In an earlier chapter I mentioned my first match in Bombay back in 1964, when I had the honour of playing against Vinoo Mankad, captain of the Cricket Club of India team, and the fact his two sons Ashok and Atul were in the eleven he led. Little did I know that day that I would one day not only compete with the elder of the two sons on the field of play but also enjoy his friendship.
Kaka, as the late Ashok Mankad was known to one and all, was a cricketer I greatly admired for his phenomenal feats as a batsman in domestic cricket and his astute leadership. (I never knew when he was alive that his nickname was because of his fondness for the film actor Rajesh Khanna, also known as Kaka to friends). For a few years, we enjoyed a great rapport whenever we met as foes on the cricket field or friends off the field--for example, during a conditioning camp for India's Test probables of 1977-78 at Chepauk. That is when we shared a dressing room, and he kept me and the rest of the boys constantly entertained with his mostly apocryphal cricket stories. One particular anecdote involving 'Nana of Poona', P G Joshi, the late Indian wicket keeper, had us convulsed.
Nana Joshi was according to Kaka in the habit of introducing himself with a flourish as “I’m Nana of Poona.” Kaka was telling us the story of a friendly match he played at Poona against the redoubtable leadership of Joshi. It was a celebration of some kind and I don’t remember the occasion, but it was Mankad’s turn to open the innings after an interval in which a large number of shandies—a cocktail of beer and lemonade for the uninitiated—had figured prominently. Nana, leading the side from behind the stumps had perhaps not imbibed, and was full of enthusiasm in the hot sun. Mankad was so far gone that he was seeing not just two cricket balls but two bowlers altogether. He turned round and saw four slips and a gully eagerly eyeing the outer edge of his bat. Hurriedly looking the other way, he spotted forward short-leg breathing down his neck. The bowler, with a reputation for genuine pace, short-pitched bowling and a short temper, was a distant speck half way to the straight boundary.
Nana Joshi was according to Kaka in the habit of introducing himself with a flourish as “I’m Nana of Poona.” Kaka was telling us the story of a friendly match he played at Poona against the redoubtable leadership of Joshi. It was a celebration of some kind and I don’t remember the occasion, but it was Mankad’s turn to open the innings after an interval in which a large number of shandies—a cocktail of beer and lemonade for the uninitiated—had figured prominently. Nana, leading the side from behind the stumps had perhaps not imbibed, and was full of enthusiasm in the hot sun. Mankad was so far gone that he was seeing not just two cricket balls but two bowlers altogether. He turned round and saw four slips and a gully eagerly eyeing the outer edge of his bat. Hurriedly looking the other way, he spotted forward short-leg breathing down his neck. The bowler, with a reputation for genuine pace, short-pitched bowling and a short temper, was a distant speck half way to the straight boundary.
Alarmed at this prospect of physical danger, Kaka turned to the wicket-keeper-captain and said to him in his most pleading voice: “Yeh kya ho raha hai bhai? This is only a friendly match, and after all those beers, you don’t want to kill me on the field, do you?”
Joshi was unmoved. He summoned his best professional manner and said sternly: “Ashok, you do the batting, and I’ll do the captaincy. After all, you are a Test batsman. Don’t tell me you are scared.”
Ashok had no choice but to steel his nerves and try to get out at the earliest and thus escape injury. He literally closed his eyes and flashed at the first delivery. It went screaming past gully for four. Nana, who had an impressive talent for whistling, whistled at the gully fielder and waving his arms furiously and regally, despatched him to deep third man.
Kaka said to himself: That was lucky; now let me try harder to get out this time. Another express delivery, and Kaka followed the same routine. Close eyes. Say prayer. Slash hard. This time the ball went like a bullet to point boundary. Nana whistled again, and waving his arms in a slightly different direction, banished fourth slip to point boundary. The fast bowler was not pleased at Kaka’s wild abandon.
The next ball was a vicious bouncer and Mankad’s flailing bat sent the ball over fineleg off a top edge for six. Predictably, Nana’s whistle-wave-arms routine followed as surely as Hawkeye follows the ball.
By now the paceman—I can’t swear to it, but I half-remember it to be the express tearaway Pandurang Salgaonkar—was livid with rage. He sent down a vicious toe-crusher and by the sheer power of his self-protection instincts, Mankad dug it out to send it past midwicket for four.
