India (BCCI). But he may not want to see the current turn of events as a ‘setback’. All these years, he kept himself busy as a full-time cricket commentator. But now, he prefers to lean back on his armchair and take this spell rather graciously.
That’s exactly what Harsha Bhogle, absurdly failed by the BCCI, has been doing since he exited the IPL commentary box.
Reminiscing his school days when he first took lessons of observation from his father he says, “Watching the IPL from home, I realized I had indeed been thrown that opportunity again. In a whirl of hotels, airports, programmes and deadlines, you rarely get time to merely gaze at something; to look at things without seeking to draw an immediate connect.”
In a column in the Indian Express, he adds how the ‘given’ opportunity has allowed him to observe the class of the Kohli and De Villiers combination on his television set at home.
“I watched Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers bat together and I realised how much I actually enjoyed it. These are two tough competitors and whatever they might say about each other, and it is nice to see such grace, one wants to be better than the other,” he says.
A calm and composed Bhogle, through his optimistic gestures in writing, applauds the evolution of a promising young generation of players in international cricket such as Muztafizur Rahman and Sunil Narine. He asks his readers to watch these chaps closely to understand their transition.
Harsha does make some valid observations about the younger Indian players.
“Shreyas Iyer is in season two. The last two years have been fantastic and he will be aware that he is a few performances away from being considered good enough to play for India. Manan Vohra was a thrilling player a couple of years ago but with Sehwag’s retirement, has the opportunity to play a whole season. Sanju Samson has been much appreciated but the runs haven’t quite flowed for him and he is in a team that has another wicket keeper in Quinton de Kock. Axar Patel was in the World Cup team fourteen months ago and since then others of his kind have crept up,” he says.
He concludes his essay saying that he will watch IPL this year just as how he’d watched cricket curiously as a schoolboy.
