Bishan the Magician

It is one of the lovely ironies of modern cricket that great cricket writers can wax lyrical about both fast and slow bowling. Whoever described Michael Holding’s bowling action as whispering death was perhaps a greater wordsmith than the man who described Bishan Bedi’s as poetry in motion, but both the speed merchant and the spin wizard tended to evoke superlatives in those watching them in their prime.

Bedi at his best not only fitted that description perfectly, but was the most consummate exponent of the art of spin bowling—so much so that the question is often asked if he has been the greatest left-arm spinner in the history of the game. Certainly Sir Donald Bradman, who saw Bedi only at his best or close to his best, believed so.

He was certainly the best left-arm spinner I saw, better than Vinoo Mankad, whom I did not have the good fortune to watch in his youth, more classical than the mercurial genius Salim Durrani, more complete, especially on good wickets, than Derek Underwood of England, who could be destructive on certain types of pitches, the two brilliant bowlers he kept out of Test cricket—Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar—his outstanding successor Dilip Doshi, and New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori.

Expanding this assessment to name the best Indian spin bowler I have watched, Chandrasekhar would have been the obvious choice for being the most spectacular, and Anil Kumble for being the most consistent, longest lasting match-winner of them all, but I might have placed Bedi higher than my eventual choice Prasanna among them, but for Bedi’s profligacy with flagrant unconcern for the state of the game in the last ten or so Tests of his illustrious career.

Every self-respecting Hyderabad cricketer of the 1960s and 70s knew that Bishan Singh Bedi might never have played for India had chairman of selectors Ghulam Ahmed not preferred him to Mumtaz Husain, the boy from his own home town, in an exaggerated display of impartiality while picking the final Prime Minister’s eleven for the tour game after the first Test of the 1966-67 season. While his band of Hyderabadi admirers were all convinced Mumtaz’s amazing bag of tricks would have proved a handful for the touring West Indies, Bedi it was who went on to snare six of the best in the first innings of that match. The rest is history.

Though Bedi had been impressive when I first saw him—in his second Test and the third and last of that series at Chepauk—it wasn’t until six years later that he was to overwhelm me with his total domination of the English openers when brought on within moments of the start of the innings. By now, he was a confident purveyor of his exquisite art of classical spin bowling. Twinkle-toed in his run-up, he was virtually airborne in his final stride to the wicket, looking over his right shoulder in side-on elegance. His incredible arm-speed in delivery completed the illusion of effortlessness that enabled him to slow the flight of the ball in the air but hasten it off the pitch with just the amount of finger spin he wanted. His arm ball, especially with the shine still on, was a veritable in-swinger that could castle the bemused righthander or find the edge of the unsuspecting lefthander. 

Bedi seemed to be naturally fit, with just the right strength and flexibility of muscle for a spin bowler. If Prasanna was cerebral and Chandrasekhar intuitive, Bedi was more the artful dodger, though he too could lay an elaborate trap for a batsman when he set his mind to it. He was also the most stubborn of the Indian quartet of spinners, someone who sometimes refused to see what was good for him or his side, as events in the evening of his career proved.

In his rivetting Bishan, portrait of a cricketer, Suresh Menon—perhaps completely rightly— attributes this chapter of his bowling life to Bedi’s adamant refusal to deviate from his philosophy of flight, but I have always wondered if the poet had simply lost his talent for verse by the time he arrived at that juncture of his cricketing journey. Was it a question of loss of spinning ability and resultant absence of loop that made the previously deceptive suddenly innocuous? (Menon does hint in his empathetic yet delightfully honest book that Bishan was physically and mentally tired by the time he toured Pakistan as India captain).

In his foreword to the book, Anil Kumble recounts how Bedi as Indian coach on the 1990 England tour made him carry Venkatapathy Raju on his shoulders and run during a practice session: “My back never recovered for the rest of the tour.”

I had a similar, if milder experience of BS Bedi the martinet when I played under his captaincy for Rest of India in the Irani Cup in 1976. Jimmy Amarnath was laughing at my plight as Bedi reserved me for special treatment on the eve of the match. Bedi was obviously training to be the future India coach even then.

To give a more complete picture of the man, I can do no better than quote from the same book. “Bedi bowled like a magician, and passed on what he had learnt. Yet the basic lessons he taught were philosophical rather than cricketing. Learn to respect the game. Work hard.”

Menon also says Bedi’s greatest contribution to the game after his retirement was as a coach. I tend to agree, and hope to soon unearth a piece I once wrote after watching him in action with young cricketers.

The Other Side of Dennis Lillee

FIRST PUBLISHED IN SUNDAY EXPRESS MANY YEARS AGO.

