Why Bharat Sundaresan is so determined to enjoy his ‘second innings’
Cricket commentator and writer Bharat Sundaresan reveals how cricket – and a Brian Lara innings in particular – saved his life.
I can testify that when you are moments away from dying, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Just that the image which flashed past mine involved Brian Lara hitting the winning runs through the covers against Australia in Barbados in 1999. Probably a couple of seconds from when my heart was about to stop beating.
I was 22 and it was June 11, 2007. Less than a month before I was scheduled to leave Mumbai for a 10-month journalism course in Chennai. A sojourn I’d promised myself would be the “second innings” I so desperately sought. Away from the drug-fuelled, ambitionless, self-loathing lifestyle I’d built for myself in my place of birth. Then, I overdosed. For the second time in two years, and this time to an extent where one by one my faculties were collapsing; my heart about to give up next. I was about to go with a single thought in my still-active brain. “You’re about to die a loser.”
It was a regular concoction of pills, powder, weed, LSD, and whatever other hallucinogen was on the menu for the evening. An extra special night, my temporary farewell to Mumbai. Little did I know it nearly became my ultimate farewell. Even if I should have known better.
We were in a farmhouse far away from medical help. I was with a bunch of otherwise well-meaning fellow metalheads and friends who, like me, had succumbed to the throes of intoxication. I basically had no one or nothing to help me, and it didn’t help when a couple of them broke into a rendition of The End by The Doors. My survival depended on me fighting off the urge to give up, and to somehow keep breathing. Somehow keep living.
In that moment of utter desperation, it’s no surprise that my brain turned to cricket as a last gasp, as I begged for a “second innings”. West Indies cricket and Brian Lara to be precise. Cricket had, after all, been my life. My life had, after all, been cricket. Cricket had kept me grounded when all I wanted was to fly high. Cricket kept me sober when I scoffed at sobriety. Eventually, when it mattered most, cricket kept me alive. Cricket saved my life.
You might be wondering how I have such clear visions of overdosing and the resultant near-death experience. I’d be as curious as you. In fact, I wished I didn’t remember the scariest moment of my life so vividly. But, over time, I’ve come to grasp the power of being able to do so.
If anything, I relive the “I’m going to die a loser” moment every morning as I look at myself in the mirror. Then I smile, and keep smiling, for in my head, I’ve just ticked off another bonus day I probably didn’t deserve to be around for. For, as in cricket, I’ve learnt that in life, too, you need to acknowledge the failures of your first go at it, in order to be grateful for the turnaround in your second innings. If you, like me, are fortunate to get one.
I re-emerged as a very different person after June 11, 2007, once I realised the worth of my life. Starting with taking a vow to never indulge in a hallucinogen of any kind. Instead getting a kick out of every aspect of the world around me and beyond me. The objective was no longer getting high but rather lifting the spirits of everyone I came across and around every room I walked into. To smile, yes, but to spread smiles.
I grew more comfortable in my own skin. I’d had the long mane for a while by then, having decided to grow it as a symbol of my independence from a deeply troubling and physically abusive relationship I’d endured at the hands of my brother growing up. And I’d always liked my colours, like obsessively. As time passed, I started experimenting with them more and more. The best part was the impact it seemed to have on others, who too were slowly drifting away from the compulsion to conform and trying to embrace their true selves.
I never aimed to be different. I was only ever being who I am.
Cricket, as always, provided me with a grand opportunity to explore and express myself even more. Firstly, as a writer and journalist with The Indian Express for 10-and-a-half years and later when I began to author books.
I’d broken out of my self-enforced stupor and created a lot of momentum personally and with my professional career. My natural inquisitiveness about all things life and people helped me in growing quickly as a journalist. And though I’d get anointed as the “Net Whisperer” in Australia, watching nets and absorbing training sessions had always been part of my approach to my work from the early days – even when I was covering fifth-division soccer in some outposts around Mumbai.
