“You can hold them if you like?” says a tour guide. The “them”, isn’t just anything, it’s a collection of some of cricket’s most sacred items. Bats the players used in their triple centuries. Chris Gayle, Virender Sehwag, Mahela Jayawardene and Michael Clarke former owners of just some of the willow you can yield. I, and probably just about everyone else who comes through, instantly tries to work out which one is their favourite. For most it’s Sehwag’s, for me it’s Jayawardene’s.
I’m at Blades of Glory, the cricket museum in an Old Pune apartment complex, run by the real estate magnate Rohan Pate. The museum has signed items, match used items, Sunil Gavaskar’s experimental bat with holes through it, and an entire room dedicated to Virat Kohli.
But when I meet Rohan, he takes me to the upstairs section. If downstairs is incredible, upstairs is the beating heart of cricket. He takes me to the shirt room, which has so many that you can barely trawl through them all, and on the wall behind you is a collection of stumps used in international games. And by collection, I mean over a hundred. Another room has pads from Boycott and gloves from Gilchrist and Dhoni. And then there is the bat room.
The Batcave has nothing on this room. The first thing you see is a century – I think this is the correct collective noun for a bunch of Sachin Tendulkar bats. If that was all there is, it would be spectacular. But he has Miandad, Warner, Hutton, Ponting, Bradman and DeVilliers too. The room, from roof to ceiling, is just bats. Clive Lloyd, sure, why not? Virat Kohli, yes, go on then. It is all there, and just standing amongst them is amazing, but then Rohan insists you pick them all up. As you pick up one, and just start to feel it in your hands he has already found another one, a Lawrence Rowe or Hasim Amla, perhaps, for you to try.
This all started in 2010, when Rohan, a massive cricket fan, was using Sachin Tendulkar as a brand ambassador for his company. “I asked him for a used bat of his because I also played cricket. And everyone would want something from him. So the first bat I got from him was a used bat. I never thought I would collect other bats, but then I thought if I can get Sachin’s bat, why can’t I get others?”
Two years later Sachin was at the opening of Rohit’s museum, and now he has over 12,000 cricket items. It’s impossible to know the true worth of this museum, as everywhere you look there is something phenomenal. I see a pink ball above Rohan’s desk, and pick it up. Rohan tells me how he got it. He had invited some match officials to the museum – Rohan invites everyone to the museum – and when they came, John Rhodes (an ACSU official) told Rohan that he had an item for him. The ball in my hand, wasn’t just a pink ball, it was a pink ball used in the first ever day-night Test, and because Rohan is a completionist, he then went and got it signed by both captains. It isn’t even on show yet, and is sitting without any case just two shelves above Malcolm Marshall’s boots.
That is more than just a museum, that is history in your hands, you’re touching one of cricket’s holy relics. That is Blades of Glory.
This is currently a humble museum, but Rohan has huge plans for it. “Since last year I’m feeling that there is so much that you can’t showcase, so I want some to get four or five acres off the highway, so it’s accessible to Mumbai as well. I want to build a museum there, a coffee and gift shop, the sort of place people spend their day. I want to get it done within six months and move everything over. I also want to collect as much as I can in the next five years I am so far ahead of any other collectors, no one can catch me for the next 200 years.”
Rohan spends a lot of time naming bats he likes before stating his preference, “I always used to have a heavy bat. I would love a Gayle bat or Tendulkar bat. So it just comes down, thwak,” he motions smacking one for six, “and it’s out of the ground.”
Getting things off player is not so easy as a heavy bat whacking a ball. “For older players it gets hard. Andy Roberts told me that his old stuff was starting to smell so he’d thrown it out in the garbage. I said what the hell, you should have called me. I would have come personally and collected it. Many of the player’s wives think that these things stink, they occupy the space, and they want to throw it away.”
With the younger players, often in the prime of their careers, they don’t want to give something away to some strange guy they’ve met in a hotel. “Joe Root was a kid in 2012, I asked him if I can have something, and he said no. This guy who has not even made his mark in the international game is saying no to me. But over the years as he has matured and come to know me, so he gave me his bat and shirt on the last tour.”
Over 300 international players have visited the museum, “Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Andy Roberts, Wasim Akram, Karun Nair, Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Brett Lee, Kumar Sangakkara, and Mahela Jayawardene”. And once they come, they are just as captivated as the fans who arrive. “Now a lot of these players say, it’s an honour to have our stuff in the museum, because after we finish up, no one is gonna ask us. So if you see their items in a museum, people will remember them”.
Unlike other cricket museums, Rohan doesn’t focus on one nation; he focuses on cricket. If a player is from Holland (yes, he has Holland stuff) or Afghanistan (yes, he has a Shapoor Zadran shirt) it doesn’t matter. If it is from an international cricketer, he will take it. “I never say no to anyone or anything; I take everything. A few years back I collected a shirt from Quinton de Kock, and the South African physio told me, ‘What are you going to do with stuff from this kid’, and now that kid is doing so well. And you don’t know after they become a star if they still give you something.”
A brief history of Blades of Glory
- Opened in 2015
- Museum is in Pune, India
- Spread across 4,000 sq ft building
- Founded by Rohan Pate
Rohan’s great white whale is Brian Lara. “Lara I am looking for, of the 375 or 400. I have tried to speak to him. It’s not that he, or other cricketers are rude, it’s that everyone wants something out of them and they think that someone will want to sell it and make some money from them. They don’t know my intentions. One day I will convince Lara to come to the museum, because once they see the museum, they will understand. I want to reach a level where like Lord’s, if I ask for a bat, they won’t say no.”
Rohan has some favourites. “World Cup final shirt of Sachin Tendulkar. All World Cup winning bats signed by entire squad from 1975 to now. All the world cup winning captains signed on one bat. Malcolm Marshall shirt. Philip Hughes shirt signed. He had promised me a bat next time I saw him.” I have my own favourites, his collection of Wisdens is lovely. Oh, and the pink David Boon shirt. Neil Harvey’s bat is very special, and so is his many boxes of cricket ties, albeit in a different way entirely. There is a newer bat was that made in the style of the original bats that resembled hockey sticks, and Boycott’s Ashes tour bag was cool. Not to mention picking up Viv Richard’s bat. I could go on and on. After almost two hours there, rifling through Rohan’s upstairs cricket utopia, I have to leave, but not before I tell him what a special thing he is doing here.
As I leave I go over and pick up the first item you see when you walk in, it’s just sitting there, in the middle of the main museum room. It’s Sachin’s bat. And for 50 rupees, anyone who comes to Blades of Glory, can pick up the bat of one of the greatest cricketers who ever lived.
That is more than just a museum, that is history in your hands, you’re touching one of cricket’s holy relics. That is Blades of Glory.
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