Wine collector, cricket administrator, coach and a passionate cook… There’s more to Dennis Lillee than just fast bowling. V Ramnarayan recounts a refreshing experience.

The Leather Bat at the Park Hotel near the Gemini flyover was very nearly empty, but the music was blaring out at top volume. On the bar stools were two Australians: the great fast bowling legend Dennis Keith Lillee and his protégé Troy Cooley, England’s fast bowling coach. 

The beer looked deliciously cold and the conversation was animated, passionate, and as is to be expected when Lillee is around, devoted to the science and technology of fast bowling.

I was the first of a small entourage of three from Sunday Express to join this thirsty, sunburnt duo reviving themselves after a gruelling day at the MRF Pace Foundation at the Madras Christian College campus at Harrington Road, Chetpet.  The welcome from the Australian fast bowling guru was as always warm and spontaneous. He has a superb memory for people and places, a handy quality in a coach. Lillee remembered me from our meeting met more than a year ago, while introducing me to Cooley.

My friends from Sunday Express joined us soon, and we moved away from the loudest part of the bar, to a relatively quiet corner. It was like getting away from the raw pace of Jeff Thomson, only to have to face Lillee, for our new perch was only marginally less raucous. (Just in case you wonder if Lillee bowled gentle medium pacers, please disabuse yourself of any such notion.  He had been clocked at 98mph before stress fractures of his lumbar vertebrae had nearly finished his career, but he came back adding vicious swing and seam to his arsenal, and at around 90mph, he was not far behind his young partner).

Now this conversation was not going to be about sheer pace, coaching or the MRF Pace Foundation, if I were to do my editor’s bidding. It should result in a portrait of Dennis Lillee the man, his interests other than cricket, his domestic skills, his new role in West Australian cricket and his efforts to moblise support for the recent tsunami victims.

First off, we learn that Australian’s greatest fast bowler loves to cook.  Seafood is his speciality, and he explained to us how he could rustle up a quick, simple mean of scallops, marinated in lemon, with a bit of soy added, and some sauce or just a bit more lemon.  By now warming to the theme, Lillee said, “I like to keep it simple, not add too many ingredients, call friends over. It goes down very well with white wine.  If there’s a barbecue, I do the barbecue every time.  I do the lasagna, simple things like that.”

We are to learn there are more hidden depths to the demon fast bowler.  “I was househusband for two years,” he reveals. “Some ten years ago, my wife went back to university full time.  My job then was the house.  That included the washing, the ironing, the cooking. If I had to go away on business, I’d cook three or four meals and put the food in the freezer so that the family would have all the food they needed when I was away.”

“I enjoyed cooking even before this stint as homemaker, but during the period, I put time aside, in the first six months to cook good meals, to improve, expand my repertoire.  I did not consult recipe books, but did some serious cooking.  After six months of learning, I went back to quick lasagnas and barbecues.”

It was an interesting time, when Lillee learnt to be organized, to plan meals ahead. “I was lucky that the boys were adults now, and not school going children needing lunches to be packed and all that goes with the responsibility of parenting young kids.” Lillee still cooks, but gets some help from one of his sons who is a chef, and lends a hand with the finishing touches.  “I time the cooking for him to come home from work when it is almost done. He takes a look at my handiwork and says, ‘Dad, you should do this, this and this,’ and I gladly hand over the rest of the cooking to him. We have this rule that whoever does the cooking, doesn’t have to do the dishes and invariably, there’s stiff competition for the cooking job.”

Lillee is also a wine lover, and has been collecting wines over the last twenty years.  ‘It’s good to drink good wine with good food.  Then you start to match your dishes.  I have been more a wine lover than a cooking enthusiast in the last ten years,‘ says Lillee, who is not entirely comfortable with conventional thinking on the subject that draws strict lines of compatibility between particular foods and wines.  “I am not so sure that red wine goes only with red meat and white wine with fish and so on. I don’t believe there’s any problem with Indian food and full-bodied wines. Indian vegetarian food goes beautifully with red wine, contrary to popular theories.  I don’t believe in stocking up with white wine to go with seafood.”

Collecting wine has become a hobby with Lillee, and 90 per cent of his collection comprises heavier, full-bodied wines, and 80 per cent red wine, he informs us.  “Besides collecting wine, I like drinking it,” he adds.

The conversation them turns to vegetarian food and we talk of the “bloody good food” at Anna Lakshmi restaurant, both in Chennai and Perth, where Lillee is a popular guest.

For someone who loves food and wine, Dennis Lillee is superbly fit, his muscular, tough frame belying his 55 years. When I asked what he had been doing since his last visit, to look even trimmer than before, he said he had been spending a lot of time in the gym, the treadmill replacing his earlier routine of 20-25 laps around the cricket ground or cross country running.  He has recently taken to the Pilates fitness regime that is growing in popularity: After attending a few classes, Lillee bought himself a machine, which he has installed at home.