What also helped was this inherent connection with cricket that I’d been blessed with. My first memories in life involved watching Patrick Patterson bowling bullets with his foot pointing at the Indian batters at the point of release. And for some inexplicable reason, I could always answer any question anyone had about cricket or cricketers. From the time I was about six, long before there was a thing called the internet. I’d be reeling off stats for Geoff Marsh or narrating backstories about Peter Taylor to amazed family members and neighbours alike during the 1992 World Cup. I was simply blessed to be the “cricket guy” – something I get referred to a lot around Australia – and those around me knew it as well. That whatever I did in life, cricket would play a part in it. Nobody could have guessed how big a role.
But somehow for all that I achieved professionally in India, I still never felt like I fully belonged there. Or that I was ever fully understood. That only happened once I left. And the biggest power surge in my second innings came when I moved to Australia. Here is where I truly found myself.
Here is where I found my purpose in life, to unabashedly spread joy and smiles. By being myself. By wearing what I want to, which generally involves every shade of every colour out there, even if they clash or should never get along. By painting my nails or wearing half-a-dozen Swifty bracelets designed by my 11-year-old niece. While I thrive on being comfortable in whatever I wear, I also do it for the hundreds of thousands who’ve walked up to me around this country and gone, “Looking at you makes me happy” or “You brighten my day”. That’s what it’s all about for me. From the lovely grannies who politely ask for selfies or the teenage girls and boys who reach out on social media and want to know where I get my jumper or shorts from.
I wouldn’t say Australia gets me, not yet anyway. But Australia accepted me. Australia welcomed me. The people, the media, the cricketers, the fans. I take so much pride in the way I’ve connected as a person with pretty much every member of the Australian cricket fraternity, former and current players alike, and the mutual respect we share. I hope it comes through in the chats I have with Pat Cummins and co, or the work I do alongside Ricky Ponting, Simon Katich and the bevy of superstars I grew up watching.
I’m blessed to be able to bring my voice to Australia and make the most it, whether through telling stories of cricket or through difficult conversations about race and discrimination. Through it all, I really do hope my love for all of you comes through, on TV, radio or in the columns I write for this esteemed newspaper.
The shifting of base to Australia, which began in February 2017 with my wife Isha’s move, was a huge gamble. She had by then worked as a special needs teacher in Mumbai for nearly a decade. A teacher-journalist combination was never going to be sustainable in terms of what we earnt and even after giving everything to our careers, we were barely making ends meet. Something had to give. If we had to move overseas, it had to be a cricket country. Australia was always our first and only choice.
We didn’t have any savings to apply for our permanent residencies. We had nothing to fall back on, and nobody in the family to lean on. So, we took the decision that Isha would leave first to pursue her Masters in Special Education, which she’d wanted to do for a while, and I chose Adelaide for a couple of reasons. Firstly, for the relatively cheaper cost of living but also because I felt it made sense to not leave Mumbai for another metropolis like Sydney or Melbourne. It meant Isha, at 30, had to sacrifice a settled base in India to deal with the solitude and challenges of being a foreign student in a faraway land, where she knew nobody.
We risked our marriage as well, living apart for 20 months, a period where the only time I spent with Isha was two weeks when I visited Adelaide in 2017. She put in the hard yards, working odd jobs while completing her Masters to ensure she didn’t go hungry while I worked my backside off in India to pay off her tuition fees. It wasn’t easy but we made it work before I made the move in December 2018.
And Australia has been kind enough to open its arms and allow us to become Australians.
Not for nothing do I consider myself to be the ultimate destiny’s child. Lucky to be in Australia. Luckier to have my second innings. Luckiest to still be alive. While continuing to count every single day as a bonus worth celebrating and worth smiling about, and forever reminding myself of the moment I nearly died a loser.
The remarkable journey and ‘second innings’ of cricket journalist Bharat Sundaresan will be told on ABC’s Australian Story on Monday at 8pm (AEDT)
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