All work and all play

He's one of cricket's best-known commentators, but Harsha Bhogle loves to play down his achievements, finds Gargi Gupta

In many ways I'm still an outsider," Harsha Bhogle declares early on during this chat. We're sitting in the garden chairs littering the poolside of the ITC Maurya hotel, and Bhogle has just joined us after a verry protracted breakfast meeting with a friend. It's big match day; the Mumbai Indians IPL team, to which he is consultant, will play a make-or-break tie against the Delhi Daredevils in the evening. But Bhogle looks relaxed, his face "" which an Australian commentator once described as that of a 23-year-old (he probably never noticed the grey hair) "" belies no tension.

Bhogle's right, of course. His popularity is that of an "outsider" who's made his way into the commentary box with his glib tongue, the amateur enthusiast who, people think, doesn't really have first hand knowledge of the rough and tumble of international cricket that he is describing. "It's greatly over-dramatised," says Bhogle of the general impression that he's never played cricket. "I played for my university [Osmania] when I was in fourth year of chemical engineering," he informs (he also captained the IIM-Ahmedabad team). But if the "outsider" tag rankles, Bhogle does not seem to have allowed it to get in his way and indeed, has turned it into a strength "" "I'm the person people can relate to; they can't be a Chappell or a Holding, but they can be me."

It's a self-deprecatory streak "" or perhaps a persona that he's fashioned "" that is almost a leit motif. Witness some of his comments:

On not playing any higher than university cricket "" "I wasn't good enough...by the time I realised that I could play decent cricket, I was too old already."

On success "" "Only two things came naturally to me "" one was chemistry (I just remembered) and fielding (I could just catch a ball and hit the stumps). But most other things in life I had to struggle really hard to get."

On his well-brought-up-boy-next-door commenting "" "I don't believe in being rude... people are doing me a favour by letting me into their house because they have the option of switching off."

On being a celebrity "" "That's an overused term. You put anyone's face on the screen long enough and people will start recognising him."

"As performers, we become very superficial people as we go along."

On his family "" "I'm the least intellectual in my family."

This last one can go along with, even if it's a little excessive. Bhogle's is a family of solid academic professionals "" his father was a professor of chemistry at Osmania; his mother that of psychology; his older sister, Swati, is an MTech who heads Technology Informatics Design Endeavour, a company into promoting sustainable development through technology, and her twin, Srinivas, a PhD in statistics who worked for 22 years with Hindustan Aeronautics and now compiles cricket ratings.

But whether self-deprecatory, or an honest appraisal of what makes him tick, Bhogle pretty much eats cricket, breathes cricket, sleeps cricket. "I can't dance, I can't paint, I can't sing..." Indeed he was asked twice to be a part of Jhalak Dikhla Jaa, the celebrity dance reality show, but refused. What he can do, and loves doing, is "talk cricket for days". Twenty-three years into his career and Bhogle can still say, with so much enthusiasm in his voice, that he's just got to be sincere, "I'm like a devotee. I've known Sachin since he was 14, but even now when he stands up and hits that shot to the cover on the backfoot I go, Aah!"

It's a busy life, all work and all play, leaving little time for leisure. Lately, he and his wife Anita have been running Prosearch, a management consultancy which advises companies' top management on strategies on winning, on managing change, et cetera using cricket for illustrating their prescriptions. "It's Anita who writes the presentation, does the briefs. I just go and make the presentation" "" there goes the self-deprecation again. But the devoted husband "" "marrying her was the best thing I did in IIM, my father says" "" is quite chagrined when people "think she's helping me; it's actually the other way round". Next on the agenda is a corporate book, taking off from these talks and, perhaps, a corporate fable in the who-moved-my cheese mould, but around cricket.

But however devoted a husband he may profess to be, as a father to two grown up sons "" one is in third year BA (economics) and the other in class ten "" Bhogle says he's quite strict, not "prodding them in the right direction so much as taking a sledgehammer". "I'm a little hard on them. I think I've seen too many people struggling through life and I feel that if my kids aren't geared to it then how will they make it?" And no, they aren't budding cricketers... Clearly, one diehard cricket fanatic in the family is enough.