Immemorial Moment : 12th June 2017, Lords London
This day (12th June), two years ago, should ideally have been a day, which I should never have forgotten, but then like all Indians in whose DNA documenting history is almost non existent, I too was found wanting and forgot the event completely until a friend of mine reminded me by sending some of the photos of an opening of the “Cricket Connects : India England Cricket Relations” exhibition that happened on the 12th of June 2017, at the Lords stadium - the Mecca of Cricket- London. Having had the honour to curate this exhibition, I was in for a surprise when the entire Indian Cricket team who were touring England for the Championship trophy turned up at the invitation of the Indian High Commissioner for the opening of this exhibition at the Lords and I had the honour to explain the exhibition briefly to Virat Kohli and his men in Blue including Dhoni.
Although I had divided this exhibition into 10 sections, my favourite was the introduction section in which under the spinoff benefits sub section. I had tried to connect the discovery of Ramanujan by the greatest of mathematician, G H Hardy, a die hard cricket fan, using cricket parlance. A compulsive science communicator that one tends to become after serving for more than 3 decades in a science museum, I subconsciously connected India and England cricket relations using a science thread.
India shares more than two centuries of common heritage with Britain, and with it, many other inherited institutions and arenas of common interaction. Our shared history includes the English language. India today produces a large number of sought after scientists and technologists, and is considered a serious competitor to the Silicon Valley in the USA. “Say no to Bangalore and yes to Buffalo”, was the mantra of the then US President Barack Obama as far back as 2005, as he tried to bring the ailing American economy back on track. Similar sentiments prevail in the US even today and the word “Bangalored” seems to have found a place in the lexicon of global economy. This vantage position that India finds itself in is due to the English language advantage that Lord Macaulay introduced to India as far back as in 1835 with the English Education Act 1835 piloted by Lord William Bentinck. The English language advantage serves India well to this day; it also brought to India the first and only Nobel Prize in Literature, to Rabindranath Tagore – the first Asian to be so honoured. The discovery of the brilliance of Ramanujan: “A Bradman class Mathematician” by the renowned mathematician G H Hardy, is another case in point that has connection with our English language.
GH Hardy - a diehard cricket aficionado – and one of the predominant English mathematicians of the pre-war era, is synonymous with pure mathematics. He is however better known to the Indians as the benevolent mentor of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Hardy was extraordinarily devoted to cricket. Hardy’s interest in cricket is seen in the statement of the internationally acclaimed economist Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesian economics and a friend of Hardy at Cambridge. He said “If Hardy had read the stock exchange for half an hour every day with as much interest and attention as he did the day's cricket scores, he would have become a rich man”.
Hardy used cricketing parlance in ranking notable mathematicians and physicists. In a postcard to Snow he wrote, "Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs (Jack Hobbs, England Cricketeer) class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They better be moved from now on into the Bradman class."
Ramanujan had dared to write to Hardy, while working as a clerk at the Madras port Trust, in the shared language - English - that connected us. He wrote that he had found new path of his own in divergent series and a definite expression of prime numbers, which Hardy in one of his papers had suggested did not exist. Although Hardy did find the letter bemusing yet, courtesy his co mathematician Littlewood, was convinced that here was a man of great intellect in maths and invited him to Cambridge. The rest is history and the legacy of Ramanujan continues to be applauded even today by mathematicians across the world. What is more important is that Hardy ranked our Ramanujan into the Bradman class. A befitting India England connect using cricketing parlance.
Now that the whole of India is hooked onto Cricket World Cup, I feel honoured to share my memories of 12th June 2017 when I had the honour not only to meet the Indian Cricket team but also to conduct a brief curatorial walk of one section of the exhibition to the entire team at the Lords Stadium.
This day (12th June), two years ago, should ideally have been a day, which I should never have forgotten, but then like all Indians in whose DNA documenting history is almost non existent, I too was found wanting and forgot the event completely until a friend of mine reminded me by sending some of the photos of an opening of the “Cricket Connects : India England Cricket Relations” exhibition that happened on the 12th of June 2017, at the Lords stadium - the Mecca of Cricket- London. Having had the honour to curate this exhibition, I was in for a surprise when the entire Indian Cricket team who were touring England for the Championship trophy turned up at the invitation of the Indian High Commissioner for the opening of this exhibition at the Lords and I had the honour to explain the exhibition briefly to Virat Kohli and his men in Blue including Dhoni.
Although I had divided this exhibition into 10 sections, my favourite was the introduction section in which under the spinoff benefits sub section. I had tried to connect the discovery of Ramanujan by the greatest of mathematician, G H Hardy, a die hard cricket fan, using cricket parlance. A compulsive science communicator that one tends to become after serving for more than 3 decades in a science museum, I subconsciously connected India and England cricket relations using a science thread.
India shares more than two centuries of common heritage with Britain, and with it, many other inherited institutions and arenas of common interaction. Our shared history includes the English language. India today produces a large number of sought after scientists and technologists, and is considered a serious competitor to the Silicon Valley in the USA. “Say no to Bangalore and yes to Buffalo”, was the mantra of the then US President Barack Obama as far back as 2005, as he tried to bring the ailing American economy back on track. Similar sentiments prevail in the US even today and the word “Bangalored” seems to have found a place in the lexicon of global economy. This vantage position that India finds itself in is due to the English language advantage that Lord Macaulay introduced to India as far back as in 1835 with the English Education Act 1835 piloted by Lord William Bentinck. The English language advantage serves India well to this day; it also brought to India the first and only Nobel Prize in Literature, to Rabindranath Tagore – the first Asian to be so honoured. The discovery of the brilliance of Ramanujan: “A Bradman class Mathematician” by the renowned mathematician G H Hardy, is another case in point that has connection with our English language.
GH Hardy - a diehard cricket aficionado – and one of the predominant English mathematicians of the pre-war era, is synonymous with pure mathematics. He is however better known to the Indians as the benevolent mentor of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Hardy was extraordinarily devoted to cricket. Hardy’s interest in cricket is seen in the statement of the internationally acclaimed economist Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesian economics and a friend of Hardy at Cambridge. He said “If Hardy had read the stock exchange for half an hour every day with as much interest and attention as he did the day's cricket scores, he would have become a rich man”.
Hardy used cricketing parlance in ranking notable mathematicians and physicists. In a postcard to Snow he wrote, "Bradman is a whole class above any batsman who has ever lived: if Archimedes, Newton and Gauss remain in the Hobbs (Jack Hobbs, England Cricketeer) class, I have to admit the possibility of a class above them, which I find difficult to imagine. They better be moved from now on into the Bradman class."
Ramanujan had dared to write to Hardy, while working as a clerk at the Madras port Trust, in the shared language - English - that connected us. He wrote that he had found new path of his own in divergent series and a definite expression of prime numbers, which Hardy in one of his papers had suggested did not exist. Although Hardy did find the letter bemusing yet, courtesy his co mathematician Littlewood, was convinced that here was a man of great intellect in maths and invited him to Cambridge. The rest is history and the legacy of Ramanujan continues to be applauded even today by mathematicians across the world. What is more important is that Hardy ranked our Ramanujan into the Bradman class. A befitting India England connect using cricketing parlance.
Now that the whole of India is hooked onto Cricket World Cup, I feel honoured to share my memories of 12th June 2017 when I had the honour not only to meet the Indian Cricket team but also to conduct a brief curatorial walk of one section of the exhibition to the entire team at the Lords Stadium.
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