mid-day's 42nd anniversary: The spinner who spins no tales

Ashutosh Marathe 53His exploits earned him the honour of being Mumbai Cricket Associationrsquos Junior Cricketer for 198081 Now he is an authorIn fixture books distributed year after year to cricketers umpires and club officials for the Dr HD Kanga Cricket League there is a mention of a certain Ashutosh Marathe He appears in the roll of honour for the Best Junior Cricketer of the Year Some of his predecessors 198081 in that list are famousmdashEknath Solkar Ravi Shastri and Chandrakant Pandit The ones who follow him are prominent toomdashSachin Tendulkar Amol Muzumdar and Ajit AgarkarMarathe 53 a former Mumbai U15 and U19 leftarm spinner now figures in another bookmdashhis very ownmdashwritten during the first COVIDcaused lockdown in 2020 and released recentlyThe Extra in Ordinary published by Notion Press is a book of short stories which Marathe decided to write after some friends started missing his regular blogs Three sections with 13 short chapters each is constructed with a simplistic approach like a bowler with a pleasing runupldquoThose who were missing my blogs wondered whether I had stopped writing or decided not to post whatever I wrote I decided that I should be the one who should make the most of the lockdownrdquo says Marathe a lawyer who started out as a bankerldquoI always loved to read I loved David Morrellrsquos suspense and thriller books Later I liked Sudha Murthyrsquos booksrdquo he says From the choice of authors he dwells on what makes interesting reading ldquoI realised that even ordinary incidents can send out strong messages So much gets written about famous people and their achievements but writing on their struggles is important the struggles when he or she was not famousrdquoMalgudi Days fan Marathersquos favourite story among the 39 in his book is The Boy Who Knew Too Much Itrsquos about an eightyearold lad who happened to be around a vada pav stall which Marathe had visited He told Marathe that he had not eaten for two days He was happy to buy him any amount of vada pavs But a lsquocounter offerrsquo was mademdashwheat flour instead because that would help feed the urchinrsquos family as well When the wheat flour packet was handed to him he asked for oil The poor boyrsquos wish was granted and he vanished ldquoIt was then that I realised that the tact he had employed far surpassed those used by lawyers like me Quite evidently the boy who stood before me was not ordinaryrdquo writes MaratheIt took Marathe a year to see his book project come to fruition He is used to doing things swiftly Ask him about his cricketing career and he will reveal howhe took his first steps in cricket at the Punjab Association club pitch at Matunga Fast bowler Austin Coutinho the famous caricaturist was one of their players and when he saw Marathe bowl he asked his father to enrol him in a coaching camp Marathe Jr ended up at Vasant Amladirsquos nets at PJ Hindu Gymkhana and within a short span of time he was representing the 198081 Bombay U15 team and later selected for BCCIrsquos National camp under the watchful eyes of Col Hemu AdhikariMarathersquos literary work may give rise to another book One More Over he could well title it like exIndia offie EAS Prasanna did for his autobiography