The legend of Malcolm Conn

Cricket writing is a funny profession. It's attracted people from all corners and disciplines – ex-cricketers, College drop-outs, crime journalist, historian,environmentalist, human rights activist, a PHD in Network modeling and what not. No wonder cricket literature is probably the richest amongst all sports. Leaving the literary part aside, even at a journalistic level, we have got writers from diverse backgrounds and with vastly divergent views. At one end, we have people like Sambit Bal, Rohit Brijnath et al elevating cricket watching experience to an even higher level with their words, and at the other end, there are writers like Sanjay Jha, Malcolm Conn and co who make you wonder if they see the same game of cricket that all of us see. Then there are those writers like Viswanath and Vijay Lokapally who write on Cricket as if it’s the most boring thing on earth.

Tony Cozier had written an article in Cricinfo today regarding the Aussie media reaction to WI’s performance in the first test which got me to write this blog. He picked out a few writers for special mention in that article but I enjoyed his rebuttal of Malcolm Conn more than others. There’s something about Malcolm Conn. Seriously, it puzzles me that such a jingoistic and dumb guy has survived as a prominent cricket writer in a country which takes it cricket rather seriously for a few decades now. Of all the non-sense that so many people thrash out in the name of cricket writing, Malcolm Conn occupies a very special place. His consistency in churning out non-sense series after series, year after year with no loss of enthusiasm is almost bramanesque (or should I say Tendlkarine*)!

His series of articles during the monkeygate series down under can be published as a book titled “Non stop no sense” and let me assure it would be a bestseller. But he’s had some real masterpieces even before that. Let me just share a few top of the mind recalls of his genius in this blog.

I am not able to trace it in google, but I remember this piece like I read it yesterday. After that historic test series (yes, the same Laxman miracle series) between India vs Australia at home in 2001, a 5 match ODI series was played between the two teams. Sourav Ganguly continued his bad run from the tests to the ODIs too until the final match. In the final match he somehow rediscovers a bit of his form and scores a brisk 70 odd and just when he is looking good he gets out to a short ball again to Mcgrath. It was a marginal decision as the ball appeared to be at just about the shoulder level so Sourav waited a few seconds to check with the leg umpire if it was over the shoulders or not and then started walking – absolutely nothing more than a wait for a few seconds. It was a non-event when I was watching the match live. The next day I open the sports section in Hindu and Malcolm Conn writes of that incident as something like Sourav’s body language on being given out was as bad as Michael Slater’s in the Mumbai test match and that he was extremely lucky to get away scot-free. It was as far from the truth as it can get but he wrote it with such assurance that if you hadn’t seen the match and just read his report, you would have a completely different take on the incident. Since this was my early days in knowing Conn, I took him too seriously at that time but over the years I have learnt to appreciate the unintended fun in his writing!

In the same series, in another match (if I am not wrong it was at Vishakapatnam) there was a near stampede in the stadium as the greedy administrators had issued excess tickets. In that kind of a situation the police have no other choice but to disallow people entry into the stadium even if they own a ticket. And as some people agitate there would naturally have been some lathi work from Police. Malcolm Conn writes in the next day’s report (stepping into the shoes of Arundhati Roy for a while) that animals are treated better in India! What an irony that this comes from a guy whose country men are anything but civil to our contingent down under!

During the monkeygate series, Harbhajan got into a controversy when someone claimed that he misbehaved with the crowd and spat at them and such other things which was denied by their very own AB who was sitting in that stand at that time. But nevertheless Malcolm Conn had made his judgment as if Bhajji spat at him and he had video recorded it for evidence with his unbelievable headline “Harbhajan Singh walks free after spitting controversy”. The fact that there was a controversy out of nothing at all is comfortably neglected.

Moreover through out the series he defended the behavior of the Australian team against the Indian team by quoting and requoting a statistic which is more a reflection of the apologetic state of justice in the ICC world for Asian cricketers rather than a pointer to reality. The statstic was “Despite having the worst behaved team in the world, with almost twice as many ICC code of conduct violations as Australia, Indian officials continually refuse to pull their players into line.”

He follows that up with an even better one!

“This summer alone India has had four players reported, three found guilty by match referees and one-day captain MS Dhoni warned for wearing illegal keeping gloves”
MS Dhoni was warned for wearing illegal gloves! If you are not aware of the background of that incident then you might think that Dhoni is a cheater…Infact immediately after that Gilly came in support of Dhoni and said it must have been a manufacturing defect. But Conn doesn’t care about all that. He never allows a fact to come in the middle of a good story – that’s his USP! Thank god he doesn’t hold anything against Sachin and Dravid, else he might have placed them in the league of villains of the game because of their ball tampering habits!

In the recent India vs Australia test series at home in 2008, Conn came up with a few more beauties:
In an article titled “India’s verbal barrage as Watson fights lone hand” he came out with an immaculate psycho analysis of the Indian team with this statement:
“That India felt it necessary to so strongly verbal the Australians when so far in front suggests how desperate they are to regain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.”

OMG, when Australia does it, its gamesmanship, mental disintegration and friendly banter but in India’s case it is desperation!!! Even Balakrishna is not capable of such comedy I tell you!

Amazingly in the same article with that verbal barrage on Watson headline, he himself goes onto quote Watson as thus:
"There was actually a lot of extremely friendly banter I thought. Obviously it was challenging but me and Brett were having a great time out there,'' Watson said.
"It was never going to get out of hand. It was friendly banter and there should always be that in any sport, especially Test cricket when everyone is challenging each other.”

More on the monkeygate again:
“Had the ICC treated India the same way FIFA treated the Spanish Football Federation in 2004 when Spanish fans made monkey chants at black England players during a friendly soccer match, the BCCI would have been fined about $100,000” he writes in a thought provoking piece.

Extending the same argument, for the number of racist abuses that happen in Australian cricket grounds (remember Makhaya Ntini or Muralitharan), Austalian Cricket Board wouldn’t have had money to pay its players after paying up the fines for racial abuses!

Another gem from the Sydney fiasco days:
“Ricky Ponting should be championed as a national hero for exposing racism in cricket.Ponting deserves to be feted, not condemned, for taking his bold stand to protect Australia's only black player, Andrew Symonds, from continuing racial taunts by India spinner Harbhajan Singh.He should be considered in the same light as former AFL stars Nicky Winmar and Michael Long, the Aboriginal footballers who took a stand against racism two decades ago.” - Even Ricky Ponting in his dreams wouldn’t think so highly of himself!

This time on the spirit of cricket and all that:
“Likewise, India's teenage beanpole Ishant Sharma made such an animated display of grief after a caught behind from Andrew Symonds was turned down that the game will become a circus if this is allowed to continue.” – He talks as if he’s never seen Mcgrath and Warne in action! BTW he is referring to that nick off Andrew Symonds which in the entire country of Australia only Bucknor failed to hear…If only the bowler didn't react the way he did that it should have made the headlines…

The legend of Malcolm Conn is too big a story to be narrated in one blog…But the next time you see Malcolm Conn in the byline you better know what to expect!

* Thats not an adjective that I invented. Suresh Menon had come out with this in the last month's edition of Sports Illustrated.