Finally, we come to Dennis Lillee’s newest role in cricket, that of getting involved in the administration. He was recently elected President of the Western Australian Cricket Association.  For the first time in the interview, Lillee showed signs of embarrassment. “It’s not something I ever wanted to do. And all my friends rang me up and said, “This is not you”.  ‘I agreed, but… WACA was financially going under.  The former regime had taken a loan to build, redevelop the ground, and the repayment was to begin in June. We did not have the income to do that, as we only earned money for six days in the year, during a Test match and a couple of one-day games.  We then went in as a group of people with a ticket. (Former Test cricketers Graeme Wood and Sam Gannon were nominated as vice presidents). We propose to sell parts of the ground, not the playing area, but newer developments of the ground to repay some of the debt.  We met the government and they have agreed to lend us some money to help restructure the debt.”

The new regime plans to build a centre of excellence in partnership with the University of Western Australia, for main games, and locate practice pitches and other matches at another area. The idea is to develop it into a ‘boutiquy’ sort of ground in the long term.

Lillee is happy that these ideas of his team are being embraced by the older elements in the administration.

Anyone who knows the turbulent past of this magnificent but controversial fast bowler cannot help feeling slightly amused by this new found acceptance by those in authority. I asked him tongue-in-cheek, if he had even been in an adversarial position with the cricket board, expecting an interesting reaction, but completely unprepared for the deadly effect my words had on him. I caught him in the act of drinking water, and Lillee spluttered spectacularly into his glass, almost choking, as he tried to suppress his laughter.  When he finally found his voice, he said, “it wasn’t very often that I wasn’t in an adversarial position with the WACA.”

To bring back the crowds, Lillee and Co., will try and make the atmosphere at the WACA more relaxed, more casual.  “People can be dressed in casuals, children won’t have to wear polos and long socks, they can wear board shorts, T shirts. We are trying to make it all more human, get staff, the curators, the groundstaff involved,  make the cricketers feel more involved.  We’ll bring them all together.

“Eventually, we’ll have to trim a bit, become a leaner organization, to improve the lot of those who remain,” Lillee continues.  “The board is in agreement, and Tony Dodemaide, the CEO, will soon have to make a decision on trimming the cloth.”

The WACA board has also decided to make a contribution to rehabilitation of tsunami victims.  The idea is to take some 12 kids from the affected areas, and see them through the next five or six years.  Lillee has his own ideas of how to go about it.  He feels that the board should involve all the states, which can then adopt a village together.  It is a democratic process and Lillee, who was not present when the WACA decision was made, will present his perspective at the next opportunity, but he will accept the decision of the board as final and play his part in the rehabilitation effort.

Lillee recently resigned his position in the Australian Cricket Academy, and he dropped one of his businesses, but that was only one of nine businesses he has been involved in. “It is a question of squeezing in time for one more activity, so I am evaluating my options.  And there is an interesting coaching assignment in the offing.” Lillee is tightlipped about the country that has made the offer, but there have been reports that India, Sri Lanka and South Africa have approached the maestro, asking him to be the national fast bowling coach.

Lillee continues to be committed to the MRF Pace Foundation.  He is proud of what has been accomplished here starting from nothing nearly two decades ago, to build something exciting, new and innovative.  It has been recognized all over the world as the premier fast bowling coaching academy.  “Most of the world’s fast bowlers come here to train, and that has been very rewarding for me and MRF,” he says with a deep sense of satisfaction.

From the MRF Pace Foundation to the job of India’s fast bowling coach seems a logical next step.  The answer should be out soon.

The best of them all

The off spinner to catch my fancy after Jim Laker was Ghulam Ahmed. If my memory serves me right, the Hyderabad and India off-spinner had a slightly round-arm action but spun the ball viciously from a height. Because he went bald early in life, he always seemed like a veteran to my young eyes, as I watched him in action against New Zealand and Australia at the Nehru Stadium. Much of my knowledge of his bowling however came from reading about him and my captain ML Jaisimha’s descriptions. According to Jai, Ghulam was an even bigger spinner than Prasanna: “you could hear the buzz of the ball as it left his hand and travelled towards the batsman in a sharp trajectory.”

The first time I saw EAS Prasanna in action was in the final Test of the 3-Test series between India and West Indies at Madras in January 1967. Test cricket was coming back to Chepauk after its banishment to the Corporation Stadium 15 years earlier. The Garfield Sobers-led visitors had won the first two Tests at Bombay and Calcutta, where Prasanna’s rival Venkataraghavan had bowled well—without great success, if you did not count Gary Sobers’s scalp, which he captured in Bombay.

