From Goodison's Silence to Lord's Roar: Fatherhood, Displacement and the Politics of Memory on the Cricket Pitch

The spring afternoons in Liverpool arrive like a long, held breath. Behind the pavilion, the stewards change the numbers on the old scoreboard with the slowness of extinguishing a cigarette. I have been watching this scene for more than twenty years—first on the small grounds of Tranmere Rovers with my own knee injury still aching in my chest; then on the sports desk of The Daily Star, where cricket reporting became a new language for me; and now, reporting from Liverpool, where the English cricket season and the Indian cricket season—two separate worlds—are bound together in my reporter's notebook. I learned the game from the touchline, where every pass became a promise. In cricket the touchline is different. It is thinner, more granular—the seam of a ball, the position of a batsman's feet, the silence of a DRS review. But that thin touchline taught me that the real record of a game is not kept on the field; it is kept in the wait outside, in a phone call, in an unfinished ticket, in an empty chair. Across twenty-six World Cup scoreboards, the story that is written least is not the story of the trophy—it is the story of absence. On the famous boundary-count night of the 2026 World Cup final at Lord's, one person who was not there was a young Bangladesh fan watching on a cable TV in Dhaka while his father lay on a deathbed. In this article I want to write about the politics of that absence—how the void of a father on a cricket ground creates a new language, and how our urban cricket-becoming is born out of the pain of displacement. I live in Liverpool. This city's cricket memory is largely overshadowed by football. But the cricket played on the small grounds of the city's clubs, near the Botanical Garden just off Anfield, is a different kind of archaeology for me. Last year, on a Saturday morning, I went to watch a match at Sefton Cricket Club—a lower division of the Lancashire League. As the steward erased the day's scoreboard, I asked him where the numbers were kept. He smiled and said—"Nowhere, mate. The board rubs off, but the memory stays." That one sentence turned my whole day's thinking upside down. I. First Innings: The Bat from My Father's Hand My father did not play cricket. He was an accountant who had moved from Kolkata to Liverpool before my birth for work. But he had bought a bat once—flat, wide, heavy—and given it to me when I was ten. His sentence was: "This is yours. Even if you can't play, keep holding the bat." I never won a big match with that bat. I never found the touch that had once taken me to the Tranmere Rovers Under-18 side—the touch that vanished after my ACL tore. But the bat still stands in the corner of my flat, carrying the smell of time like a silverfish. For me, my father's bat is not an artefact; it is a question. After his death I understood that inheritance is not the weight of the bat but the posture of holding it. That posture is visible in certain players—especially those batsmen who come out not with technique but with inheritance. When I watch Kohli's cover-drive, I do not see his father's hand—but I feel his father's presence in Kohli's confidence of standing in a particular spot. In the series after the death of Kohli's coach Rajkumar Sharma, there was a small change in his batting grip—hands an inch lower, as if carrying the weight of absence on his own shoulders. II. Second Innings: Displacement and Living-Room Nationalism I landed in Liverpool when I was eighteen. Having come through the Tranmere Rovers injury, I decided I would not play. But I would write. My first report was Liverpool U18 vs Manchester United U18 at the Kirkby training ground. Liverpool lost 2-1. I could not write the description of the goals; I wrote the sound of studs on wet grass, the lack of warmth of a substitute on the bench, and the empty eyes of a boy after conceding. After that report I understood that the game, for me, was no longer numbers but a ritual. During the 2026 World Cup I was covering the fan screening of England vs Colombia for The Anfield Wrap—at Camp and Furnace, in front of a thousand fans. When Jordan Pickford saved Carlos Bacca's penalty, I recorded the sound of a thousand people breathing at once. My piece 『The Breath Before the Kick』 was shared twelve thousand times. But in cricket, this story of living-room nationalism is different. Here diaspora does not mean simply leaving one country for another—it means the bloody relationship between the cricket of one country and the cricket of another. Born in India, living in Britain—the cricket of these two countries is not a rivalry to me but a mirror of each other. During the 2026 World Cup, when Bangladesh beat the West Indies, I was in a pub in Southampton. English fans were pronouncing Bangladesh's name with a strange respect. I felt—that respect is not gratitude, it is recognition, because the English know that the cricket of the former colony is a mirror of their own. III. Third Innings: The Knot of Shubman Gill's Possession At twenty-four, Shubman Gill stands in a strange place in cricket. His batting trajectory has reached a point where runs and class are separating. I saw Gill live twice last year—once at Edgbaston, once at Lord's. In both matches his technique was questioned, but his stance was the same—stylish, still, as if whatever happened around the field, his bag's weight would not let go. To me this is not the story of technique, it is the story of inheritance. The character in which Gill grew up—a cricket family in Punjab, a father's stern discipline, a tradition of coaches—has a certain time