BCCI secy Ajay Shirke set up an audio system for Sachin Tendulkar

It was a morning soon after Ajay Shirke returned to the Indian cricket board as its secretary on May 22. In his Pune home, Shirke lowered the needle of his record player on an LP of Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, surrendering himself to the symphony.

In addition to being a cricket administrator and construction mogul, the 57-year- old is a music aficionado. He also has a business of high-end music systems. “Arrey I’ve been collecting music since 1965. It (the passion for music) just happened,” Shirke says.

He often prefaces answers with an impatient yet avuncular “arrey”. And his voice is reminiscent of JY Lele, the late former Board secretary. “I still have the old Grundig radiogram in my Pune house on which I started listening. It’s still in playing condition,” he says.

Shirke’s homes — in Pune and London — are equipped with elaborate audio systems. He says, “I listen to a wide genre of music… blues, pop, rock, jazz, western classical. In classical, I listen to orchestral and chamber. Very little is opera. In the past, I would spend 15-20 hours a week listening to music. Now time is scarce and it’s probably two-three hours a week. My preferred listening time is post 10 pm. It unwinds me.”

Reel to Reel
Just as cricket romantics enjoy Tests over limited overs, Shirke submits his trained ears only to analog music. And a lot of his spare time is spent making analog copies of albums.

He estimates he has around 4,000 LPs and several hundred tapes and CDs. “I do listen to digital sources, but very little, and only CD,” he says. “But I have a lot of analog sources and quite a few original reel to reel tapes. I have recently acquired in UK a Studer half inch 30 IPS tape machine. It is a professional studio tape recorder running at high speed and though 30 years old, it is in pristine condition.”

Playing for Sachin
Several cricketers have interacted with Shirke over music. John Wright, handy with a guitar, spent hours in Shirke’s den enjoying the sound. So did Sachin Tendulkar. In fact, Shirke set up a system at Tendulkar’s residence.

Asked if he played any instruments himself, Shirke says, “As a child, I played piano and the sitar for a while. But I gave it up. It demands a certain routine and I could not do it.” His heart bleeds for the way music is made and consumed these days. And with trademark eloquence he rails against modern methods. “People talk about the benefits of portable platforms and modern digital recording techniques, but it’s taken the soul out of music,” Shirke says.

“Music is an art form, whether it is recording or playback. During recording in the era gone by, art happily coexisted with technology. Now individual musicians often email their bits of music for integration onto an album, which to me is scary. Gone are the days of the tonmeister (a trained soundmaster). There will not be a Rudy van Gelder or a Wilma Cozart Fine again, who produced masterpiece recordings almost as a matter of routine.”

The saving grace for audiophiles is that vinyl is making a strong comeback. In fact, it is one of the few thriving markets in the music business, otherwise hit hard by the internet and by portable devices. “The future is encouraging,” Shirke says. “Vinyl is the fastest growing category in the music market. Even the Facebook generation is investing in turntables. They are finding a big difference between compressed music and the real thing.” Spoken like a connoisseur.

‘Males are inferior’
Once Ajay Shirke likes something, he sticks to it. He finds Polo t-shirts comfortable, so he only wears them. He got his first pet poodle in 1968. Since then he has only had poodles. And female ones. “The male of any species is far inferior to the female,” he says. The dogs are called Stella, Leica, Poppy and Jasmine. “The latter two together are pop and jazz,” Shirke says. “I also sponsor Cally who is a beautiful guide dog.”


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