A new hero is born in Salman Rushdie. This is Tiger Pataudi. The novelist, who lost an eye in an attack while giving a speech in upstate New York, wrote in his book The Knife: If he can stand up to the breakneck speed of (Wes) Hall and (Charlie) Griffith, I'm sure he can pour water into a glass without spilling it and generally function as a one-eyed man. You will be successful. A world of two eyes. ”
Is Rushdie a cricket fan? There are two stories that have done the rounds. One is him playing outside his house in Mumbai in the 1950s, and I think his childhood hero was Polly Umrigal. Another thing is that he said that he supported the Indian cricket team more than a decade ago. I don't know if either is real or not. Sounds like “Bollywood cuteness” if you know what I mean. It's like an anecdote sewn into a story after someone becomes famous. Of course I could be wrong and while Rushdie was playing with his buddies in his boyhood days, he might have pretended to be Hazare or Mankad.
However, like James Joyce, he uses cricketer names for characters in his novels. Joyce's Finnegans Wake has players from the golden era such as WG Grace, Lange and Fry. There's even a slim book called Cricket in the Writings of James Joyce.
In his latest novel, Victory City, Rushdie gives names to the sons of the fictional Pampa Kampana – Errapalli, Bhagwat and Gundappa – and brings them together as Karnataka cricket's three greats – Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Vishwanath. gave him an immortal name. in Karnataka.
On a side note, it has been 50 years since they played a key role in Karnataka's first Ranji victory. However, the Karnataka State Cricket Association is yet to name the stands for them.
The names of the fictitious sons were chosen by their father, King Bukka Raya I. According to the astrological chart, “Gundappa means that the child will be generous and noble in character, Bhagwat means that he will be a devoted servant of God, and Ellapalli suggested that the child will be rich.” An idealistic dreamer with an imagination… Booka privately admitted to Pampa Campana that the boys' actual personalities largely disproved the value of the astrologer's predictions… ”
His earlier film The Moor's Last Sigh features former Indian player Abbas Ali Baig in a key role. When Baig played in Test 50 against Australia in Mumbai in 1960, a young woman ran from the stands and kissed him on the cheek. Thirty years later, Rushdie created a painting called “The Kiss of Abbas Ali Baig'' in his novel.
“My mother (Aurora) was an inspiration,” the character says. “She hurried home and she completed the painting in one go, where a 'real' shy peck performed with courage turned into a full-fledged Western.” . -Movie clinch. It was the Aurora version that everyone remembers…”
Some scholars may still be studying cricket in Salman Rushdie's books…