limit. His problem is not only footwork; the problem is that after 2026, his batting strike-rate and his batting average are running in two different directions. A strange contradiction. This contradiction is not of technique, it is the contradiction of the mental body. I have grown to love this contradiction, because it reminds me of my own cricket experience. When I returned to the field after my injury, my body had returned, but my mind had not. On that Tranmere ground I could no longer sprint as before. Watching Gill's batting, I feel—this young batsman may now be where I once was: one body on the field, another on the touchline. I add one new fact to Gill's story that is written about very little: in the 2026 BGT series in Adelaide, the way Gill was out—there was a small delay in his front-foot stretch, behind which was the memory of an old groin injury. That small delay repeatedly hurt him on tours against pace bowling. The trophy count is still in his favour, but in strike-rate terms he is changing quickly—which, according to my analysis, is long-term damage to his team, because it spoils his batting tempo. IV. Fourth Innings: Custody of Absence In September 2026, during Project Restart, I covered the 0-0 draw of Liverpool vs Everton at Goodison Park for my university paper. The stadium was empty. Only twelve journalists were allowed in. Jordan Henderson's shouts were echoing in the Gwladys Street End—but there was no response. When players looked at empty seats after a missed chance, it was a scene that sent a chill down my spine. That report 『The Crowd That Wasn't There』 won a student sports journalism award. After that I understood one thing—absence has to be written as presence. Since then I always notice what is missing: a closed fan, an injured teammate, a lost ritual. My metaphors became quieter, more tender, and I understood—empty spaces are characters in the story. In cricket the politics of absence is even more intense than in football. Because cricket is a game that keeps accounts of its own absence. A zero on an innings' batting card does not mean failure—it is the tomb of a particular posture. During Steve Smith's suspension after Sandpapergate, I watched cricket news every day as if opening an invisible lock. Smith, away from cricket for a year—watching his batting, I felt he was not absent, he was in an invisible practice. V. Fifth Innings: The Trap of Loan Commerce But absence has a specific economy, which has become clear in this transfer window. If a free agent takes a huge signing-on fee, it is more toxic than a transfer fee—because it bypasses the core scrutiny of FFP. In cricket this trend is growing every day, especially in the negotiations after the IPL auction. I want to write a long piece on this, but for now I just remember—every big signing-on fee is the name of an absent auditor. Between 2026 and 2026 the cricket transfer market has been covered by a world of accounts where nobody wants to ask—where did this money come from, where will it go. A total of 230 crore rupees was spent at the IPL 2026 auction, a third of which went to free agents, many of whom were injured or not proven in international club cricket. These fees are invisible from the club's balance sheet, but not far from the core question of cricket economics. In my view this money inflation is another form of cricket's money-based capitalism—a new kind of absence, where no one is responsible but money is everywhere. Cricket's commercial displacement can be far more dangerous than this, if we do not analyse it in terms of values. VI. Sixth Innings: The Question of a Small Ball I went to watch a match this morning, at a small club ground on the outskirts of Liverpool. The players are all under-15. The pitching is good, the fielding is good, but at one moment in the match a young player standing at the boundary line suddenly stopped. He put his hand on his knee and looked at me. I understood—he was looking for a spectator. That spectator was not there. Perhaps he had never been there before either. But that one moment re-arranged my whole day's thinking again. Cricket is no longer just a trophy account for me. It is a question whose answer is perhaps like my father's bat—standing in the corner, with the smell of time's silverfish, waiting for an answer. I have been writing for ten years. The beginning was on The Daily Star's sports desk, then I built a platform like BDCricTime, and now I write about cricket's future. But in that young player's gaze this morning I saw a new Bangladesh—a Bangladesh whose cricket memory has not yet been written, but for which I want to write. VII. Last Word: A Small Ball's Window The politics of absence has taught me that cricket is never just a game. It is a family document, a diaspora diary, an unfinished letter of a state. When we dream of winning the World Cup, what we are really dreaming of is a readable 2026. Every person clapping in the Lord's gallery has a small bat in their pocket—given by a father, perhaps lying in a corner at home. I believe that in the next ten years the crisis cricket will face will be a crisis of one question—for whom do we play? The answer to this question may be hidden inside a small ball that has not yet found a place in some teenager fielder's hand. And finding that place for that small ball is my job. That evening the empty stands of Goodison Park slowly disappeared into the blue light of dusk. I closed my notebook and felt something like a trembling vibration—the match no one saw, I am still writing its report. Perhaps this is my profession, perhaps this is my prayer: to find presence inside absence, the sound of fathers' bats in the weight of a small ball.