Life Inside The
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The IPL uncovered ‘A six-week When writer MM Owen was invited to spend some time behind the scenes spinning glitterball’ at Rajasthan Royals, he stepped into a netherworld both hyper-modern and quaintly innocent, where cricket is the hook for a nation’s collective obsession LIFE INSIDE eparting my room in search a team franchise, you see that the IPL is a big, big deal. of a breakfast dosa, I am This is hardly news, but it’s another thing to witness it. It gathered up by some hotel is never, ever not on TV (which helps it suck up a quarter staff and ushered along a of all India’s advertising spend). It is intertwined with THE IPL corridor to a service lift. Bollywood stars and tycoon owners, whom Indians One of the men wishes me revere with none of the awkward affluent guilt of the luck for tonight’s game. I Western middle-classes. And the IPL’s big players say thanks, because to be are like rock stars. RCB are captained by Kohli – he is rude would be worse than staying on my floor, in what I assume is the room with a to lie. The lift doors open. I burly Sikh gentleman stationed outside it at all hours – am Dswept through a hissing kitchen, and enter through and in the two days before the game, the K-word drifts on a back door into what a few hours earlier had been a bar, the air like a mantra. People prowl in the lobby, phones at but this morning is one vast breakfast buffet. To the the ready, camera apps already visibly open. I overhear confusion of the staff, I make for the exit, contorting discussions of where he is: Kohli is in the gym, Kohli just myself around the imposing back of a South African got in the lift, someone saw Kohli getting in an SUV. Two security guard who is explaining to a woman that no, different receptionists express profound disappointment this is a private players’ area, meaning no, her children that he is married (to a Bollywood star, naturally). can’t meet Ben Stokes. With every selfie to which I politely acquiesce, I For the rest of the day, I am burdened with this odd aura feel even more like a pathetic non-celeb. Come six of misplaced celebrity. I am at the Rajasthan Royals’ o’clock, milling in the hotel lobby draped in the Royals’ team hotel and this evening they are playing Royal distinctive pink, I am assaulted by eyeballs that fill me Challengers Bangalore here in Jaipur. I’m young enough, with embarrassment at the thought of just how dreadful white enough, and just about lean enough to pass for an I’d be if right this instant I was thrown into a Royals overseas cricketer, so I am relentlessly afforded attention net session. We wait. Eventually, the team entourage is I don’t deserve. As I emerge from the team’s breakfast loaded onto a minibus. In front of us is the team coach, room, a little girl runs over, looks up at me with enormous bigger and pinker. I’m sat in front of the Stokes family, brown eyes, and says “Excuse me, sir; are you Jos who are rollicking good company, and across from Buttler?” When I inform her that no, I am not Jos Buttler, Jofra Archer’s girlfriend, whose Barbadian accent is so she looks crestfallen and scampers away. Immediately, gorgeously musical that it’s hard to pay attention to what she is replaced by a young man who wants a selfie. I tell she’s actually saying. him I’m not a cricketer, just a tourist. He doesn’t listen. We set off. A police escort has us moving with a velocity We take a selfie. that, by India’s traffic-choked standards, is remarkable. This keeps happening. It’s the IPL, so the match won’t Along the side of the road, people are dancing and waving start until 8pm, but by lunch I am so worn down by and singing. As we near the stadium, the numbers swell. disappointing cute children that – despite not having English cricket grew out of the village, but Indian cricket held a cricket ball in a competitive setting for more than has always been a thing of the city, and here they are, a decade – I am mimicking precisely the behaviour with the density only urban centres can generate. The of the actual Royals players and sequestering myself Royals’ social media team are streaming on Instagram MM OWEN away at the top of the hotel. I wish I’d done what they Live, and because I have a prime window seat I am given A UK-based are encouraged to do by the coaching team, and sleep the phone to record the crowds. The people notice, and author of non- until midday. Outside, the Rajasthan horizon quivers