The most important cultural question today is: Did Tagore play cricket or have anything to do with the game? If not, should we not ban him from all cultural spaces. I mean what kind of a top poet of the language ignores the game we are really bad at?

Ok, OK, the above is a joke. Please don't take it seriously as some often do but just as a matter of interest, did Tagore have anything to do with the game at any level in any capacity? Did he ever visit a cricket field? I mean why not? It's all the more relevant because Bangladesh social media is awash with AI and human generated stuff on the "Great white bearded one."

So, since it's Tagore week and my interest are as much in cricket as the serious poetry of the Tagore variety, I went looking for a link between the Great one and the great game. And this is what I found.

Shock information number one. Tagore did.....

I was pretty certain that given his poetry and Shantiniketon status with its slightly effeminate image, there would be no connection so just imagine my shock when I learnt that Tagore had links with the game and they were several. But here is the biggest catch of them all.

"According to family anecdotes and historical snippets from Zee News Bengali, Tagore did try his hand at the game in his youth. His elder brother, Satyendranath Tagore, was a cricket enthusiast who even hired Anglo-Indian coaches to teach the family the game at their Ballygunge home."

However, coaching and exhorting didn't produce a cricket player. Tagore apparently practiced for about three months but then decided he wasn't cut out for it. What made him decide that? Well, the old injury factor and fear of disability due to the same.

One day while on a practice match, he was hit on the leg by a ball and Tagore was sort of injured. Ok, no big deal but enough to scare him off. He was also finding it difficult to maintain the required "eye-on-the-ball" focus. I mean he probably saw the Universe rolling towards him or something and decided "enough is enough".

It was a decidedly brief career but let's get the facts. Tagore did play cricket as a wanna be batter. He didn't make it sure but he had been there, padded himself up, adjusted his eyes to the light and was ready to swing. Wow, man wow. Tagore did play cricket.

It's reported that he later preferred traditional physical activities like "Lathi Khela" (stick fighting) and yoga but I won't comment on this. I mean really. Cricket and lathi khela? Just because there is some resemblance between the two sticks made of wood.

The symbolic Gomoh match

While stray references to cricket exist in his work, what made Tagore's link with cricket most well- known was a match made in heaven or well fantasy.

The "Gomoh Match" was published in the 1950s in the Bengali journal "Dainik Basumati". It describes a match organised by Tagore in the 1930s in the town of Gomoh (near Dhanbad) which is not far from Kolkata.

Tagore's team was great as he was playing but his opponents were cricket greats. It included the Nawab of Pataudi - current one's grand dad, the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram (Vizzy) who is India's most famous and most boring cricket commentator and Duleepsinhji, the true legendary cricket player. Naturally all had royal blood flowing in their veins or where blood flow what were you expecting?

What I found most interesting was Tagore's cricket gear. He played wearing a "dhoti and a palm-leaf peasant's hat (toka)", using a bat made from local wood to symbolise Swadeshi (self-reliance). I mean really.......

Tagore and cricket language

Tagore's is the one who did most with the Bengali language most lasting contribution to the sport was perhaps through the Bengali language and that included cricket. "When Brajaranjan Ray, a pioneer of Bengali sports journalism, struggled to translate technical English terms like "square cut" or "leg glance," he turned to Tagore."

Tagore participated in the cricket terminology with great enthusiasm. He told Ray to "invent terminology without fear," saying that these terms would one day become standard use and part of wider usage.

Such was his enthusiasm that in his memoir "Chhelebela" (My Boyhood), Tagore referred to cricket as Bāt-Bal, which he wickedly suggested said was a "distant cousin" of some traditional Bengali games. Another word was "Wicket-Keeper" mentioned as "Uiket-Rakshak, the "Fielder" became "Khetro-Rakshak and so on. He even called the pitch as "Khela-Prangan" which isn't in use but shows his interest and effort.

Tagore tried to find indigenous translations for "leg glance" and "square cut" but it probably didn't work out. Buthe did try.

So there, hail to Tagore, not only our literary and musical prodigy but our cricket soul as well.