Book Reviews: "Secret Keeper" & "If Cricket is a Religion, Sachin is God"

Sorry for talking about two rather unrelated books in the same blog, but it so happens they are actually related to each other in the sense that I read them in sequence. :)

Firstly, I finally managed to take "Secret Keeper" by Mitali Perkins off my reading list. For a book categorized under "Young Fiction", it did not sound "young" at all and I very much enjoyed the book. The conflicts in the story are established quite nice-and-easily in the first half and the resolution of the conflicts in the second half were surprising and enjoyable. I did not anticipate the way the story was ended, but as I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This read and my previous read "Shine, Coconut Moon" by Nisha Meminger were both based on their respective reviews at Brown Paper by Niranjana Iyer. Having enjoyed both, I have started noting down reads from her reviewed list into my reading list.

Secondly, I finished reading "If Cricket is a Religion, Sachin is God" by Vijay Santhanam and Shyam Balasubramanian. I picked this one up from flipkart after Sachin stroked his masterful ODI double hundred. Having been an on-and-off Sachin critic over the years, I was finally convinced of his greatness after that particular innings. And the purchase of this book followed on an impulse.

While I have to say that I enjoyed reading the book in its entirety, there were places where either the discussion was a drag or totally misplaced. The authors are gushing with their passion for the little master and it shows in every page. In general, the idea is to convince you of two things - Sachin's statistics are super awesome and that he is a God, because what he achieved belittles the achievement of every other cricket in this or previous generations (except the Don, of course) through various arguments. Sometimes the arguments are compelling and at other times, they are purely irritating either for being biased, or lacking the complete context.

On the good side:

• Really wonderful statistics - let there be no doubt about it. They have gone to pains to explore various angles of the numbers, both of Sachin and his contemporaries.
• The "Age 33" factor, coined by the authors, reveals that at the age of about 33, all great batsmen tend to lose their way, with some rebounding and others not. Revealing. Most revealing.
• The parallel that they draw with Vishwanathan Anand's success. Having been guilty of not following Vishy's career, this comparison was revealing to say the least.
• Chapter 8, title "The case for Sachin", where they compare him to his Indian compatriots over the years using a new measure called "batting momentum" was novel and quite enjoyable.

On the bad side:

• They have clearly chosen to ignore Sachin's leadership issues. Clearly, Sachin's career had a major flaw in terms of Sachin's 2 failed attempts at captaincy. This discussion was clearly missed, and probably deliberately left out since it would have diluted their claims.
• While Sachin's performances over the years are nothing short of exemplary, there was a period of time (roughly between 1999-2007), where he missed out on firing on the big occasions quite frequently (vs Aus, WC 99, vs Aus, WC 03, vs everybody WC 07, a few test matches that could have been saved, but were not and so on) and it was no surprise that the authors failed to bring it up, since it would have diluted their claims.
• It is all well that Sachin performed with greatness, but belittling the achievements of others, most notably that of Ganguly and Dravid is way too glaring to ignore. The fact that India started to win abroad in tests can be solely attributed to Dravid's single minded focus on supporting the team's batting advances way beyond anything Sachin did for years (at Adelaide 04, Dravid hit a 200 and supported the team through in the 4th innings with a fifty. Awesome.) Again, in the ODI world, Ganguly was a key pillar of strength for India between 1996-2005 and many famous victories (98 Dhaka) were designed by him. By saying that "Big 3" is not even a proper term to use, the authors are clearly just favoring their favorite son.
• Boringline, a term coined by the authors to explain the Naseer Hussain tactic of bowling outside the off stump in 96 Eng series, is being compared to Bodyline on how individual greatness of players (Don and Sachin) forced captains to take extreme steps. Really? No. Really? This is the greatest drag in the book. Boringline is so inconsequential in the history of the game that nobody even bothered coining a term for it expect these authors. There was no national outrage, no stress on the diplomatic ties, no books written on it and no movies made. Bodyline hasn't been repeated in the history of the game while "boringline" has been used every now and then, most recently by Dhoni against Aussies in 2008. So, seriously, the comparison is plain stupid. It shows that the two Sachin fanboys had to draw an unwarranted parallel between the Don and Sachin and this is what they came up with.
• Their discussion on religion up front and on Chess history later on, are both drags. The first one wasn't even tolerable, but the second one is quite enjoyable, though grossly misplaced.

All in all, the book is a good read for people who like statistics, or Sachin, or both, but their fanboyish passion and the above mentioned drags make it tough to complete it.