A fast bowler and the slow life: Great article on Munaf Patel

By Sriram Veera in The Indian Express

What lies ahead for a cricketer past his best? If you are Munaf Patel, the pacer from Gujarat undazzled by fame and riches, all you need is a village, and the art of chilling

In a room, somewhere in West Indies, Sachin Tendulkar approaches Munaf Patel. It’s 2007, India has been evicted from the World Cup but they can’t go home yet. The Bermuda versus Bangladesh game is yet to be played and the players wait for a miracle. Back home, things have turned. Sachin Tendulkar’s and Sourav Ganguly’s restaurants have been attacked, Zaheer Khan’s house stoned, a wall of MS Dhoni’s house broken. Patel recalls the players downloading the public outrage from the internet. Tendulkar asks Patel: “Something or other is happening at everyone’s house. What’s on at your home, Munna?” “Paaji, jahan main rahta hoon na, udhar aath hazaar log hai and 8,000 mera security hai! (There are 8,000 people where I stay, and those are my security.)” Tendulkar laughs, “We might all have to come to your home from here.”

Couple of us journalists are at his home in his village Ikhar in the Bharuch district of Gujarat. Seven years down the line, Patel’s fortunes have swung the whole arc. He has been a part of a team that lifted the World Cup in 2011, and now, as the team heads for another World Cup, his name doesn’t even figure in the list of probables. But the 31-year-old remains a hero at Ikhar — and remarkably, for someone who has seen both fame and riches come and go, at peace with himself, in this village from where he started his dream run.

Hailed by India’s then bowling coach Eric Simons as the “unsung hero of the 2011 World Cup win”, Patel had ended the tournament as India’s third-highest wicket-taker, behind Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh, with 11 wickets. He could have been the fastest Indian bowler ever but a shoulder injury in 2004 forced him to forsake pace. He played just 13 Tests but starred in 70 ODIs, picking up 86 wickets, and was indispensable to the team between 2009 and 2011. These days, when he is not playing Ranji Trophy for Baroda, he is at Ikhar, probably leaning against a well in a kheth (field) with his friends or lolling at the swing in his home.

It’s a fairly big house. A kilometre or two past a railway gate, beyond the cotton fields, it is caressed by a gentle breeze on a warm but pleasant day. A bike approaches from behind and Patel gets down. Dressed in track pants and a T-shirt, he welcomes us with an earthy smile: “I was chatting in the field.” We walk down the pathway, lined by trees and shrubs, to a small six-pillared portico with a swing. Patel understands and can speak English but we mostly converse in Hindi. Often philosophical, and with an ever-present smile even when talking about struggle, the man who says he just likes to have fun — “Masti chahiye bas” — opens up on his journey.

It’s the 1990s and Patel is in the ninth standard at the village school. He is already the fastest bowler but doesn’t want to play cricket anymore. Guilt is in the air. His father works on someone else’s farm, there isn’t much food at home. The children get new clothes on Id, but only in a good year. For the last couple of years, during vacations, young Munaf has been at a tile factory choosing the best “export-quality” tiles, packing them in boxes and going home with Rs 35 for an eight-hour shift. “Dukh hi dukh tha lekin jhelne ki aadat ho gayi thi. Kisi ko sunaon toh lagega kya din tha but when you are used to it, and there is no other option, then you feel kya yaar, yeh to roz ka kaam hai. Paisey nahi hai to kya kar sakte hain? Father akela kaam raha hai and we were in school. (It was a hard life, but it had become a habit. There wasn’t enough money, but what could we do? Father was the only one earning, and we were in school),” he says. A friend urges a teacher to intervene: “What’s your age? You can work once you get out of school. Now just play.”

A few years on, Patel receives his first ehsaan (favour), a constant theme in our chat. He requests a well-connected person in the village, Yusuf Bhai, to take him to Baroda to get his cricket career going. Yusuf even buys a pair of shoes for Patel, who used to play in chappals till then. “He bought me Rs 400-worth shoes, and introduced me to a cricket club. Ehsaan rahega zindagi bhar.” (Even today, whenever Yusuf comes down from UK, Munaf hops over to his house. “Kuch bhi kaam hai toh bata dena, bhai.”)

