BENGALURU: Many national English dailies have a very specific way of identifying cricketers who have performed 'well'. It doesn't matter whether it is in school cricket or in internationals, but as long as the player scores 25 runs or picks up two wickets, their name will appear in the newspaper.
This ‘convention’ has existed since time immemorial and will likely continue as long as newspapers are around in the country. It’s how Sachin Tendulkar was first spotted in a newspaper in the 1980s (Tendulkar xx). It’s how Virat Kohli made his newspaper debut (Kohli xx). It’s how Gautam Gambhir made it to the newspaper for the first time (Gambhir xx).
The beauty of this convention is that it doesn’t discriminate. School names are no bar. Competitions are no bar. If somebody sent it to the newspaper, it will be published. But sometimes, there is a kind of invisible veil. You tend to see them — or write their name yourself — an awful lot without really knowing anything about the person. Manisankar Murasingh is one of those cricketers. For almost 17 years (he made his first-class debut against Jharkhand in November 2009), Murasingh has quietly existed in nondescript cricket grounds up and down the country and in the ‘brief scores’ section of the sports pages. In a career spanning over 100 first-class games, the southpaw has scored 25 or more 55 times. He has also taken two or more wickets in 87 innings.
It’s why the 33-year-old is widely regarded as one of Tripura’s greatest cricketers.
On Day One of Tripura’s Ranji Trophy encounter against Karnataka earlier this week in Mysore, Murasingh made it to the newspaper again. He hit 25.
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The first thing Murasingh tells this daily — and the only thing he repeats time and again in the near 20-minute conversation — is his love for the game. “It was love at first sight,” he says. “Even when I was young and I wanted to play the game, my father used to take me to the ground. I love cricket; that’s why I picked cricket.”
Born in Murasingh para, a village some 70 kms away from Agartala (most of his extended family members were born there), it was the place where he first learned to play the game. That ground was his field of dreams for over five years before he graduated to a government-run academy in Tripura to play age-group cricket. When he was a child at the Netaji Subash Regional Coaching Centre (NSRCC) in Agartala, he didn’t think he would become Tripura captain one day.
When he first started training at the NSRCC, he didn’t have a single kit he could call his own. “I still remember my first day; I didn’t have a single kit, and we were just doing some fielding drills before I was asked to do some bowling drills. That’s all.”
Some 25 years later, his dreams have changed. “The ultimate would be to play in an Indian Premier League (IPL) game,” he says. He has given trials for several teams, but he remains optimistic. “It’s my last goal (in the game. When I gave my trials for the Royals, I saw how they trained and what their expectations were.” As part of the process, he was asked to score 30 runs in 10 balls, and there really are no excuses.
It’s a sentence he’s fairly familiar with. When you are from Tripura and you aspire to become a cricketer, open grounds and concrete wickets become your friends. Nets can be hard to spot. While the facilities have improved, it’s relative. “We don’t have a proper academy in Agartala,” he says. “It’s improving, but the infrastructure we have right now is not much. There is one international stadium, but it’s not completed. We only have one indoor gym in Agartala. We have three grounds but only one is fully capable. One ground is this size (the SDNRW inside the University of Mysore campus) and the others are a bit smaller.”
Put it this way. There are children of lesser Gods, and there’s Tripura. Nestled between Bangladesh, Mizoram and Manipur, the state isn’t even a backwater when it comes to the sport. It’s why Murasingh is fairly intimate with the subject. “You can’t compare Karnataka and Tripura. In cricket also, there’s a lot of difficulty over there, lots of not good infrastructure. But we have been growing over the last 4-5 years.”
That kind of growth has been visible in their performances. In the last 12 months alone, they have beaten Karnataka, Delhi (both in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy) and Gujarat (in Ranji Trophy). “I remember those wins,” Murasingh says. “One of the happiest memories.”
And better news could be around the corner as the government and the state federation are striving for a better tomorrow. According to the cricketer, there are talks underway to acquire land for a bigger academy.
At some level, Tripura, who have competed in the Ranji Trophy for a little over 40 years, come armed to competitions like these on a wing and a prayer and little else. Here’s the 33-year-old. “We are not doing well because of a lack of preparation,” he says. But it is not for a lack of trying. Their Ranji Trophy prep consisted of two days’ worth of practice in Hyderabad. “Before that, we had fitness-related screening in Tripura. In terms of actual training-based prep, we spent two days in Hyderabad (last year, they played in the Capt. K Thimmappiah Memorial event, a KSCA pre-season invitational).
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Within the wider Tripura cricketing ecosystem, Manisankar is a genuine icon, and his words carry heft. In fact, in January, Manik Saha, the chief minister, held a felicitation function after Murasingh’s 100th Ranji match. “Any goal can be achieved through hard work, discipline and self-confidence,” the press release of the function had stated. “The 100th Ranji Trophy match of Manisankar Murasingh, one of the state’s finest cricketers, stands as a living example of this.”
But the 33-year-old, who has played for Philadelphia CC in the UK, doesn’t really think of himself as a difference-maker. “I don’t think about myself from that perspective. Murasingh doesn’t matter; I’m thinking only about the game. Cricket has to keep growing in the state. It’s why he’s hopeful of the Tripura Cricket League seeing the light of day soon enough. Before that, though, the one thing he keeps telling his teammates is that they need to keep playing well in the Ranji Trophy, Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the Vijay Hazare. “You do that, grab the attention of the scouts, and you can also start dreaming.” He has also told his colleagues that ‘if Jammu & Kashmir can (win the Ranji title), we can also do it one day’.
He doesn’t know how many more seasons he has in the tank. For the time being, though, he’s going nowhere.
“I love the game, and I want to keep playing.”