wave harder. Someone yells “Buttler!” Glancing at the fiction, Owen with heat, but in air-conditioned solitude I turn on Star screen, I notice the comments pouring in. It is pure has published Sports. Not for the first time, I find Kevin Pietersen, excitement. There are no remarks about Unadkat being with Aeon, The opining on last night’s highlights with a strange dropped, or questions about whether we are expecting Blizzard, The pensiveness. dew as the evening progresses – just a stream of emojis Independent, Folha This general experience starts off as a bit of a curiosity, and capitalised player names, a flood of colour and cheer. de São Paulo, and a minor anecdote – but by the time I leave Jaipur it has I am accustomed to cricket being a generally sedate a range of other expanded in my mind to reflect, obliquely, the heart of thing, a game that can never quite shake a whiff of publications the IPL. Looking out from within the day-to-day life of fundamental uncoolness, most loved by people prone 42 WISDEN CRICKET MONTHLY | MAY 2019 www.wisden.com 43 The IPL uncovered to serious opinions about whether to bring fine-leg myself craving the full tamasha. The Royals are chasing up. This isn’t that. This is about fame, about a blend down 158, and it is tense, for the handful of us who are of celebrity and athletic worship that borders on an bothered about who wins. All of the Stokes family are ecstatic religiosity totally alien to the English version of intelligent observers of the game; the chat is a pleasure. It the game. “Cricketainment,” Lalit Modi called the IPL, is pushing midnight. Eventually the Royals need one run when he launched it in 2008. “The great tamasha,” the off the last two balls. I look back at the general manager, writer James Astill has called it, tamasha being Hindi higher up the stands, who gives a nervous thumbs up. for a spectacle, a dazzling hullabaloo. An IPL season is Dhoni style, Rahul Tripathi hooks it for six. The place “like standing in a room with a glitterball spinning for six erupts, amplification be damned. They would’ve done the weeks,” Royals spinner Ish Sodhi tells me after the game. same if he’d bottom-edged it onto his stumps. How sweet At the ground, we go from the minibus up a series of and pure, to love the game itself. We stand up and clap. staircases to the Shane Warne gallery. Below us is the People crowd the front wall to take pictures of the players pink-walled home dressing room. We claim perfect shaking hands; girls scream Kohli’s name. seats behind the bowler’s arm. The stadium is a low Down at ground level, those of us floating along on a river bowl, brilliant under the floodlights, writhing with pink. of impeccable Royals hospitality are ushered out onto the Things get busier. Music pounds, and the big screens pitch. There are people in pink polo shirts everywhere. show an endless reel of recent sixes, or ‘maximums’. The From haunting me on television, suddenly KP is right air is aswarm with insects, some of them as big as your KOHLI IS STAYING ON MY FLOOR, IN WHAT there, laughing with Steve Smith. I high-five the GM. The fist. The IPL’s skimpily dressed cheerleaders have long “ chairman and I walk out to the wicket. The fans are still I ASSUME IS THE ROOM WITH A BURLY SIKH been controversial amongst India’s more conservative GENTLEMAN STATIONED OUTSIDE IT AT ALL HOURS, there, waving flags, dancing. I hope that at least a few of spectators – uniquely within the league, the Royals them got a blurry shot of Kohli walking by; handsome tactfully tone things down, outfitting their cheerleaders AND IN THE TWO DAYS BEFORE THE GAME, THE beard, armful of tattoo. Confusing me for someone else, KP in full sleeves and leggings. Despite the sweltering K-WORD DRIFTS ON THE AIR LIKE A MANTRA looks me in the eye and says “see you later”. WE GET BACK AROUND 1AM;“ AMAZINGLY, THERE ARE Jaipur air, they gyrate down below us with gusto, pom- We get back around 1am; amazingly, there are still STILL CROWDS OF PEOPLE, WAITING ON THE DUSTY poms and blonde hair rippling. ABOVE: every time Kohli cracks one, but they also love it when crowds of people, waiting on the dusty road outside the ROAD OUTSIDE THE HOTEL TO WAVE FURIOUSLY FOR The previous evening, on a tour of the stadium, I Jos Buttler, the the excellent Shreyas Gopal rattles his middle stump hotel to wave furiously for the few seconds it takes the THE FEW SECONDS IT TAKES THE BUSES TO TURN had watched the top of the fencing being wound with with a googly.