The Chepauk Test, made memorable by Farrokh Engineer’s near-hundred before lunch on the first day and some second innings aggression by Ajit Wadekar and V Subramanyam which served to book their berths to England in the following summer, was the first time the trio of Chandrasekhar-Bedi-Prasanna came together.

Prasanna was impressive in that game, though not incisive enough to cause a collapse in either innings. In the first innings, he accounted for the wickets of Butcher and Hall, while in the second he fared better getting Hunte, Butcher and Hendricks out. The bouncing run-up and tempting were very much in evidence, and so was a happy optimism as if he expected a wicket every ball in his approach to bowling. For someone who was making his comeback to Test cricket after a hiatus of five years, he looked comfortable in his shoes, as though he never doubted he belonged in the company of his seniors in the side. A lot of it must have been the result of the confidence he enjoyed from his captain and South Zone teammate Pataudi as well as South Zone captain and Test teammate ML Jaisimha, on the reserve bench for the match.

That Test match which ended in a draw thanks to dogged post-tea resistance on the last day by Garry Sobers and Charlie Griffith had raised hopes of a resurgent Indian team, with some exciting batsmen in Ajit Wadekar, Pataudi, and Borde and a brand new spin combination promising much. The tour of England that followed soon afterwards proved a great disappointment, with India receiving a massive drubbing despite some isolated instances of defiance. The spinners did nothing of great note, and we had to wait till the third and final Test for Prasanna to run into some form. He took 3 for 51 and 4 for 60 in the best of his outings in the series. In fact, Prasanna never did spectacularly well in England, the weather in the first half of the summer perhaps preventing him from bowling at his best, with the ball retaining its shine for long periods and the grassy wickets inimical to turn.

Prasanna was at his best on the 1968 Australia-New Zealand tours when he took as many as 49 wickets in eight Test matches. Like thousands of other Indians, I was glued to the radio every morning during that wonderful tour when India were gallant losers in Australia and deserving winners in New Zealand. Prasanna was hailed as a world-class spinner by the Australian critics and even some of the Australian batsmen.

The real moment of magic was to come soon. It was in the Chepauk Test in January 1970 that Prasanna almost single-handedly landed India at victory’s doorstep—only for a missed stumping chance and fighting batting by Ian Redpath and the tail took Australia to a total which proved way beyond India’s fourth innings capability. In their second innings, Australia were tottering at 24 for 6 before their miraculous recovery. Prasanna’s share of victims up to that point had been four, to Mohinder Amarnath’s two—incredibly, Keith Stackpole and Ian Chappell, both for duck. Prasanna finished with six wickets in the innings, and I was permanently hooked on his bowling, though I was away in Dharwar playing university cricket and only heard the match!

I remained his fan throughout the rest of his career, and had the pleasure of playing against him in the Ranji Trophy. He had a lean patch after that wonderful spell against Australia, when Ajit Wadekar took over the captaincy and led India to historic victories in the West Indies and England in 1971. India’s maiden triumphs in the two continents meant that Prasanna’s relegation to the background was hardly noticed. His bowling against England in the 1972-73 season and again in the 1976-77 season was outstanding, though against Tony Greig’s men his spin seemed to have lost some of its sting. Jaisimha and Pataudi, my seniors, however believed he was still as good as ever, when I suggested to them that he was past his best. In between, in the 1975-76 season, he had a successful tour of New Zealand and a less successful tour of the West Indies, where he lost his Test place to Venkataraghavan after the first match.

I realised that Jaisimha and Pataudi were probably right about the continued high quality of Prasanna’s off-spin when I played against him in the Ranji Trophy, which featured some outstanding spells by him. In what was perhaps his last Ranji game, he took seven wickets against Hyderabad, in a match at Bangalore. I was one of his victims, caught at short-leg while trying to drive on the offside. The ball was a perfect beauty, flight, dip, turn, bounce and all. I had hit him the previous ball for a four to square-leg, a shot he actually applauded. How he had me fooled! Around the same time, I remember the way pressmen waxed lyrical over the way he dismissed Sunil Gavaskar with a perfect straight delivery in an Irani Cup match. I had to wait for some 15 years to witness a repeat of that scene, when he bowled Gavaskar after he hit a flurry of boundaries with a similar delivery that clipped the off bail during my brother Sivaramakrishnan’s benefit match (in April 1993) at Chepauk, between two teams of veterans. Prasanna was all of 53 then—and Gavaskar 40-plus.

