(From left) Ok.N. Raghavan, former worldwide cricket umpire and writer; Amrit Mathur, writer and former Indian cricket staff supervisor; and Arun Lal, former Indian cricketer, throughout a discussion at the Kerala Literature Festival at Kozhikode.
| Photo Credit: Ok. Ragesh
Cricket turned out to be one of many unlikely highlights on the opening day of the seventh Kerala Literature Festival. A lively discussion on numerous points of cricket featured a former India opener, an administrator and staff supervisor who has labored with a few of the largest names together with Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev, and a former worldwide umpire.
The session proved rather more than in regards to the guide Pitchside, authored by former India staff supervisor Amrit Mathur, who accompanied the cricketers on a number of excursions together with the historic one to South Africa in 1992-93. He raised some attention-grabbing factors.
As did Arun Lal, who performed 16 Tests and 13 ODIs for India within the Eighties and confronted the bowling of the likes of Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop. Moderator Ok.N. Raghavan, a civil servant and writer moreover being a retired umpire, ensured the discussion was attention-grabbing sufficient.
Not surprisingly, the outstanding success of the IPL was one of many matters that got here up. Mathur recalled how sceptical a BCCI official was when Lalit Modi, the person mainly accountable for the world’s most crucial league, spoke of the large numbers – the type of cash the event would usher in.
Lal mentioned the IPL was the very best factor that occurred to India cricket, and he tried to purpose with a Test fan within the viewers who apparently didn’t share the view. Lal informed him that although he himself most popular to look at a session of Test cricket to a complete season of the IPL, there weren’t many like him at current.
Mathur additionally spoke of how the present-day India cricketers lived in a bubble and the way they most popular to speak by social media. That wasn’t the case earlier, when journalists had extra entry to the gamers, he identified.
