TIME TO WRITE: REFLECTIONS AFTER READING ‘TIME TO TALK’ – THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CURTLY AMBROSE

          (This is not a review of the book. So, people expecting a review of sorts can better stop reading and continue their useful work)

Before continuing with my useless rants, special thanks to Sachin Bansal and Co. for announcing the Big Billion Week recently in October. I don’t know how much it mattered to others, but for a bibliomaniac like me, it was a fairy in disguise. My sincere gratitude is also extended to my close buddy Karthikeyan, who has been pushing me towards biographies, autobiographies and biopics, thankfully. I must admit that they have had a really drastic positive effect in me.

And, I had bought this book and kept it untouched for about a fortnight. But after watching this man bowl in the All Stars cricket match, something nudged me to read it. So, here I am.

Cricket – the word itself has some kind of vibratory resonation attached to it and rightfully, it is the most followed sport in the subcontinent (not to degrade any other sports, for Heaven’s sake). Any cricket lover would spontaneously transfer the thoughts towards World Cup, the supreme recognition of dominance of this game of euphoric eleven. And, the next frame would be Clive Lloyd holding the prestigious trophy back in 1975. Also in 1979. Those are not mere pictures but the frozen moments that depict the sheer audacity and passion, with which the West Indians reigned over the sport, assaulting the other nations with relative ease, before Kapil Dev and his men discontinued their run forever till date in 1983.

Curtly Ambrose, being the descendant of such a team, has shouldered the legacy for the next decade and a half, though he was never gifted to be a part of the WC winning squad. Ambi (not the Indian version) is how he was called, but en route his descriptions of the various highs and lows, one could sense the Anniyanish attitude of him on the field and quite an Ambi-like (the Indian version, here) behavior off the green. ‘Time To Talk’ is not just a book explaining Curtly Ambrose’ persona, but rather an account of the rise and fall of the West Indian dynasty in the cricketing empire.

The first half – or rather three quarters – of the book express the pride and pompousness of being a bowler of a team that combined ruthlessness with an unquenchable thirst, to win countless matches. In contrast, the remaining portion makes the reader feel the vehemence of a veteran, who couldn’t help but watch his team sliding towards a downfall, handing over a rich legacy to another team.

Curtly, true to his name, has always been curt towards the media, but he elaborates that he always wanted five and a half ounces in his hand – he mentions the cork ball – to speak for him and about him. The whole book contains his references in an honestly harsh and brutally blatant manner, just like the way he bowled, without any shortcuts to take wickets. To think of a team that has maintained an astonishing record of having never lost a Test series for fifteen years at a stretch from 1980 to 1995 without these kinds of bowlers is like eating food without salt.

We have always experienced cricket from the batsman’s point of view. The ultimate expectation of a spectator would be a 600 + score in case of a Test, or a 350 + in ODIs. “How many centuries in this innings?” would be our first question; seldom would anybody ask “Was there any five wicket haul?” in the first place. Same is the case with the cricket books also. While we are totally inclined to read Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Kevin Pietersen or Yuvraj Singh, rarely do we remember a Zaheer Khan or a Shaun Pollock.

This book, to me, sounded like the one written by a doppelganger of Curtly Ambrose, time travelling back to his playing days, and watching him play along with his team. And, one more highlighting aspect that distinguishes TTT (Time To Talk; let us call it in the short form wherever, from now on) from the others is that there are not too much blabbers about the personal self. Instead, Curtly carefully strolls us through almost all the team members, with whom he shared the space in the West Indian cap.

Personally for me, Winston Benjamin to Curtly Ambrose resembled Vinod Kambli to Sachin Tendulkar. There are many other facts that strike a chord with the Indian cricket scenario. Curtly states that the players from the Big Four (viz. Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica) were mostly given preference to others, which has similarities to Mumbai players being given unfair advantage over the others in the past here in India. Hugh Gore as a mentor, who was one of the important people who pushed Curtly Ambrose into cricket, has his own share of being an alter ego to Ramkant Achrekar for Sachin Tendulkar.

Curtly Ambrose, being 6 foot 8, was naturally focused on basketball, even after receiving the national call-up in the national squad, and he says he was not 100% interested in cricket even then, and wanted to push his way into NBA. For one of the evergreen quicks of the history, with 405 scalps in 98 matches in white uniform, this sounds unrealistic. Yet true.

The narrations of certain incidents sends a chill in the vertebral column, but the man himself tells that any form of aggression was always only inside the ropes and never beyond it. Some of the incidents involving his encounters with Steve Waugh, Dean Jones and Mike Atherton are really a treat to read, and the scene just expands infinitely before us like holography. The concept of ‘letting one have it’ finds its place at numerous places in the book as a reference to the harsh treatment received by a player for not performing well, or for sledging unnecessarily. Dean Jones, according to Curtly, was dealt in heavily by him for complaining to the umpire, asking Curtly to remove the white wristbands that he always wore throughout his career, because that ‘disturbed his concentration to focus on the white ball’. But when Dean Jones told Curtly at the non – striker’s end that it didn’t matter about the wristband, Curtly got really serious and unsettled Jones for the whole of the innings. Now, this typical character would be explained by many people as the ruthlessness of the West Indian bowlers, but the lanky speedster states that nobody in WI had ever wanted to break a jaw or rib intentionally, and that was just a way of expressing sportive aggression.

No wonder that Steve Waugh has written foreword to this book, though it contains a lot of passages explaining the chivalrous rivalry that both of them shared. There are also wonderful excerpts from Atherton, who was one of the strongest rivals of Curtly, and was ironically the 400^th dismissal of the legend.

While his dedication is shown by the mention of every player starting from Clive Lloyd and Malcolm Marshall, who has been the role model and idol for Curtly, to the likes of Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Tino Best, his openness is brought to limelight by his slashing Lloyd (during his administrative role of being the manager to the team), when he intentionally left Courtney Walsh and Curtly back at the airport during one of their abroad tours; Brian Lara, though praised at many parts, has been criticized for his immature blurt that he wished to captain the West Indies, when the likes of Walsh were already there in the team.

When he says, “There was no one in the world cricket at that time who could have subdued me. Not even Sir Donald Bradman in his pomp”, that does not seem to be a statement of blowing his own trumpet but rather as an outcome of his intent and personal confidence in himself as an able bowler.

The book, during the fluid passage, brings out the relatively better transition in the bowling department when Walsh and Curtly took over the reign, and the likes of Reon King, Mervyn Dillon and Cameron Cuffy, entered the team as new entrants, whereas, the batting sphere had stumbled heavily after the exit of people like Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge and Sir Vivian Richards. Now, this kind of observation can never be expected while reading a batsman’s autobiography because that would have never struck him.

Regarding the players of the next generation to his, Sir Curtly mentions a high regard for Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis. And, the message to the current period of cricket is very vital. “If you have a team full of youngsters, who is going to teach them the way? A great team always has a good balance between youth and experience. When we speak of Chris Gayle, we hear about how explosive he is in T20, and yes, of course he is. But he is also a quality batsman in the Test arena as his two triple centuries will testify.” This pretty much sums up what cricket is and how it would progress towards doom if Test cricket is ignored.

Time To Talk – Curtly Ambrose with Richard Sydenham

Publisher : Aurum Press Ltd., London.

Pages: 282

Price: Subject to change (because I bought it in offer in Flipkart).