Building Blocks
Stories of people with good eyesight
“Five-thirty: the hour is beautiful. Birds can be heard, and milkmen, but in the melting inkiness of the house you know you have beaten the city. Australia comes to us like a secret, crystalline. The cricketers in their whites are more defined than elsewhere. The sound of the ball pitching is harder; the thump into the wicketkeeper's gloves - fingers facing up - louder.”
In his essay, A Billion Bill Lawrys, Rahul Bhattacharya paints a vivid portrait of the Indian cricket fan's unique relationship with Australia. I have written a small share of pieces on Australian cricket and cricketers, and despite my best efforts, I don’t think I can top this. In just sixty-two words, Bhattacharya perfectly distils the charm of waking up crusty-eyed at dawn to watch those cricket superheroes.
My first experience of this came at nine years old, during India's tour of Australia in 1999. The Boxing Day Test fell neatly into my school’s week-long winter break. Forget sleeping in, I was going to get up earlier than the birds outside my window.
Australia had recently won the ODI World Cup, showed up with a team that had McGrath and Warne and Ponting and both the Waughs and, I don’t know, a million other extremely scary cricketers.
India, on the other hand, limped into Melbourne, nursing wounds from a 285-run drubbing in the first Test. No problem, time for a bit of retribution. Australia took first strike, piling on runs like there was no tomorrow. India only got to bat midway through the next day. And as they were getting in, the commentators were whispering about some young fast bowler making his debut. Soon enough, he was handed the red ball. There he stood, a vision of youthful energy: blonde spikes, a torso so lean it seemed sculpted by wind tunnels, and a scowl on his face. This being his first game, I was expecting our boys to welcome him with some pure Indian hospitality, if you know what I mean.
Instead, Brett Lee’s pace made me fear for the safety of those in the navy blue helmets. The scorecard says he took five wickets, but the impact was more visceral. The Indian batters looked, at least from the other side of a screen, physically and mentally unprepared for that kind of ferocity.
That entire series was a lesson about Indian cricket as much as it was about Australian cricket. The gulf was massive.
**
Over this past week, the Olympic chatter has shifted gears. As the carnival lights dim and the dust settles, we find ourselves in the familiar place of looking back at the fortnight that was.
Unsurprisingly, India's medal tally has become a hot topic. After Tokyo's seven-medal haul - hardly a reason for street parties - Paris' five feels like a step backward. Cue: the chorus of voices questioning the return on investment. “400 crores spent, and this is all we have to show for it?” The gotcha confetti is bright and tax-free, I hear.
But, as Abhinav Bindra, speaking from Paris, wisely points out - cash alone cannot guarantee medals. Building a sporting powerhouse requires a far more complex recipe. For a deep dive into what it really takes, I'd point you towards the recent insightful essays by Prem Panicker and Nandan Kamath.
“Sustained sporting excellence is based on mass support, grassroots development, and funding -- and it is this trifecta India needs to work on, systematically, if we are not to have quadrennial conversations on the lines of 'Why can't a nation of 140 crore people…”
This bit, from Prem’s piece, got me thinking about some of my favourite such stories.
Thanks for Coming
On 29th July, Republic of Korea and France faced off in the men’s team final event in Archery. The rules were simple: three men per team, shooting in turns. Each team got six arrows per set, a maximum score of 60, and three total sets in the match. At the end of a set, a tie earned one point, a win two.
France opened with 57; as did Korea. France then shot 58 in the second set - on most days good enough to clinch a crucial two points. Korea shot 59. That’s five bullseye hits and one 9. France shot 56 in the third, which was a problem, because Korea applied the coup de grace with another 59. 5-1, Olympic gold, thanks for coming.
This was Korea’s sixth gold in the men’s team event from the last seven Olympics. They have also won all ten golds in the women’s team event, first introduced in 1988. The individual events are no different. There is domination, then there is daylight, and then there is this dynastic hold on an entire sport.
Archery's roots in Korea run centuries deep, but its rise as a professional sport is a recent tale. In the '70s, after archery's comeback into the Olympics, the Korean Archery Association (KAA) began sending young talent and coaches to Japan and the USA - then the world's archery powerhouse - to learn from the best.
