Calcutta Club The Telegraph National Debate 2025: Get ready for war of words
Telegraph | 7 February 2025
Their guile, gumption and game plans are well documented. Whether they bring the same skills into play on a different Calcutta pitch will be known on Saturday evening.
On the lawns of Calcutta Club, some of the finest cricketers of their time and three keen observers of the sport will debate a topic that has polarised the world: T20 is the real test of cricket.
At the Sister Nivedita University presents and Jac Olivol co-presents Calcutta Club The Telegraph National Debate 2025, the speakers are: Dilip Vengsarkar, Arjuna Ranatunga, Dilip Doshi, Diana Edulji, Kirti Azad, Mukul Kesavan, Mudar Patherya and Joy Bhattacharjya.
The debate comes at a time cash-rich T20 leagues, led by the IPL, are accused of “ruining” the essence of cricket. Many puritans feel not only is the new format turning cricket into a circus but is also compromising the core competence of budding players. Test, they maintain, is the ultimate test of cricket.
The supporters of the T20 format just point to the packed stadiums and contend that the world has changed.
Few know how to drive change in sports and embrace them better than Arjuna Ranatunga. The flamboyant Sri Lankan skippered his country to a World Cup title in 1996 and changed modern cricket for good.
He never shied away from confrontation, defending his players and their rights, most famously Muthiah Muralidaran, the team’s spin-bowling talisman, against allegations of chucking.
Vengsarkar, aka the “Colonel”, was one of the finest top-order Test batters of his era.
Few spun the cricket ball with the silken grace and adroitness of Doshi, who represented Bengal and India with aplomb.
Edulji brought fame to women’s cricket before women’s cricket became famous. The all-rounder and former India captain once quipped the MCC should change its name to MCP after being denied entry to the Lord’s Pavilion.
Azad, one of Kapil’s Devils of the triumphant 1983 World Cup triumph, was an aggressive all-rounder who could smash the ball all around the park and take wickets with his off-breaks, skills that would have made him a prized catch in the modern T20 format.
Bhattacharjya has been associated with sports for over three decades. The quizzer-quiz master-raconteur has been a former team director of KKR.
Patherya began his career as a cricket correspondent and then many things over the years, from consulting to conservation. Who would know better how to preserve the past and spark fire into the new?
And then there is Kesavan, historian, novelist and one of the finest commentators on cricket in the T20 era.
The debate will be moderated by Kunal Sarkar, a cardiac surgeon by profession and debater by passion.