Prasanna was perhaps the most confident bowler I have seen, certainly the most aggressive off-spinner. Short of stature, and generously built, even plump at times, he had a springy run-up to the wicket, whose momentum he used to great effect. At his best, he was perfectly side-on, and brought his right arm down quickly to maximize the spin he imparted to the ball. His variations were subtle—including intelligent use of the crease, changes of grip ranging from fingers loose and far apart to tight and close together to control the amount of turn. He could bowl a flatter, quicker ball with fingers close together or a floater angling away from the bat by rolling his fingers over the seam. All these variations were marked by the invariable magic of the ball dropping short of the length the batsman anticipated.

I was fortunate to play alongside the great spinners of the time. Prasanna may not remember it, but he came over to watch me in action at the State Bank of India nets in Hyderabad (where he had moved for about a year from Bangalore), at the request of my teammate P Krishnamurti. When Murti told me Prasanna had been impressed, it did my morale a world of good, as I was not yet the first choice off-spinner in the bank’s team. (Syed Abid Ali was another “guest” Murti invited to assess my bowling. In a cricketer’s life, these are unforgettable gestures of kindness).

My subsequent encounters with Prasanna were as a rival player, and those are not quite the same. Once, when we were playing at the Chinnaswami Stadium, the umpire ruled AV Jayaprakash not out caught behind off my bowling, and Prasanna shouted from the pavilion: “That was off the middle of the bat, not an edge.”

Yes, Prasanna was an outspoken man. He proved it again that day, as I returned to the pavilion at lunchtime, with a couple of wickets in my bag, by telling me I was bowling too fast, I should give the ball more air. I didn’t take too kindly to that unsolicited piece of advice. (Well, you can talk, you have a batting line-up that gives you runs to bowl with, I thought).

It was only in hindsight that I realised he was absolutely right, though there was precious little I could have done, as I was only playing the role my team expected of me.

Naturally, as a competitive sportsman, one tried to be as good as one’s rival, even if he was the world’s best off-spinner, as it happened to be in this case. It was indeed a tall order, as in addition to his formidable bag of tricks, Prasanna had one advantage over taller off-spinners—the extra height to which he could flight the ball.

It was an honour to merely try to compete with him.

Maverick

(First published on 12 June 2005 in The Sunday Express)

Anil Kumble has earned his place in the pantheon of the greats of the game by sheer perseverance and longevity—not to mention his superb qualities of head and heart which have enabled him to triumph over the trials and tribulations besetting him through his long and distinguished career. There is no doubt that in a different time and place, his exceptional intelligence and man-management capabilities would have won him the captaincy of his country. He is a man to be admired and respected, and not one for whom tears are easily shed, because he meets every adversity with courage and determination—and usually succeeds.

This preamble is necessary to explain the greater partiality many of the 70s generation have for the unorthodox Indian leg-spinner to have attained cricketing immortality—BS Chandrasekhar, who turned 60 a few weeks ago. If Kumble is the perfect professional, Chandra was in many ways the antithesis, a genius with nothing workmanlike about him. If Kumble is all intellect and mental toughness, Chandra was frail and vulnerable, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense. A polio-afflicted limb gave him the unusual arm-speed that enabled him to whip googlies, flippers and the occasional leg-break at ferocious velocities. There was the air of a tragic hero about him as time and time again misfortune struck him when least expected.

His physical attributes too contributed to this less-than-aggressive image that stayed with him through his career. He remained slim, almost thin, throughout his 15 years in top-flight cricket, his intermittent beard serving to heighten that impression of forlornness.

Of the celebrated quartet (or trio, to be truthful, as only once did all four play together in a Test) of Indian spinners, none was more spectacular than Chandrasekhar. Bishan Singh Bedi’s bowling action was deservedly described as poetry in motion, Erapalli Prasanna was a spinner’s spinner with his classical flight, sharp spin and delightful variations, and Srinivas Venkataraghavan was a probing wielder of a surgeon’s scalpel, but none of them could accelerate the pulse rate of excited spectators in the manner of a fast bowler as Chandra did.

As he measured his paces, marked the start of his bowling run, walked the first couple of steps cupping the ball in both hands, ran in with a purposeful stride, and then delivered in a perfectly side-on finish, left arm raised high, right arm coming down in a rapid whir, thudding on to his left thigh, the crowd exploded in a burst of feverish anticipation.

Slip fielders and short legs, not to mention wicket keepers belonging to any other generation would have dreaded the prospect of the fierce edges that Chandra’s fizz and bounce induced. But that high noon of Indian cricket was lit by some extraordinary close-in catching fireworks, ignited by such champions as Ajit Wadekar, Venkat, Abid Ali, and the incomparable Eknath Solkar. Despite that magic ring of fielders, streaky boundaries abounded when Chandra was on song, as the edges flew through the gaps at supersonic speeds towards the boundary.

