Stanley Carvalho | 12:48pm GMT 22 January 2025
When a pricey member of the family was by the dreaded most cancers in 2017, Jairaj Galagali was clearly distraught; juggling a job, residence and hospital runs was distressing.
The California-based, Indian techie wanted to do one thing to de-stress. The cricket bug that had bitten him years in the past got here to his rescue and an inspiring concept was born.
“The thoughts wanted a respite, to flee into one other world, to my 12-year-old self when life revolved round cricket and flicks,” begins Galagali in his deep baritone.
“I made a decision to unearth classic footage of priceless moments from India’s wealthy cricketing historical past,” he says, sitting in his Bangalore condominium whereas on a busman’s vacation.
At this time, his non-profit YouTube channel ‘Jai Galagali’ options a number of outdated movies relationship again to the Forties sourced from India’s Movies Division in addition to self-created movies regarding cricket.
His channel has over 30,000 subscribers and thousands and thousands of viewers throughout cricket taking part in international locations. Furthermore, Galagali has come to be generally known as an archivist and historical past buff of Indian cricket, a truth recognised by well-known cricketers and media retailers.
Nevertheless, his journey from 2017 was no cakewalk. Sitting in his examine in California, he needed to make quite a few cellphone calls at evening to the Movies Division in Mumbai that always went unanswered. Galagali doggedly pursued his aim, knocking many doorways earlier than lastly getting his booty after paying for it. The cargo of 200 DVD’s (every DVD was a newsreel comprising cricket titbits too) landed at his doorstep.
“I carried that field which was actually holding the historical past of Indian cricket and after I took it to my room, tears welled up in my eyes,” he says half-smiling.
The newsreels comprised each cricket match filmed in India since 1948, a 12 months after India’s independence in 1947. A few of them had soundtracks, many didn’t, he provides.
Galagali swung into motion quick, posting the movies on his YouTube channel with some enhancing. Regularly, he lent some depth to the movies with a short narration by including some context, background and attention-grabbing data. The libraries of Stanford College and College of California, Berkeley had been helpful repositories for his analysis.
The primary video, recollects Galagali, was a three-minute one in every of the1973 India-England match at Kolkata and the most recent video is an interview with former Indian wicket-keeper Syed Kirmani, who launched his autobiography just lately in Bangalore.
A number of the widespread movies embody India’s first cricket check match victory in 1952 in Madras; the Indian gamers are seen carrying black wrist bands as a mark of respect to the departed King George VI. In that memorable video, Galagali additionally interviews C.D.Gopinath, now a nonagenarian, who took the successful catch of that match.
One other is of the primary India-Pakistan check collection in 1952 the place the legendary Subhash Gupte’s bowling motion is introduced reside for the primary time.
There are different memorable snippets of cricket matches performed within the 50s and 60s between India and England, India and the West Indies, the Pakistan tour of India and the debut matches of a few of India’s best cricketers.
Cricket matches have at all times seen some drama and one putting video is of an enthusiastic girl in a saree who beat the safety and made it to the pitch to kiss Brijesh Patel on scoring 50 runs within the India-West Indies check match in Mumbai, 1975.
Unexpectedly, Galagali’s labour of affection hit a snag in 2020 when he acquired an e mail from YouTube citing copyright violation from the federal government of India. Realising he was not within the mistaken, particularly having paid for the DVD’s, he made a number of pleas to the Movies Division that fell on deaf ears.
Galagali then reached out to cricket loving politician Shashi Tharoor who wrote a scathing letter to the ministry highlighting the importance of such a channel. Some cricketers too voiced their opinion in favour of the channel. Quickly, the channel resumed.
In the course of the Covid lockdown, Galagali posted movies often, offering viewers, significantly cricket lovers an choice when reside matches weren’t telecast.
The response to Galagali’s YouTube channel is encouraging. “The footage brings a lot of the heat, nostalgia and pleasure of the various cricketing tales to so many viewers,” he gushes and goes on to quote some responses.
An adolescent from Delhi referred to as to thank Galagali as a result of his grandfather, affected by dementia, opened up, recollecting the previous after watching some movies.
India’s legendary captain Pataudi’s daughter despatched a message saying the movies introduced again a flood of reminiscences of her dad.
A famend economist wrote to say that his late sister whereas going by way of chemotherapy would endlessly watch as she noticed herself among the many spectators in one in every of his movies.
It was ‘yesterday as soon as extra’ for a Sri Lankan cricketer, presently residing in Australia after seeing a reel of the primary check collection between India and Sri Lanka. The cricketer performed in that collection.
Galagali has to date posted solely about fifty % of the precious treasure in his possession. Fortunately, with the member of the family now again in good well being, viewers can count on many extra movies of Indian cricket.
https://jaigalagali.wordpress.com/
