Missed opportunities

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

These words of Brutus in Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar are probably the wisest ever spoken in history. In my cricket career, I did not pay heed to the tide at more than one crucial juncture, though the first time around, I was more to be pitied than censured, when well-meaning but incompetent seniors saw the tide in my affairs and neatly deflected it.

The first hint that I was perhaps capable of competing with professional cricketers came on a tour of Bombay a month after my 17^th birthday. I was in the midst of a successful 1963-64 season as an off-spinner for Jai Hind Cricket Club in the First division B zone of the Madras league.  My performances led to my inclusion in the Madras Cricket Association Colts team selected from the B and C zones of the First Division. It was then customary for the Colts team to undertake a ten-day tour of Bombay where it played some strong teams. It was a wonderful experience for players who otherwise never had any exposure to cricket outside Madras.

The tour was off to a memorable start, with our opening match against Cricket Club of India at the famous Brabourne Stadium, the venue of many a stirring international contest. The excitement of playing at the historic ground was enhanced by the personnel that did duty for CCI. The team was led by Vinoo Mankad—now retired from first class cricket—and had a few Ranji Trophy players and at least one India cap in Arvind Apte. It was a proud moment for all of us when our manager asked Mankad to hand us our Colts caps. Unfortunately, to our great disappointment, the former India captain neither bowled nor batted in the match, though two of his sons, Ashok and Atul, played in the eleven. Ashok went on to captain Bombay and pile up runs at an average of over 70 in the Ranji Trophy, and though less successful as a Test batsman, had his moments in international cricket.

Winning the toss, CCI batted first. I came on to bowl before the new ball was ten overs old, as was often the practice those days. With the ball still shiny, I was getting quite a bit of bounce and frequent away movement while bowling my off spin at a slightly quicker pace than I would with an older ball. With my brisk run-up, high arm action and attempt to impart sharp finger spin, I was proving quite a handful to the batsmen. Arvind Apte was one of them, and he was all at sea, not knowing which of my deliveries would turn and which would go the other way. I was finding the edge and hitting him on the pads frequently, and feeling quite on top of the world. It was so exciting to know that a Test batsman was struggling against my yet unproven spin bowling. I was thrilled I seemed to belong at that level.

It was too good to last. My captain SV Narayanan, an amiable chap who could bat a bit, did not seem to know much about spin bowling, unlike my Jai Hind captain Raman. “Toss it up, toss it up,” he kept pestering me, when he should have let me continue bowling the way I was bowling. The batsmen were sooner or later bound to make a fatal mistake, the way I was dominating them. I had frequently come across such ignorance in collegiate cricket, but also knew how to ignore gratuitous advice and do my own thing as far as bowling was concerned. This time, unfortunately, I succumbed to pressure from the skipper, who was ten years older and more experienced. I sent down a couple of lollipops, which were duly despatched to the boundary. The same captain who had exhorted me to squander my advantage away, now took me off. I never bowled again in the match, in fact almost never again on the tour.

You don’t show your disappointment on a cricket tour, and I had wonderful company in some of my teammates, but I realised that every passing day without an opportunity to bowl against the high quality batsmen the Bombay teams had lined up for us was seriously hampering my progress. I was still playing in the second division (First Division B Zone those days) of the Madras league and would never have such chances back at home. The indifference of the team management really hurt me. The manager of the team, Mr S Annadorai, was an eccentric old man, who, because he was distantly related to me—I guessed—decided he must be sternly impartial towards me. He decided to find fault with me constantly and even made fun of me in public more than once.

I must hand it to him, though. Mr Annadurai was an excellent manager of a young team, when it came to looking after our comforts on the tour. The dormitory of the South Indian Education Society’s school at King’s Circle, Matunga, where we stayed, was spacious, clean, and cool. We slept on mattresses spread on the floor in the assembly hall, and as the school was closed for Christmas holidays, we had the whole school to ourselves. The bathrooms were spotlessly clean and that really helped our morale. Breakfast and dinner were usually at a nearby cafe or South Indian Concerns, a popular hostelry catering to people from our part of the world as the name suggests. Lunch was at the ground where we were playing and the manager also treated us to icecream, movies, or even dinner at some relatively posh joint. In this, he was generous to a fault, often spending his own money on us.

The problem started, I think, with my smoking cigarettes. The habit was a few months old, and I probably smoked two or three cigarettes a day, but I hated doing it in the sly. The manager saw me light up a couple of times, and was duly shocked. He made it a point to declare in the team bus what an unworthy member of what a worthy family I was. I did not realise that a case was being built up against me, and it was exciting to be seen as a rebel— though one without a cause, for sure.

The second nail in my coffin was struck by a girl my family knew back in Madras, when she joined me—and the whole team, manager and marker—at the movies the one afternoon we were free on the tour. The last straw for the manager was when I returned from my teammate Lakhi’s cousin’s flat on Marine Drive and vomited violently. The villain was a particularly greasy peas masala we ate that evening, but my manager refused to believe I was as yet a teetotaller. “He smokes, he drinks, and he womanises!”  he announced to a tittering group of irresponsible young rascals, who loved my discomfiture rather than rise to a man in support of me.

Annadurai—bless his departed soul, for I hold no grudge against him—haunted me throughout the short tour with sarcastic remarks. “Ramnarayan’s top spin is as erratic as his off spin”, he declared at the table tennis table one evening. I had hardly any chance to prove my ability on that tour. In hindsight, I realise I was one of the few players in the squad who could have gone on to higher levels of cricket. As events turned out in the long run, I was, in fact, the only one to do so, but I had to endure a very long wait, as this was my last opportunity for the next five years. Annadurai’s tour-end assessment of my performance saw to it.

The highlight of the tour was the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the greats of the game. And, when I landed at Madras and found that my father had been hospitalised, it was a rude wake-up call. He recovered soon enough, but it was my first hint of some of the hard times to come.