Today the pundits mock Kumble for his lack of turn. Back in the 1960s, they called Chandra the fastest bowler in the Indian XI. It was like saying that Indira Gandhi was the only man in her cabinet—sometimes it was actually true. Some of Chandra’s hand grenades, which sent stumps cartwheeling, were no more than a blur to the spectator. Worse, from a batsman’s point of view, he did not see them much better either. What caught batsmen unprepared was that the lead-up to a sensational Chandra spell could consist entirely of full tosses and long hops. One moment, he would be muttering to himself and working himself into a nice temper to bowl better, and in the very next, he would be firing down an unplayable yorker or flipper. Like a man in a frenzy, he would wait impatiently for his next victim, chafing at the leash.

Unlike Kumble, Chandra was not a cerebral bowler, but it would be a fallacy to state, as many self-styled experts did, that he did not know what he was doing. If his general bowling style was fast and faster, he introduced subtle changes as he grew in age and stature as a bowler. When he held one back, it presented a much more difficult proposition to the unsuspecting batsman than the well-flighted delivery of an orthodox wrist spinner. There was only an imperceptible change of trajectory in this change of pace, which more often than not fooled batsmen into spooning return catches.

Yet another major difference between the two great leg-spinners of Karnataka is that the senior could not bat to save his life, while the younger man has on occasion shamed his frontline colleagues with his determination amidst the ruins of a collapse. Chandra is perhaps the only Test bowler in history with more wickets than runs to his credit. I believe he once made 22 in a Test innings and played two memorable supporting roles at No. 11—the first while V Subramanyam, his Karnataka captain, went from a hundred or thereabouts to 200 against Madras at Chepauk in 1967, and the second as an admiring spectator at the non-striker’s end while GR Viswanath raced to an electrifying unbeaten 97 against the fire of Andy Roberts & Co. at the same venue seven years later.

Everyone knows that Chandra’s greatest moment was the Oval Test of 1971, when he bowled India to an improbable first Test victory in England. Yet it would be folly to single that magical performance out in a glittering career, which included many acts of derring-do in India and abroad—against England, Australia, New Zealand and West Indies. In one memorable spell at Bombay, he took eight wickets in the first innings and four in the second. The Hindu’s PN Sundaresan, not known for flowery prose or sentimentality, wrote perhaps his most inspired prose describing the lump in his throat as he watched the frail young man soldiering on against a West Indian batting juggernaut led by Garfield Sobers.

Personally, though never a close friend, I, like other cricketers of my generation, was witness to Chandra’s tragedies and courage in adversity. We all knew of his weakness to Mukesh’s hauntingly nasal voice and his guru Saigal’s favourite beverage. I also had occasion to learn of his fondness for another brew—rasam, without which no south Indian meal is complete. In Chandra’s case, it could be the meal to the exclusion of the rest of the menu, I once found out.

I wonder if Kumble would have been possible without Chandrasekhar. Were it not for Chandra’s match-winning exploits in the 1960s and 70s, would any selector have dared to blood an unorthodox wrist spinner in the mould of Anil Kumble in the 90s? Would he have been dismissed as a freak bowler, unlikely to succeed on the world stage?

A tough, proud man

Before he gained the respect of players and commentators as a top class international umpire, S Venkataraghavan  was player, administrator, selector, commentator and match referee at different times. In an arena wider than the field of play, he must be cricket's most versatile all rounder.

The qualities that made Venkat such a good umpire were evident in him as early as during his schooldays, when I first met him. These were a thorough knowledge of the game and its laws, fearlessness, superb physical fitness, the ability to concentrate hard for hours, a brisk decisiveness and a commanding presence. These are not necessarily endearing qualities, and Venkat has never been in the race to win any popularity poll.

I played with or against (mostly against) Venkat from the time I was about 10 and he 12, but though we had occasion to meet intermittently on the cricket ground as well as socially for decades, I cannot count myself as one of his friends, for he is a very private man, with few intimate friends. On the field, however, we had some enjoyable exchanges, highly competitive and intensely fought. That is the only way the off spinner knew to play his cricket. The needle was a bit extra, at least on my part, when we competed against each other, because I was an off spinner myself, trying to dislodge him from the Indian side, though without success. Every time I faced him I was determined not to lose my wicket to him, and every time I bowled to him I desperately wanted his wicket. I do not know if he reserved any special effort for me, but the going was never easy when I was at the receiving end from him.