Then 1981 happened. That year, Seoul won the bid to host the 1988 Olympics. The head of state, Chun Doo-Hwan, ordered major businesses to invest in sports for a strong home showing. Hyundai was allotted archery.
Three years later, at the Los Angeles Olympics, Korea, coached by now-legendary figure Kim Hyung-Tak, won gold in the men’s team event. In 1988, Korea won silver in the men’s individual event, and gold in men’s team, women’s individual, and women’s team.
If this sounds like the result of deep attention into a sport, the real investment was happening at the grassroots. Archery clubs mushroomed everywhere across the country - no school too far from one. Take Tokyo 2021 gold medalist Kim Je Deok, who first picked up a bow at the age of nine. “As an elementary school kid, I shot around 300 to 500 arrows per day,” he told World Archery. Accounting for eight or nine years of shooting these many arrows everyday, he arrived at the Tokyo Olympics with a log of nearly a million arrows.
Today, it is tougher to win an archery competition within Korea than one at the Olympics. Rio 2016 gold medallists Chang Hye-jin and Ku Bon-chan did not even make it to the Tokyo games. The archery association backs up this intense competition and hard-ground skill with an insane level of investment into preparation and details. Sample this - months before the Tokyo Olympics, they scouted the venue, noting weather, wind direction, and noise levels that the archers would have to face come the Games. Then they built an exact replica at home, down to the colour of the stands. Nothing is left to assumption within Korean archery, not even the possibility of rain.
Honestly, France never stood a chance, even under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
Sunrise
As Korea prepared to host the Seoul Olympics, Japan was quietly falling under the spell of a different sport. Football, once an afterthought, was capturing hearts across the nation, thanks in no small part to the strokes of a manga artist's pen. In 1981, when Captain Tsubasa first hit Japanese shelves, the country boasted a modest 68,900 registered footballers. Seven years later, that number had soared to 240,000. For decades to come, nearly every Japanese footballer would credit this comic series for igniting their passion for football.
Yet, for all the fervour in the streets and schoolyards, Japan's national team remained well below the global standard. They hadn’t qualified for a World Cup, and lagged behind even in Asian competitions. Their domestic league, called Japan Soccer League, was officially amateur.
The 1990 World Cup came and went, Japan once again relegated to spectators. It was the final straw. The Japan Football Association (JFA) decided it was time for a revolution. In 1992, they unveiled the J-League, the nation's first professional football league. The initial target was just that: to professionalise Japan’s football. Gone were the days when teams bore the names and management styles of corporate giants like Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi. Now, clubs would be emblems of their communities, run with the seriousness of top-tier football entities. Simultaneously, the JFA opened its coffers, luring twilight-year stars from abroad. Even the Brazilian legend Zico was coaxed out of retirement.
The 1994 World Cup qualifiers saw Japan inch closer, but the door remained frustratingly shut.
But then, Japan zigged where others zag. Instead of starting over, they looked towards solutions. Scouts were dispatched across football hubs in Europe and South America to identify the missing pieces of their puzzle. The result was the audacious 100-Year Vision, a roadmap stretching to 2092 - the J-League's centenary. Its pillars are elegantly simple: nurture the grassroots, embrace professionalism, and cultivate a culture of excellence that would, in time, yield World Cup glory.
It was a brave dream, especially for a nation yet to taste the heady atmosphere of a World Cup match. But they had dived in, head first.
In Japan, football has always trailed sumo wrestling and baseball in popularity. So, they started with the kids. DVDs, TV shows, more manga, and endless Captain Tsubasa reruns.
Fun fact: Captain Tsubasa’s fandom stretched beyond Japanese borders, finding a devoted fan in a hyperactive kid from Rosario in Argentina. We know him as Lionel Messi.
Japan qualified for the 1998 World Cup. They lost all their matches, but a threshold had been breached. Since then, they've reached the knockout stages in four of six men’s World Cups. In 2018, they nearly reached the quarters. 2022 saw them beat Germany and Spain before a cruel penalty shootout dashed their dreams once more. Meanwhile, the women have already climbed atop the Everest, winning the World Cup in 2011.
