When a dear family member fell ill with the dreaded cancer in 2017, Jairaj Galagali was clearly distraught; Juggling work, running home and the hospital was unnerving.
The California-based Indian technician needed to do something to relieve his stress. The cricket that bit him many years ago came to his aid and an inspiring idea was born.
“The mind needed a break, to escape to another world, to my 12-year-old self when life revolved around cricket and movies,” begins Galagali in his deep baritone.
“I decided to dig up vintage footage of priceless moments from India’s rich cricket history,” he says, sitting in his Bangalore apartment while on a bus break.
Today, his non-profit YouTube channel ‘Jai Galagali’ features several old videos dating back to the 1940s from the Film Department of India, as well as his own cricket-related videos.
His channel has over 30,000 subscribers and millions of viewers across cricketing countries. Moreover, Galagali became known as an archivist and a history buff of Indian cricket, which was acknowledged by famous cricketers and the media.
However, his journey since 2017 has not been easy. Sitting in his study in California, he had to make numerous phone calls to the Films Department in Mumbai at night which often went unanswered. Galagali doggedly pursued his goal, going through many gates before he finally got his loot after paying for it. A shipment of 200 DVDs (each DVD was a film magazine that also contained cricket tidbits) arrived at his doorstep.
“I was carrying that box which literally contained the history of Indian cricket and when I took it to my room, tears welled up in my eyes,” he says with a half-smile.
The diaries contained all the cricket matches recorded in India since 1948, a year after India’s independence in 1947. Some of them had soundtracks, many did not, he adds.
Galagali quickly jumped into action, posting videos on his YouTube channel with little editing. He gradually added depth to the videos with short narration adding context, background and interesting information. The libraries of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley were useful repositories for his research.
The first video, Galagali recalls, was a three-minute one from the 1973 India-England match in Kolkata, and the last video is an interview with former India wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani, who recently published his autobiography in Bangalore.
Some of the popular videos include India’s first victory in a cricket match in 1952 in Madras; Indian players are seen wearing black armbands as a mark of respect for the late King George VI. In that memorable video, Galagali also interviews CDGopinath, now a senior, who took the winning catch in that match.
The second is from the first India-Pakistan Test series in 1952 where the bowling action of the legendary Subhash Gupte is broadcast live for the first time.
There are other memorable clips of cricket matches played in the 50s and 60s between India and England, India and West Indies, Pakistan’s tour of India and the debut matches of some of India’s best cricketers.
Cricket matches have always been drama, and one striking video shows an enthusiastic lady in a sari beating security and arriving on the field to kiss Brijesh Patel after he scored 50 in the India-West Indies Test match in Mumbai in 1975.
Unexpectedly, Galagali’s labor of love hit a roadblock in 2020 when he received an email from YouTube citing copyright infringement from the Indian government. Realizing that he was not in the wrong, especially since he had paid for the DVDs, he made several pleas to the Films Department which fell on deaf ears.
Galagali then approached cricket-loving politician Shashi Tharoor who wrote a scathing letter to the ministry highlighting the importance of such a channel. Some cricketers also expressed their opinion in favor of the channel. Soon the channel resumed its work.
During the Covid quarantine, Galagali regularly posted videos, giving viewers, especially cricket fans, an option when live matches were not televised.
The response to Galagali’s YouTube channel has been encouraging. “The footage brings so much warmth, nostalgia and joy of so many cricket stories to so many viewers,” he gushes and goes on to quote some responses.
A teenager from Delhi called to thank Galagali as his grandfather, who suffers from dementia, opened up, recalling the past after watching several videos.
Legendary Indian captain Pataudi’s daughter sent a message saying that the videos brought back a flood of memories of her father.
The economist, who suffers from cancer, wrote that she watched the videos endlessly because she was a viewer of one of them.
It was ‘yet another yesterday’ for the Sri Lankan cricketer, who currently lives in Australia, after seeing the reel of the first Test series between India and Sri Lanka. The cricketer played in that series.
Galagali has so far deposited only about fifty percent of the valuable treasure he owns. Fortunately, with the family member now in good health, viewers can look forward to many more Indian cricket videos.
https://jaigalagali.wordpress.com/