We both played for the same school, P S High School of Mylapore, Madras, but in college cricket, we were regularly pitted against each other. He led the formidable Guindy Engineering College against Presidency, my college, which had a number of talented players. In addition to bowling his accurate and nippy off spinners, he batted high in the order and scored consistently. He was a brilliant fielder, especially close to the wicket, a facet of his cricket for which he was admired at the highest level. (One remarkable catch I saw him take in local cricket, however, involved his running to midwicket off his own bowling and holding on to a skier, a truly fantastic effort, on the Marina ground). He was already a Test cricketer, and some of the senior batsmen in my side got out to him even before they left the safety of the pavilion, so complete was his psychological domination of them. Our first victory over Engineering was achieved only after Venkat's graduation.

Our worst performance against Engineering came when I was captain. We were dismissed for 42 on the University Union ground, and though we managed to cause a few alarms when Engineering batted, they passed our score after losing four wickets. It was the final of a tournament, and the umpires tried to continue the match—naturally to my delight, as it gave my side an outside chance—thinking it was a two innings affair, but the party was spoiled by Venkat, who, rule book in hand, proved that the match was in fact won and lost already.

My enduring memory of Venkat is one of the seriousness with which he approached net practice, bowling non-stop for three hours everyday, following that with an extended session of fielding practice. Taking a hundred slip catches a day was about par for the course for him.

Everyone knows that throughout his career, Venkat never left the ground citing injury. Two occasions stand out in my memory. The first was during a Duleep Trophy match against Central Zone at Bangalore in 1975. One evening during the match, Venkat met with a minor road accident, falling off a scooter. (Can you imagine a current Test cricketer on two wheels?) On the morrow, he carried on as if nothing had happened, bowling a long, match-winning spell with little or no indication that he was in any discomfort. But back in the pavilion he had great difficulty taking off his trousers to change, because he had been badly bruised from waist to foot on one side.

On another occasion, Venkat bowled a marathon 72-over spell against East Zone in the Duleep Trophy at Eden Gardens, nursing a very painful injury. Left-hander V Sivaramakrishnan, my younger brother, who played that match, rates that spell as the bravest, most disciplined effort he has seen on a cricket ground.

Around the time he made his Test debut against New Zealand, after a splendid match for Indian Universities against the tourists, Venkat’s bowling was perhaps the most accurate anywhere. His sharp off spin was persistent and his occasional well-disguised leg cutter a deadly variation, invariably resulting in a catch behind or at slip when it was not clipping the off bail. Batsmen mostly played him from the safety of the crease, stretching well forward to avoid being lbw. Rarely did one of them use his feet to dance down the track. To prolong his career at the first class level, Venkat slowed down, but his trajectory was still flatter than that of the classical off spinner who flighted the ball. He was much taller than Prasanna, for instance, and therefore could not achieve the arc that Prasanna did. Still, his own adaptation of flight and spin to suit his natural endowments—which by the way included strong, long fingers, and a supple, wiry frame—was a beautiful sight on a cricket field. All his life, he remained a difficult proposition to score off, and earned the respect of many leading batsmen, including the incomparable Garfield Sobers. In fact, some of Venkat’s important successes came against the formidable West Indies.

No tribute to Venkat can be complete without mention of the terror he struck in the hearts of team-mates and rivals alike. Stories about the nervous wrecks he made of some of them are a frequent cause of merriment in the dressing room. I remember him describing the South Zone fielding in that same Bangalore match as "diabolic" and my wondering how many of my team-mates understood the word. And sure enough, I found one of them scurrying off to the KSCA office and asking the clerk there if he could borrow a dictionary.

Another time, playing for Madras Cricket Club in the Chennai league, he was the non-striker, with S Vasudevan in the midst of a brilliant spell of left-arm spin, claiming six wickets on a placid track. Vasu bowled one ball down the leg side during that spell, possibly the only bad ball he bowled that day, and to his utter shock the non striker literally barked: "How many times have I told you to bowl the faster one on the stumps!" Venkat was then the captain of the state team and Vasu one of his main bowlers.

Of most combative sportsmen it can be said truthfully that they mellow with age. I believe Venkat suffers from no such constraint. He continued to be aggressive and relentlessly focused on his job as an umpire, just as he used to be as a player. He still does not seek to win popularity contests and revels in calling a spade a bloody shovel. He is indeed a professional, with whom pride of performance in all he does is an article of faith.

It’s a tie!

It had been a difficult couple of years for me in cricket. Competition, quite a lot of it unfair, was breathing down my neck, and I was suffering from the first major injury of my cricket career, without realising how serious it was. Constantly wearing inferior cricket shoes as I did, I had developed an Achilles tendon problem, medically known as bursitis, which gradually grew unbearably painful. Off-season, I had trained harder and harder, somehow gritting my teeth and ignoring my pain, thinking this was the usual temporary soreness of muscles. I even ran with my awful cricket spikes on the gallery steps round and round the stadium when it rained. My condition naturally grew worse. The new season was about to start and at 32, I had serious cause to worry about my future in the game, if this injury was going to lay me low. And all this after I had been dropped - unfairly, I can assure you - from the Hyderabad team in the previous Ranji season and I had sworn to get back into the team, come what may.