Today, the J-League boasts three divisions and over sixty pro clubs. Coaches regularly train in Europe and South America. Schoolchildren receive a level of training that would make many developed nations envious, with high school championships drawing crowds that rival professional matches.
From fielding an all-domestic team in their World Cup debut, Japan's 2022 starting eleven against Germany featured ten players from overseas clubs, mostly European.
As I write this, Liverpool Football Club are about to begin their new Premier League season. Their first-choice defensive midfielder is Japan’s Wataru Endo.
Speed
Ah, yes. The story about Indian and Australian cricket that I left incomplete. Nineteen winters after Brett Lee’s tempest, India were in Australia again. Their record in the time since had been better, they were more equal, but it was still a tour where you were expected to lose.
Boxing Day 2018 dawned, and I was there at 5:30 am, blurry-eyed, for another Melbourne classic. Australia were rampant from the previous week’s win in Perth, the series was tied at 1-1, and India were going to bat first on what looked like a typically unforgiving pitch. This game had a debutant too, but he wore Indian colours. As Mayank Agarwal strode into the MCG cauldron, surrounded by a sea of baying voices, I hoped he'd survive long enough to shield Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli. He scored 76. Even more impressively, it wasn’t just gritted-teeth survival. Mayank looked sharp and ready for Starc, Cummins, and Hazlewood. A week later, he scored 77 in Sydney.
Two years later, on the same Melbourne patch, it was 21-year-old Shubman Gill’s turn for a baptism by fire. He scored a solid 44 on his debut, and followed it up with a scarcely-believable 91 on that final day at Brisbane.
India won both the 2018-19 and 2020-21 Test series in Australia, and their triumphs were crafted by a species that previous generations did not know could exist within us. This had always been a land of batters and spinners, but the fast bowling lineup, by the end of the second series, was the envy of the world. All of them, through different routes, have benefitted from the vision of a businessman at a tyre company in Chennai.
In 1987, Ravi Mammen, then managing director of the Madras Rubber Factory, set up the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai. His conviction was simple yet profound: India's dearth of genuine quicks was the albatross around its cricketing neck. Our World Cup squad that year supported this theory. Save for the indomitable Kapil Dev, India's seam attack of Roger Binny, Manoj Prabhakar, and Chetan Sharma was more gentle breeze than hurricane. Every other team, including the next-door neighbours, could fill a room with high-quality fast bowling talent, some even an entire apartment.
To set up a proper academy, Mammen needed coaches. The first call went to Australia. Dennis Lillee was hired, and he would spend twenty years as the alchemist of an explosion. But an Australian, no matter how legendary, taking a key spot in Indian cricket didn’t, couldn’t, come without resistance. Undeterred, MRF recruited well-connected domestic coaches and dispatched letters to state associations, asking them to send their brightest youngsters over to Madras. Amongst the starry-eyed pupils to make the trip was a short, curly-haired boy. Dennis Lillee, to this day, probably regrets asking Sachin Tendulkar to leave fast bowling aside and become a batter.
Progress was slow, but consistent and mapped out with extreme professionalism. Over time, Lillee transformed how young Indian fast bowlers trained. Zaheer Khan, a proud alumni, credits the foundation for raising his weight from 70 to 83 kilos while dropping fat and gaining muscle. In the last few years, Glenn McGrath has taken over from Lillee as the academy director, but all else remains the same. Young bowlers still make their pilgrimage to Chennai, braving the unforgiving sun, honing their craft hour after gruelling hour. It stands as the finest finishing school of its kind in the nation.
The twin victories over Australia were balm to the Indian fan’s soul, long scarred by past drubbings. The true euphoria, however, did not come from the resilient batting, stirring as it was. It came from watching our pacers outgun the Australians on their own patch. And in knowing that these were creations of a system that was meticulously built to generate excellence over time. If Australia can throw another Brett Lee at us, we will have someone in our shed too.
What is that famous saying about building Rome?
Brilliant, as always!!
Excellent piece.