Ear on the ball

Shekhar Naik hopes his Padma award will draw BCCI's attention to blind cricket

He’s a cricketer who has scored 32 centuries in a career that spans 13 years and 63 matches across all formats. Under his captaincy, India won the 2014 World Cup. Throughout his career, he has been a role model for hundreds of sportsmen and women. Which is why, when the government awarded Shekhar Naik the Padma Shri for his contributions to Indian cricket this Republic Day, India’s 50,000-odd blind cricketers raised a silent cheer to celebrate this long overdue acknowledgement. 

“Any sport is hard for someone who can’t see,” says Naik, as he describes the rules of the game. “But perhaps, because the cricket field is large and the ball so small, blind cricket is the most challenging of all sports.” 

Players — 11 in each team, including four totally blind, three partially blind and four partially sighted — rely on their sense of hearing, using an “audible” ball for the game. Unlike the clapping and cheering one associates with mainstream cricket audiences, blind cricket is played in pin-drop silence, so that the players can focus on the sound of the ball. 

The silence, however, has permeated every aspect of this sport, as it hasn’t been formally acknowledged by the Board of Control for Cricket of India, or BCCI, yet. Consequently, players of the game are forced to take leave from work to play in tournaments, and even have to raise funds to meet their travel expenses. Naik’s Padma Shri could change this.

At present, Naik is the sports coordinator of the Bengaluru-based Samarthanam Trust. Its offshoot, Cricket Association for the Blind in India, or CABI, organised the recently-concluded T20 tournament in which 10 countries participated. 

The people in my village in Shimoga, Karnataka, can’t believe that someone like me could have won such a big honour,” Naik says. “They want to be the first to felicitate me after I actually receive the award.” 

For someone whose childhood was marred by a series of misfortunes, this recognition is especially sweet. 

Naik was born with congenital blindness in 1986 to a family of modest means. His protective father was afraid of sending him to school. “My mother was also blind and initially wanted me to only focus on academics,” he recalls. 

Things changed after his father died. A chance accident around that time led young Naik to a health camp, where doctors discovered that one of his corneas was healthy and with surgery, some of his vision could return. 

The operation was successful and Naik’s mother enrolled him in a blind school. Tragically, she died soon after and Naik spent the rest of his school years in a hostel. Around this time, he discovered the sport that was to transform his life — cricket. 

“When I started playing cricket in school, I knew nothing about the game,” he says. “But somehow right from the beginning, my shots were straight like an arrow.”

His physical education teacher got him to join the cricket team of his school, and then there was no looking back. Soon, Naik was selected for the Karnataka state team of the blind as wicketkeeper. Those early years were often tough. “I was sent to coaching camps — a strange and often scary experience for a visually-challenged boy who’d never stepped out of his school,” he recalls. “We often had to practise in the heat of the summer, and had it not been for the fact that I’d promised my mother just before she died to do well in cricket, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it.” 

Naik went on to score 249 runs in the next state-level tournament, and became the only member of the Karnataka state team to be selected for the national squad in 2006. 

After playing in the national team, Naik’s cricketing statistics improved substantially. “In 2006, I received three Man of the Match prizes and was also adjudged Man of the Series,” he recounts proudly. “In 2007, when we went to play a tournament in England, I was declared Man of the Match twice.” Eventually, in 2010, Naik was appointed captain of the Indian blind cricket team. “Under my captaincy, our team won two World Cups,” he says. 

These are no mean achievements in themselves, but for a visually-challenged orphan from a small town in Karnataka, with few opportunities to excel in anything, they are little short of a miracle. At a time when he was despondent and alone after his parents died, cricket alone motivated Naik to make something of his life. 

“I used to be especially depressed when all my friends would leave the hostel to spend the summer vacation with their families, while I had nowhere to go to. But once I started playing cricket, I never felt alone.” 

In 2005, cricket brought him in touch with Samarthanam, the NGO that works to empower the visually-challenged in different fields of life. The meeting was serendipitous, and to date Naik works for, and is supported by, the organisation. “The people at Samarthanam, especially its founder, G R Mahantesh, became my family,” he says. 

This motivated him to keep playing, even though players like him received neither recognition nor aid of any sort from the government. 

Naik also met his wife though Samarthanam. They now have two daughters, who Naik calls his good luck charms. “When my first daughter was born, the Indian blind cricket team won the 2014 World Cup,” he says. “And my second one has brought me the Padma Shri.”

Many expectations hinge on Naik’s Padma award today. While some believe that with it, Indian blind cricket is finally coming of age, others feel that the underdeveloped sport will only evolve once BCCI stops being blind to it. 

“After we won the 2014 World Cup, even the president felicitated us and companies began to show some interest in sponsoring our games,” says Naik. 

At the recently-concluded T20 tournament, the Indian boys in blue beat the Pakistan team in the finals, receiving much publicity. “But until BCCI recognises and supports blind cricket, the 50,000-odd people across the country who play it will remain in limbo,” he says.

Naik now plans to develop a state-of-the-art cricket training facility for the differently-abled, especially youngsters. “In my journey so far, my disability has not hampered me in any way. In fact, it has opened up a world of possibilities,” he says. “I’d like others like me to experience the same.”