Meanwhile, his father isn’t happy. Every day, at dinner, young Munaf is asked to quit playing cricket and join him at work. And eventually go to Africa. “I would just stay silent; my mother would tell him to let me play.” For Ikhar, a village of poor cotton farmers, Africa was the passport out of poverty. Every year, a youngster or two would land up at a friend, relative or acquaintance’s house in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa or Zimbabwe to find work in a factory or a shop. Patel had an uncle in Zambia and so his future seemed set in stone. “You can’t blame my father. No one here really knew that cricket had this kind of scope. That I can even earn money from this.”

But the doors kept opening, through the kindness of strangers who spotted talent in the gangly youth. Former India wicketkeeper Kiran More, “who hasn’t taken a single paisa from me and even bought me my first branded cricket shoes (Gunn & Moore)”, trained him at his academy in Baroda, also sent him to the MRF pace school in Chennai. A city where “they never spoke Hindi” and “auto drivers matlab fight” but a place close to his heart. He recounts a tale that captures his personality then. An English batsman, along with Sajid Mahmood and Simon Jones, had come down to the school. Patel can’t remember his name. “Gora tha (He was white), left-handed and the pitches were fast then. I bowled four-five bouncers; one hit his shoulder, one his helmet and other his gloves. He started to come towards me, saying something in English. Mujhe toh English aati nahi tab. But I see that he is angry. So I slip away quickly and dive into the swimming pool. I thought he will complain to Sir, who will throw me out of the academy!”

Patel started to learn the ways of the world at MRF. “I lived there for five-six months. I learnt how to wear good clothes, how to speak, kuch bhi nahi aata tha. Dennis Lillee (Australia’s legendary fast bowler who coached at MRF) would say something and I used to look at someone else’s face! Kya bol raha hai? Lillee Sir always used to laugh, and ask someone to translate.”

Around this time, Australian cricketer Steve Waugh dropped by the academy, saw Patel in action and was impressed. He told as much to Tendulkar, who convinced Patel to join the Mumbai Ranji team. “I learnt a lot about cricket but not its lifestyle,” he says. The Mumbai cricketers would invite him to parties but Patel wasn’t ready. Only later, on a foreign tour, did he go to a club. “I thought I had to drink if I go there. Only after Gautam Gambhir (Patel’s closest cricketing friend) told me that there is no need to drink, and that even he doesn’t drink, did I go. I still don’t drink to this day.”

Patel with friends in his village, no one with a request is turned away from his house

Early on in his life, Patel had learnt to live with an unshakeable sense of right. Principled, unwilling to bend, quick on temper and willing to take seemingly rash decisions. Like in South Africa in 2009, when he shut the door on his captain Shane Warne and threatened to quit. Piqued at not being given any over in an IPL game, which the Rajasthan Royals eventually lost, he stormed to his hotel room and asked team owner Manoj Badale for his passport back. Soon, a knock on the door. Patel peeped through the eyehole to see Warne. “Please open the door”. ‘Shane Sir, I won’t’. “Let me explain.” “I don’t want to hear a thing. Bye.” Of course, he had admiration for Warne’s captaincy. “He was magic. He had the ability to get the best performances from everyone.”

Always frank, he once fobbed off a national selector because of perceived mockery. A day before a game after he was already selected, the selector asked him, “Are you fit?” Patel lost it. “How did you select me then? Tu khila raha hai toh cricket hi nahi khelna mujhe (If you think you are a doing a favour to me by selecting, then I don’t want to play).” The selector disappeared into the lift. “Tu yeda hai kya?” (Are you mad?) said Wasim Jaffer, who was with him then.

Patel was a man often criticised, at times even for his sartorial choices. A furore broke once about him not tucking in his shirt on the field with former players criticizing him on air. The dressing room too reflected the difference in personalities. Rahul Dravid, the captain, suggested he tuck in his shirt to end the controversy. “Voh ekdum sincere, padhe-likhe type (educated man) “ On the other side, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Yuvraj said, ‘Chodna yaar, hum bhi tuck in nahin karenge kal sey! ( We also won’t tuck our shirts in)’. I was not doing it on purpose. I hadn’t come from a school where kids wear white shoes, and tuck in their shirts!”

It set him off from the others, the straight talk, the no-nonsense attitude that anchored his feet to the ground. It would make him tick off young boys who would let fame get to their head— “Stop acting silly. Cricket hai bhai, anything can happen. Ek injury and sab khatam, finish. Then what will you do?” And it allowed him to look at the transformation of diffident young boys into celebrities with detachment. “See it’s the atmosphere you grow up. If you live in a city, are well-off, and more importantly, play for the country, your group will change. Where is an ordinary man, a poor man, going to be in that group?”

