BENGALURU: Picture this: The 1983 World Cup is in full swing and the Indian cricket team, a bunch of underdogs, is playing against Zimbabwe. And all is not going well. “I was in my dressing room, preparing myself for a breakfast and a good shower and suddenly, there’s a big shout from outside – ‘17 for five wickets, come out!’ I saw the scoreboard and then the floor took off from under my feet,” recalls Syed Kirmani, former Indian wicket-keeper.
The team continues to lose wicket after wicket, and the score is a disappointing 140/8 when Kirmani comes on the field with captain Kapil Dev opposite him. He continues, “I walked up to Kapil, and said, ‘We are in a do-or-die situation, we cannot give up just like this,’ and he replied, ‘We have to play at least 30 overs’.” This partnership, completely turning the tables on Zimbabwe and winning India a crucial match was never recorded on camera but is the stuff of legend in Indian cricket.
Kirmani’s autobiography Stumped: Life Behind and Beyond the Twenty-Two Yards (Penguin Play; Rs 499), set to be launched on his 75th birthday on December 29, promises to reveal many such intense, heartfelt and fascinating anecdotes from his storied career, unveiling the layers behind the cricketer’s persona, and giving an inside look at cricket in the ’80s. “Everybody goes through good times, bad times, ups and downs – this is the untold story of my life. The true facts without any bias or prejudice,” says Kirmani.
Five years in the making, putting the autobiography together has been a long process for Kirmani and his co-authors Debashish Sengupta and Dakshesh Pathak. After a long time spent planning, the final push to publish came from his old friends and former teammates. He says, “I made up my mind nearly five to six years ago and I was noting things down. Eventually, my ’83 group colleagues said, ‘Yaar tum khaali bol rahe ho, kab aa rahi hain kitab?’ (You’ve only been saying things, when is the book actually coming out?), and now the day is almost here!’’
The book promises to cover pretty much everything fans might have wondered about the cricketer – from his boyhood days spent playing gully cricket to his international cricketing days and beyond. Recalling his early days of playing cricket in Bengaluru’s bylanes, he shares, “I grew up playing cricket in the gulleys of Jayamahal Extension. I would block a cork ball standing behind three bamboo sticks – two bricks were my first cricket gloves.”
Apart from nostalgic memories, Kirmani says that he has not shied away from addressing difficult moments, “One such moment was when I was dropped like a hot brick right after my debut. That was way back in 1979 when the Indian team was selected to go to England for the Second World Cup in 1979 – that was the biggest shock of my life,” he says. Speaking about the title’s allusion to difficulties he faced after his international career ended in 1986, Kirmani says, “People will start wondering – what does he mean by ‘stumped’? See, I was stumping everybody on the field, and after my international cricketing career, I was being ‘stumped’.”
According to Kirmani, one thing fans can expect from the book is the unexpected. “There are quite a few surprises in the book where the reaction from fans will be ‘Oh my God, is this what happened?’” he laughs.