Cool and the gang

Naseeruddin Shah, a true sports lover. File pic/Ashish Raje

Just like his departed friend Tom Alter, actor Naseeruddin Shah has a deep love and understanding of sport. Shah's sporting passion came shining through in a dark, evening setting of a Khar lounge last Saturday. Shah was one of the speakers at the first anniversary of journalist Sohini Chattopadhyay's brilliant book, The Day I Became a Runner, which features in the main, the trials and tribulations of eight women athletes. To his right was the author, who was also flanked by Suhasini Mulay, who has acted in Assamese, Bollywood and Marathi films. Shah playing coach Mohit Mishra in the 2005 film Iqbal and hosting Mid Wicket Tales, a show aired on Epic Channel, explains his cricket connection. But his sporting love goes beyond the 22-yard strip as it were.

He indicated to his audience that he was more interested in the vanquished than the favourite. One is not sure whether he was aware that Jammu & Kashmir had outgunned a formidable Mumbai team in the Ranji Trophy earlier in the day, but Shah's utterances about unexpected winners were made on the same day. "The margin between glory and humiliation is very fine in sport," he said, referring to the film Rocky, where one witnesses the "underdog triumphing." Cricket didn't take long to get into the mix: "And we have seen that happening at least in our cricket in India. People from less privileged backgrounds are emerging as forces to reckon with… people from small towns, people whose parents ride a rickshaw or are gardeners - that is fantastic. It does say something of the emergence and awareness of trying to reach for things. I don't think that happens in any other sport, where you spend your entire life trying to reach a point and you fall just agonisingly short of it or you triumph when no one expects you to. I think the sense of competition and the sense of being the victor is very precious. We all identify with a person who may be a loser, but who has won our admiration in some way or the other. We all look up to such people."

Shah also reflected on the strong, unfair reactions to defeats. "It is a pretty fickle admiration, of course. The same cricketers who are carried on people's shoulders when they win, get their houses stoned when they lose," he rued.

Mulay expressed her deep admiration for sprinters Pinki Pramanik (who in 2012 was accused of pretending to be a man and raping a friend) and Dutee Chand (who in 2019 became the first Indian sportsperson to reveal she was gay) in particular. Mulay was asked by Anindita Ghose, the perceptive moderator, as to which character among those featured in Chattopadhyay's book she would have liked to play. "Every one of those stories is spectacular. The idea of playing any one of those characters would be stupendous. Pinki… I mean… what she has been through! Pinki and Dutee… these are women who not just fight sports people. These are people who have fought for gender perceptions. To have to question your own body and to stand and have to validate your own body, to me is about the most personal and toughest thing to do," said Mulay.

Throughout the evening, which served as a reminder about how the real road to sporting success or failure is so commonly underplayed, I couldn't help thinking about how actors do love and have loved sport. Dilip Kumar loved cricket. So did Pran. In fact, the man who often figured as a villain on the screen, wanted to fund a young Kapil Dev's visit to Australia, where he would have better training facilities. Unfortunately, the trip didn't materialise.

In his autobiography, Sir Garfield Sobers referred to an actor who could have been Dilip Kumar with whom he enjoyed a special bond on his 1966-67 tour here. And the late Yashpal Sharma believed that it was this special actor who played a role in his emergence as a Test player after he watched him bat in a Ranji Trophy match for Punjab against Uttar Pradesh in 1978. Apart from Yashpal's century-in-each-innings feat, Dilip Kumar was impressed by the middle-order batsman's temperament. Later in the year, Yashpal was in the Indian team that toured Pakistan.

Talking about Pakistan, the country's famous cricket writer Qamar Ahmed told me about him attending a party hosted by Raj Kapoor at his Chembur residence during the Bombay Test of the 1979-80 India v Pakistan series. The legendary actor's sons Randhir and Rishi were happy to meet him. Rishi, according to Qamar, revealed he was a huge Wasim Bari (wicketkeeper) fan and wanted Qamar to arrange a telephone call to his hero. Rishi got to speak to Bari that night, thanks to Qamar and the departed actor was ever so grateful to ‘Qamar Sir.' What astounded the travelling journalist was that, of all the other stars in that Pakistan team which included the biggest name of them all, Imran Khan, it was wicketkeeper Bari who was Rishi's hero for the supporting role he played in Pakistan's highs in the 1970s and 1980s.

Back to Saturday's function. Listening to Shah talk sport, I couldn't help thinking how my friend Alter would have been an apt speaker here as well. He could speak. He could write. In 1988, Tom ended his piece on swimmer Anita Sood for Sportsweek thus: "So off she goes on her lonely pursuit of perfection. Sponsorship, training, diet, the grind of practice and the pressure of competition - Anita Sood will swim over all these hurdles simply because she has the talent and the determination to do so."

And like Shah and Mulay, he would have loved Sohini's book.

mid-day's group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello

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