Triumph of hope

[1]

Vaibhav Vats grew up in a house in east Delhi, which was separated from the rest of the city by Yamuna. Cricket, in this neighborhood, occupied the role of a daily ritual. ‘Every evening two bricks were set down on the concrete, and for a few hours, us local children claimed the street’, writes Vaibhav in his first ever book Triumph in Bombay. In the description of his childhood days is the story of where his love for the game began, in the tense air of his house where he watched the 1996 cricket world cup as a 10-year-old and saw an uncle cry over India losing that dreaded semi final. A story that led to him travelling to cover World Cup 2011, as a journalist. Somewhere in between, he had turned away from the game, only to return later as a critic. What brought him back, among other things, was a book his friend had gifted Beyond a Boundary written by CLR James. “I did not know one could write about the game like that,” he says in an email interview.
“Another very important book for me was Rahul Bhattacharya’s Pundits from Pakistan. Until then, most cricket books I had read were written by older writers, who had an assuredness of voice and a fully formed worldview. After I read Pundits from Pakistan, I felt one could cut through the commercial clutter and still find beauty in the game.” The idea to write the book came in 2009. And so in his 2011 trip, he took extensive notes, filling two fat notebooks. When he wrote the book, there was no separating the travels he made and the matches he covered. One was the continuation of the other.
“For me, the two are inseparable in this book. Some reviewers have tried to analyse the cricket and the travel as separate entities — I don’t see how it is possible to do that. The cricket drives the travel, and the travel sets up the cricket. That said, I enjoyed both during this tournament. In the World Cup, there was quality cricket and the thrill of the unexpected. For example, nobody expected India to win the World Cup even a month into the tournament. I loved describing the ebbs and flows of the tournament, and the constantly changing fates of individual players. On the other hand, travel writing is something that I always enjoy.”
Vaibhav brought back with him too many memorable moments from the game as well as the sights he saw. “Cricket-wise, the quarter-final between India and Australia at Ahmedabad was the most compelling. In terms of travel, I enjoyed the time I spent in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The jubilant scenes in Dhaka, where the World Cup began, are something I’ll always remember.” While writing gave him a greater degree of control and depth, he found well-thought-out journalism just as rewarding. “I think it was Hemingway who said he lost all joy from writing once he started to write professionally. That said, I enjoyed writing about a new place in every chapter. It challenged me and also kept me fresh,” he says.