This time around, there was a slight change in the sequence of events. In trying to deport second slip to midwicket, Nana Joshi got the whistling perfectly right but the arm waving, for the fourth successive time, obviously proved a bit of a challenge. “Cramp! Cramp!” he shouted, and turning towards the pavilion, screamed, ”Paani, paani! Jaldi paani aur Electral lao.”
It was during that camp that I first heard the typically Mumbaiyya expression 'leg n' leg' that Kaka repeatedly used to describe our condition after our coach Darshan Tandon put us through the wringer day after day. The Indian skipper Bishan Bedi, away playing county cricket in England, joined the camp only for the last three days or so. Kaka's impersonation of how Bishan would come into the stadium for training on his first morning in the camp and find noone there was a brilliant act of mimicry. Imitating the captain, and giving wild vent to his imagination, Mankad went through the whole gamut of emotions—surprise, bewilderment, anxiety, and finally anger—peaking with the dawning of realisation in a sterling show of the adbhuta rasa, when Bishan finds the entire team jogging on the roof of the stadium.
Bishan was part of the audience that stood around Mankad at M L Jaisimha's Marredpally, Secunderabad, residence one evening during Jai's benefit match, in which the Indian team led by Bedi played against an 'international' eleven captained by Jai. Asif Iqbal, Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas and Mushtaq Mohammed formed the strong Pakistani contingent at the match. Most of them gathered around Kaka, who told story after story, embellishing fact with fiction, slowly building up suspense in each tale, like the master raconteur he was.
Mankad was growing redder and redder in the face as the beer kept flowing after a long day in the sun, and the rest of us were struggling to stay on our feet as he kept us all in rollicking good humour.
That morning, Sunil Gavaskar had pulled a long hop from me straight into Mankad's hands at deep square leg, and one of the guests, a police official, who was generally inflicting his company on the celebrity cricketers at the party, now reminded Kaka about that. “Mr Mankad,” he said, wagging a naughty finger at Kaka, “is there an old rivalry between you and Mr Gavaskar?” Not satisfied with Kaka's firm reply in the negative, he said, “Then why did he fling his bat in the dressing room after getting out and mutter, 'Sala, drops catches in Test matches, holds mine in a benefit match'?”
Mankad's riposte was a classic, but one he was quick to stress was just a joke. He said, “Reddy Saab, catch me dropping Sunil Gavaskar! Wake me up at midnight and I will hold his catches!"
Wondering if he had perhaps gone too far, Kaka immediately tried to play it down. “Reddy saab, you know of course that I am saying all this in good humour.”
Bishan was part of the audience that stood around Mankad at M L Jaisimha's Marredpally, Secunderabad, residence one evening during Jai's benefit match, in which the Indian team led by Bedi played against an 'international' eleven captained by Jai. Asif Iqbal, Sarfraz Nawaz, Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas and Mushtaq Mohammed formed the strong Pakistani contingent at the match. Most of them gathered around Kaka, who told story after story, embellishing fact with fiction, slowly building up suspense in each tale, like the master raconteur he was.
Mankad was growing redder and redder in the face as the beer kept flowing after a long day in the sun, and the rest of us were struggling to stay on our feet as he kept us all in rollicking good humour.
That morning, Sunil Gavaskar had pulled a long hop from me straight into Mankad's hands at deep square leg, and one of the guests, a police official, who was generally inflicting his company on the celebrity cricketers at the party, now reminded Kaka about that. “Mr Mankad,” he said, wagging a naughty finger at Kaka, “is there an old rivalry between you and Mr Gavaskar?” Not satisfied with Kaka's firm reply in the negative, he said, “Then why did he fling his bat in the dressing room after getting out and mutter, 'Sala, drops catches in Test matches, holds mine in a benefit match'?”
Mankad's riposte was a classic, but one he was quick to stress was just a joke. He said, “Reddy Saab, catch me dropping Sunil Gavaskar! Wake me up at midnight and I will hold his catches!"
Wondering if he had perhaps gone too far, Kaka immediately tried to play it down. “Reddy saab, you know of course that I am saying all this in good humour.”
It was Bishan’s turn now to bring the roof down. “Kaka says it in good humour all right, but he means it.”
(Disclaimer: Sunil Gavaskar was not amused when he heard this story, failing perhaps to see the humour in it. He vehemently denied there was any rivalry between Kaka and himself. I hope he will see it as no more than a funny story, not meant to cast aspersions on anyone—if he reads this again. Mankad himself thoroughly enjoyed it).
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