Here, in Ikhar, away from the adrenaline rush of victory and fame, the bright lights of the city and its lures, he knows that playing for India is many worlds away. “After the 2011 World Cup, I was injured for five-six months and by then, the selection approach had changed. They wanted to look beyond me and Nehra and give youngsters a chance. Which is fine. I will probably play for Baroda for two more years. Let’s see how long the body holds,” he says. But he also knows he is free of the favours and the ehsaan that has powered his run. “Bahut logon ka ehsaan mujh pey chada. I used to wonder how I shall pay them back. In between I thought I will even quit. Jitne logon ka ehsaan chadta hai, aap utne neeche jaate ho (The more people oblige you, the lower you slip).”

He has found a way now. The Patels never turn away a man who comes to their house, looking for help. It could be a request for Rs 50,000 for a wedding or money for hospital expenses. People come in, ask for the keys and take his cars for a ride. His father encourages him to do more. “If I ask any question to anyone who comes to home, my father will say, ‘Why are you asking questions? That won’t feed him. Just give him the money’.” The village has a trust which helps people in need. “We all know each other in the village. People always take care of each other.” And that’s why Patel doesn’t see himself leaving Ikhar. “Shaanti hai idhar, peaceful. Why will I go anywhere else?” 

Unpaid interns charged £300 for a job reference by thinktank Civitatis

From The Guardian on 11/01/2015

A former aide to a Liberal Democrat peer has been condemned for charging former unpaid interns at his thinktank “£300 a go” for employment references.

Jan Mortier, who describes himself as a former consultant to Lord Garden, a one-time defence spokesman for Nick Clegg’s party, has admitted that he charges former unpaid trainees at his Civitatis International organisation for references, but denied that they had been interns, on the basis that they had been “trained directly” by him.

Civitatis International advertises itself as a private foundation “committed to promoting peace, dialogue and co-operation between nations and civilisations”, and has submitted evidence to parliamentary select committees as a thinktank. Until a year ago it ran a “junior associates” programme under which young people were charged over £1,600 for a three-month “unique experience in project management training at our international secretariat in the City of London that was instituted by us because British universities are not giving the skills or experience necessary to help young people secure careers in the policy sector”.

The junior associates programme, which did not offer a recognised qualification at the end or a guaranteed job, had been advertised on a website called Internwise, among others, which promotes itself as a “tool ideal to meet employers and gain some work experience”. At least one former junior associate has posted an online CV describing his role at Civitatis International as an “internship”. Civitatis invites “successful” junior associates to pay an additional £400 to £600 a year to become fellows of the organisation, which it describes as a private members’ club for “future leaders”.

Now it has emerged that Mortier, 37, has written to those who had been on the junior associate programme to inform them they must pay a £300 fee each time they want an employment reference.

Tanya de Grunwald, the founder of Graduate Fog, a graduate careers blog and a campaigner against the exploitation of the young, last night condemned Mortier and his organisation and said it was an extreme example of how the hopes of young people were abused. There has been a huge growth in unpaid internships in recent times, with an estimated 100,000 places advertised a year.

De Grunwald said: “Employing unpaid interns is bad enough, but charging them for a reference when they leave is appalling. We keep being assured that the graduate job market is picking up, but this case shows that there are still dark corners of it where unscrupulous employers find they can take advantage of young jobseekers’ desperation and naivety. This guy should be ashamed.”

Civitatis’s website says it was founded in 2012. A company with the same name, of which Mortier was a director, was struck off Companies House records in 2009 after being dissolved. It is not registered with the Charities Commission. Mortier declined to comment on the organisation’s tax status.

Civitatis’s website is advertising a summer school at a cost of £400 for the week. Those who attend are promised a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for students around the world to gain employable skills”. It claims that it can offer “an introduction to the thinking of the Club of Rome”, the global thinktank where Mortier claims on his Linkedin profile to have “advised the secretary general on various issues”. A spokesman for the Club of Rome told the Observer: “Jan Mortier was an intern at the Club of Rome for five months in 2010. He left a month early following a dispute. There is no link between the Club of Rome and Civitatis International.” A spokesman for Civitatis said Mortier was a “full member of the Club of Rome EU chapter”, an affiliated Belgian organisation.

