All our life we thought Sanjay Manjrekar was diffident, complex. With Imperfect he has allowed a window—both panes wide open, curtains-fluttering-in-the-wind kind of open—into his soul. Sports books in India, especially biographies and even more so those of cricketers, are rarely bare-to-the-bones honest. Manjrekar’s autobiography, Imperfect, bucks that trend. He calls a spade a spade.
Batting colossus Vijay Manjrekar’s son had only one dream—to become a Test cricketer and play for India. In the book, Sanjay tries to explain simply his relationship with his father. It was a complex bond. The cricket education was fantastic, but then there were times when, a simple family ride in the car turned ugly due to his father’s rage. In the end, it was his mother Rekha who was his rock. Not surprisingly, he dedicates the book to her.
The chapter on Pakistan is, perhaps, the one that every Indian cricket fan must read. There is this one incident in Karachi when both India and Pakistan were practicing. Suddenly, all players saw the great leg spinner Abdul Qadir chasing a man. The chase went on for quite some time, with the cops getting involved and helping Qadir pin the intruder down. The leggie was allowed to bash the intruder up. No one knew the story; what was the reason, the incident didn’t even find space in the papers the next day. The man had pinched Qadir’s bottom!
Lucid and precise, the book does not waste words. It holds your attention right through the 200 pages. Do you want to know how an Indian team meeting of late 1980s and 1990s used to take place on tours? Do you want to know what really happened on that night of October 23, 1993, in Sharjah, when India played arch-rivals Pakistan in bad light and with street lights on? Do you want to know how Mohammed Azharuddin led the team, what he said in meetings, or on the field? What really went wrong in that ill-fated semifinal match against Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup? Imperfect brings you the inside story.
Manjrekar’s had some ‘imperfect’ relationships with erstwhile teammates ever since he retired, including Sachin Tendulkar. Interestingly, his book reveals how the duo stuck together on tours quite often. Above all, this is also a story about Manjrekar’s perfect expectations of himself and the struggle he had in meeting them.
He gives an insight into the attentive, caring personalities Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan are, beyond their image of tough competitors. The anecdote-brimming parts are those about the tour of the West Indies and Pakistan in 1989, and South Africa in 1992. Absolute diamonds—the stories about Jeff Dujon, Malcom Marshall, Vivian Richards, and young Manjrekar, of course.
The book is also Manjrekar’s way of thanking all those who were part of his cricketing life and after. A constant thread in the book is his ode to Mumbai cricket with all its patrons, players, coaches and
well-wishers, who were like his surrogate parents.
Imperfect
Sanjay Manjrekar
Published by Harper Sport
Pages: 206
Price: Rs 699