'Who are you, mate?!'

Faisal Shariff

Scene 1: A young dark man with a receeding hairline is stopped at the gates of the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, by the security guards.

He identifies himself. His name draws a blank. A bemused expression flits across his face. Followed by a smile that can only be described as a rictus of embarassment.

Mannava Sri Kanth Prasad is today a man alone, as only a cricketer who has briefly risen to the heights and then been dumped can be alone. The national team searches for a wicket-keeper for the future, and Prasad searches for answers to a question.

To wit, what on earth did he do wrong?

To refresh the memory -- and your memory, like that of the security guards at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, just might need refreshing -- MSK Prasad is the man who kept wickets for India on the last tour of Australia, and did a more than decent job with the gloves too.

He, however, failed with the bat. He was sidelined then. And now, forgotten. Forgotten, too, is the fact that on that tour, nobody distinguished himself with the bat.

Scene 2: Inside the Chinnaswamy Stadium, on the lush grass surrounding the central playing strip, a young lad chucks the ball at a probable, giving him some practise. John Wright wanders past, does a double take, turns to the lad and asks, "Who are you, mate?"

A bemused expression flits across the young man's face. He smiles -- a smile that can only be described as a rictus of embarassment.

Vijay Bharadwaj is a shattered man, today. At one time, this ground was his. Today, they ask, 'Who are you, mate?' And he asks himself, 'Who am I? And what the hell am I doing on a cricket field?'

And then he shrugs, and picks up the ball, and chucks it again at a player who was once his mate and who, today, is one of the chosen while Vijay himself slinks in the shadows because if he wanders even accidentally into the circle of the spotlight, someone will ask him, 'Who are you?'

All morning he chucks the ball at the probables. And then he goes away. Cynicism is his constant companion, bitterness his anthem.

“Sometimes, when I think about the difference between when you’re in and when you are out, I feel like crying," says MSK Prasad. "When someone asks me who I am, what do I say? Hello, my name is Prasad and I have played cricket for India?"

Prasad missed the last cricket season due to a serious spinal injury. The resulting surgery cost him a little over Rs 100,000. No, he hasn't asked the BCCI to reimburse his medical expenses -- because he has been around long enough to know what a humiliating experience that can be. Being asked who he is is humiliating enough -- why would he go out of his way to look for more?

I spent some time sitting by myself in the pavilion, and watching the goings on. And I realised what the word 'insecurity' can really mean. It is, at its worst -- and it is at its worst when you know you are somewhere where you don't belong any longer -- like having a communicable disease, with very visible symptoms. You shrink into yourself, you avoid your fellow man.

MSK Prasad was like that. Hovering on the fringes, obviously reluctant to go up to his mates, looking on wistfully while they obliged the hordes of autograph seekers. You could see it on his face, sense it in his body language -- the anguish of a man who not so long ago was one of the chosen 11, and who is today just another unnoticed face in the crowd.

It was his childhood buddy, VVS Laxman, who suddenly spotted Prasad, cut through the crowd, threw his arm around the former stumper and dragged him off in the direction of the team dressing room.

As they entered the pavilion, we got together, the three of us, for a casual chat. And just then, Erapalli Prasanna, arguably the greatest off spinner the world has known, walked by. Stopped. Turned to Prasad, and said, "Where are you? What happened to you? You kept well in Australia after a slow start... how can you just give up so easily? Look who's taken your place, Dighe! Tell Venkata Rao to do something. Just because some people spoke some loose words about you, you get disheartened?!

“C’mon, champ,” Pras said, as he walked away, "get back in there, you should be keeping for India!"

Prasanna went. Leaving behind a Prasad who, for once, sported the trace of a smile. A genuine smile, not an embarassed grimace.

"I'll get back into the team," he told me, as he kept his eyes on the disappearing Prasanna. “I can do it, it is only a matter of time.”

Last August, MSK was recruited by Bharat Dynamic Limited (BDL) in Hyderabad. His workplace houses, among other things, India's Prithvi missile, sans the warhead.

When you think about it, that is a pretty apt metaphor for Prasad as well.

Also read:
Bold, but inconsistent decisions
'My priority is to establish myself as a specialist batsman in the side' - Vijay Bharadwaj