Civitatis’s website claims that “for a decade, Civitatis International has been coaching our junior associates to get policy jobs paying £24-£32,000 per year with a 100% success rate”. When approached by the Observer, Mortier admitted that “one or two” alumni might not have reached their goals yet. He said the £300 fee for an employment reference was a “fair administrative fee”.

India's Security Policy

Talk by Shri Ajit Kumar Doval

Do Ched Evans or Amir have an automatic right to rehab in sport?

 Kamran Abbasi in Cricinfo

The Pakistan board's unseemly haste to bring Amir back reflects poorly on it  © AFP

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Ched Evans is a footballer trying to resurrect his career. He is also a convicted rapist. Evans says he is innocent and since his release from prison he is looking for a new football team. First, he made plans to train with his old club, Sheffield United, but the public outcry was such that Sheffield United distanced themselves from him. Any subsequent opportunities with other clubs have ended abruptly following protests and threats by sponsors to end deals. Evans and his supporters argue that he deserves a chance at rehabilitation.

A few weeks ago, Ramiz Raja questioned the rush to return Mohammad Amir to professional cricket. The crimes of Amir and his fellow spot-fixers are different to that of Evans, of course, but the principle championed by Amir's supporters is the same, that he deserves a chance at rehabilitation. Ramiz spoke from the heart, of how it would feel for other players to welcome back a cheat. Pakistan's linguistic innovator has also worked as chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board. He speaks from board and broad experience.

Rehabilitation of offenders is an important principle that has benefits for individuals and society. No doubt that Evans and Amir and other sportsmen who commit a crime during their sporting careers have every right to be rehabilitated, but the question is whether or not they have an automatic right to be rehabilitated back into the sport they have dishonoured?

Some professions take criminal conduct so seriously that practitioners can be disbarred or struck off. The medical and legal professions are prime examples. Decisions to end careers are difficult. Professional bodies, for example the General Medical Council and the Bar Council in the United Kingdom, are responsible for making judgements on whether or not individuals are fit to practise. Hence, a barrister who has committed rape or a doctor who has made fraudulent financial claims for patient treatments will probably be judged by the relevant professional council to be unfit to remain in the profession. A doctor or barrister can be rehabilitated into society, find alternative work, but any career as a doctor or barrister will be finished.

Some professions take criminal conduct so seriously that practitioners can be disbarred or struck off. The medical and legal professions are prime examples

Society rightly demands high standards of doctors and barristers since they hold positions of influence and power. A professional sportsman is influential too, even powerful, especially in a privileged position as a role model to thousands and millions of adoring fans. Why then should a sportsman have an automatic right to return to a profession? Why shouldn't he be judged by high standards too? Role models are immensely powerful in sport and brushing over serious misdemeanours risks diminishing the gravity of the crimes. Rehabilitation back into the sport might cause offence to team-mates, fans and victims. Being disqualified from a sport might be the most powerful deterrent to future spot-fixers and rapists.

None of this reduces the onus on society and professions to support the rehabilitation of offenders. Each case requires careful consideration by a suitably qualified governing body equipped to make judgements on the seriousness of offences. But just like other professions of influence and power, rehabilitation shouldn't necessarily mean rehabilitation back into a sport. Unlike medicine and law, sport isn't geared up to make such sensitive and profound decisions. The ICC, FIFA, and national bodies like the PCB and the FA, must ensure that codes of conduct for standards of behaviour are in place and that they are enforceable.

Ramiz began to articulate that Amir and other fixers from Pakistan and elsewhere should not be rehabilitated back into professional cricket. Dissenters in England argue that Evans should not be rehabilitated back into professional football. The governing bodies of cricket and football must consider mechanisms to put the honour, reputation and values of their sports before individual and corporate gain.

This will be an unpopular view for fans who have an emotional attachment to a tainted star. Amir's case is a perfect example, tugging at our heartstrings. His role in the spot-fixing of 2010 might be judged to be too minor to bar him from cricket? But the unseemly haste to return him to international cricket reflects poorly on the PCB and ICC. A code of conduct panel for cricket might judge that other spot-fixers and match-fixers should never return to the sport. It might even decide the same for Amir?

Either way, the current systems and processes of the ICC and PCB, like the governing bodies of other sports, seem to miss the point on rehabilitation. Sport, as we are reminded each time a great player retires or moves on, is far bigger than any individual.