When a dear family member was stricken with a terrifying cancer in 2017, Chirag Galagali was visibly distraught; Juggling work, home and the hospital was excruciating.
The California-based Indian tech had to do something to relieve the stress. The cricket that had bitten him years ago came to his rescue and an inspired idea was born.
“The mind needed a respite, to escape into another world, into my 12-year-old self when life revolved around cricket and films,” Galagali begins in his deep baritone.
“I decided to dig up old footage of priceless moments from India's rich cricket history,” he says, sitting in his Bangalore apartment while on a busman's holiday.
Today, his non-profit YouTube channel 'Jai Galagali' features several old videos dating back to the 1940s acquired from the Indian Film Department, as well as videos he created himself related to cricket.
His channel has over 30,000 subscribers and millions of viewers across cricketing countries. Moreover, Galagali has become known as an archivist and enthusiast of Indian cricket history, a fact acknowledged by famous cricketers and the media.
However, his journey since 2017 has not been easy. Sitting in his office in California, he had to make many phone calls at night to the film department in Mumbai which often went unanswered. Galagali doggedly pursued his goal, knocking on many doors before finally receiving his spoils after paying for them. A shipment of 200 DVDs (each DVD was a newsreel that also included cricket videos) arrived at his doorstep.
“I picked up that box that literally held the history of Indian cricket, and when I took it to my room, tears welled up in my eyes,” he says with a smile.
The newsreels included every cricket match filmed in India since 1948, the year after India's independence in 1947. Some of them had a soundtrack, while many did not, he adds.
Galagali quickly got to work, posting the videos to his YouTube channel with a few edits. Gradually, he added some depth to the videos through brief narration by adding some context, background, and interesting information. The libraries of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley were useful repositories of his research.
The first video was a three-minute video from the 1973 India-England match in Kolkata, and the last was an interview with former Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Syed Kirmani, who recently released his autobiography in Bangalore, recalls Galagali.
Some of the famous videos include India's first win in a cricket Test match in 1952 in Madras; The Indian players were seen wearing black wrist bands as a sign of respect to the late King George VI. In this unforgettable video, Galagali also interviewed CD Gopinath, now a junior, who received the award for winning that match.
Another is from the first Test series between India and Pakistan in 1952 where the bowling of legendary Subhash Gupte was shown live for the first time.
There are other memorable excerpts from cricket matches played in the 1950s and 1960s between India and England and India and West Indies, Pakistan's tour of India and the debut matches of some of India's best cricketers.
Cricket matches always have some drama, and one eye-catching video was of an excited lady in a sari who overcame security and arrived on the field to kiss Brijesh Patel after scoring 50 runs in the India-West Indies Test match in Mumbai in 1975.
Unexpectedly, Galagali's beloved work hit a snag in 2020 when he received an email from YouTube citing copyright infringement from the Government of India. Realizing that he was not wrong, especially after paying for the DVDs, he made several pleas to the film department that 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. The channel soon returned to work.
During the coronavirus lockdown, Galagali posted videos regularly, giving viewers, especially cricket fans, an option when live matches were not broadcast.
The response on Galagali's YouTube channel has been encouraging. “The footage brings so much warmth, nostalgia and joy to so many cricket stories for so many viewers,” he gushes and goes on to quote some of the responses.
A teenager from Delhi called to thank Galagali because his grandfather, who suffers from dementia, opened up and reminisced about the past after watching some videos.
The daughter of legendary India captain Pataudi sent a message saying the videos brought back a flood of memories of her father.
An economist who suffers from cancer wrote that she watched the videos non-stop because she was a spectator in one of them.
It was 'yesterday again' for a Sri Lankan cricketer, currently living in Australia after watching the first Test series between India and Sri Lanka. The cricketer played in that series.
So far, Galagali has only published about fifty percent of the valuable treasure in his possession. Fortunately, with the family member now back in good health, viewers can expect more Indian cricket videos.
https://jaigalagali.wordpress.com/
