Victorious on the blind side

Like every other new boy in school, Shekar Naik was bullied out of the cricket grounds by his seniors. You can probably guess that Shekar beat these odds, that he did not let the seniors spoil his perfect short strokes, that he trained all day until he became as good as bowler as a batsman, that went on to score 249 runs in a one-day match, that he has no fewer than four Man of the Match awards, that he is a World Cup winning Indian cricket captain. So why haven’t you heard of Shekar before? Probably because, with only 60 percent vision in his right eye, Shekar is legally blind and the cricket team he leads are the reigning world champions – the Indian Blind Cricket Team.

Born in Shimoga in Karnataka, this now Bengalurean speaks to us with a frankness that perhaps comes from the struggle he has been through. He says, “Virender Sehwag is my absolute favourite cricketer. I say this to whoever I meet, wherever I go, with the hope that he hears my words and I get to meet him someday. He did great things for the Indian team. Of course, I have met the PM, Narendra Modi, and that was quite the experience – Modiji asked for our autographs! Now I will be working with Hrithik Roshan for a show on Discovery Channel that will highlight unlikely heroes and I can’t help but wonder how it is that a non-cricketer like Roshan is so interested in a man like me who leads a team that is so ignored by the cricket greats of this nation. Hats off to Hrithik.”

Of all the countries with a blind cricket team, India is the only one where the official cricket board – the BCCI – does not accept its affiliation and therefore keeps the team from making any significant sponsorship deals. “ Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka and England have made significant efforts to bring their blind teams into prominence. In India, there is nothing of that. Sourav Ganguly, who was the Blind T20 World Cup brand ambassador, did not appear for a single match. To give you an example of star support, I have to go back to 2002 when Robin Singh and Mohammad Kaif donated some kits to us. Why would anyone play for the blind team? Why would they leave a job to do something that has no returns and where everyone will be quick to forget that you play cricket too?”

In 2014 India, under Shekar, defeated the defending champions Pakistan to win the fourth Cricket World Cup for the Blind. Little changed for the team’s captain, “I wake up at 6.30 am everyday to go for a jog, then I drop my daughter to her kindergarten, go to work with the Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled, in a 9 to 6 job. I hop from MNC to MNC and give presentations so that something might stir and some good soul might donate kits to the team. Everyday I change buses thrice and have to depend entirely on public transport. Sometimes I cannot read a bus number and have to ask a bystander, who will promptly say something like, “Can’t you see?!” I think of how my life would have been had I been a cricketer with sight. And I feel very, very sad.”