by Mayukh Ghosh
The 13-year old was away for a vacation with his father. He was glued to the radio hearing cricket commentary.
England were playing against Pakistan at Lord's.
The two of them were having breakfast when his sister Melloney rang from home.
There was news. His mother had suffered a brain hemorrhage.
They hastily returned home. All through the way, he was still hearing the commentary on radio.
They reached the hospital and heard that there was a severe second hemorrhage.
As Hanif Mohammad battled to save the match for Pakistan, his mother battled against death.
Hanif succeeded. His mother couldn't.
‘‘I do not remember crying much, or feeling angry or bitter, or even talking. Cricket kept me going — firstly reading about it, then writing it, before I ever had a chance to play.’’
Scyld Berry was six years old when he first went through the pages of a Wisden.
It fascinated him.
Seven years later, after his mother died, he immersed himself in the Yorkshire CCC yearbooks.
His father was a teacher who was too absent-minded to look after his children. The children, in fact, knew that they must look after their father.
Rescued by Hanif and Yorkshire CCC yearbooks, Berry began to explore the game of cricket even more.
In the early 1970s, still an undergraduate in Cambridge, he submitted his first article to David Frith, the editor of The Cricketer.
It was published.
Five years later, The Observers sent him to cover an overseas tour with the England team.
Then, in the early 80s, he wrote CricketWallah. In that book he predicted that cricket in India would take off and it wouldn't be long before they would become the superpower in world cricket.
He followed it up with another book on cricket in the subcontinent in 1987( Cricket Odyssey).
He has edited Wisden, besides covering the most number of overseas tours by an English journalist.
He not only wrote good books himself but he also gave birth to ideas behind great cricket books.
He persuaded Stephen Chalke to write the book on Geoffrey Howard.
A decade later, he ( along with Chalke) coaxed an autobiography out of David Foot.
Berry still plays the game. He bowls gentle leg-breaks for Hinton Charterhouse Cricket Club. And continues to idolise Shakespeare and Hammond.
It's cricket that has kept him going for so long.
For him, it's been The Game of Life.
Scyld Berry was born on April 28, 1954.