That is when my friend Dr Harsha, an orthopaedic surgeon, arrived on the scene like some angel of mercy. He correctly diagnosed my condition and offered to give me a cortisone injection in the affected part. “The injection pain will kill you but after a couple of days of that hell, you will have a new heel. If you are lucky, the relief could be permanent.”

I took the chance and decided to brave the injection pain. Just as Harsha had promised, the pain was real hell, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Two days later, I woke up in the morning, completely free from pain! It was as if I had a new heel, a new foot, a new left leg!

I was then playing for Andhra Bank, led by Vijay Paul in the absence of Narasimha Rao who was away playing league cricket in Ireland. We had stars like Jyotiprasad, Ravi Kumar, H Ramprasad, Meher Baba, Chandran and many more and we were about to play the first round of the Ghulam Ali memorial knockout tournament. I don’t remember the early rounds, but I clearly recall our encounter with the Jaisimha-led Marredpally Cricket Club in the quarterfinals. I was delighted to claim Jai’s wicket for the first time and finish up with five wickets. We won despite a fighting, elegant 85 by Vivek Jaisimha. In the semifinals, I took seven wickets against State Bank of Hyderabad, another star-studded team, and we entered the final in style.

Syndicate Bank were our opponents in the final, which was a 2-innings match limited to 75 (8-ball) overs a side in the first innings and 35 in the second. Our opponents were a strong outfit, even though their Test player Shivlal Yadav was away playing for the country. Led by Vinod Reddy, they had in their ranks Jugal Kishore Ghia, Chamundeshwarnath, Sainath, Shivkumar, Moses Nityanand and several other talented cricketers.

Winning the toss, we batted badly and were soon in a bad way. As our manager, the late C S Shyam Lal, and I took a walk around the boundary line, I told him, “Don’t worry, if we make 150 we will win,” so confident was I with my bowling form after the recent treatment. We managed to reach 169 with a small contribution from me in partnership with Jyoti and we were soon on the field. We claimed a couple of early wickets but the obdurate Shivkumar tested our patience with his complete mastery of whatever we sent down. In the last over before stumps, I managed to get one past him (by sheer mind power, I think) and we went home in a reasonably happy frame of mind. Next morning, our bowling really clicked and we bowled Syndicate Bank out for 125, with 7 wickets my share of the booty.

When we batted a second time, we fared much better, and I was again involved in a rearguard partnership with my good friend Jyoti. Syndicate Bank had to make 224 in 35 (8 ball) overs to win the match. Moses Nityanand and his partner (whose name I don’t recall now) blazed away, but our left arm spinner Meher Baba and I were able to put the brakes on the rampaging batsmen, and though Moses made a hundred or thereabouts, we managed to peg Syndicate Bank in their run chase. I bowled the 34th over, yielding only three runs and helping effect a run out (my second in the innings). I had taken six wickets, totalling 13 for the match. Meher bowled the last over with Syndicate Bank needing six runs to win the match. The batsmen ran like crazy between the wickets, there were run out attempts that missed the stumps by a whisker, until the last ball target was a mere two runs. The batsman swung and missed and they ran a bye. It was a tie!

Once the significance of the result sank in, disbelief and joy replaced the disappointment of not winning and both teams were able to enjoy the rare occasion. I invited all the players of both teams home for beer and dinner, and my wife had the shock of her life when some 30 bedraggled, dirty, tired cricketers landed at her doorstep. The celebrations went on till well after midnight and many of the guests stayed overnight. Rarely in my personal experience have two rival teams enjoyed each other’s company as we did that night.

 

It’s a tie

It had been a difficult couple of years for me in cricket. Competition, quite a lot of it unfair, was breathing down my neck, and I was suffering from the first major injury of my cricket career, without realising how serious it was. Constantly wearing inferior cricket shoes as I did, I had developed an Achilles tendon problem, medically known as bursitis, which gradually grew unbearably painful. Off-season, I had trained harder and harder, somehow gritting my teeth and ignoring my pain, thinking this was the usual temporary soreness of muscles. I even ran with my awful cricket spikes on the gallery steps round and round the stadium when it rained. My condition naturally grew worse. The new season was about to start and at 32, I had serious cause to worry about my future in the game, if this injury was going to lay me low. And all this after I had been dropped - unfairly, I can assure you - from the Hyderabad team in the previous Ranji season and I had sworn to get back into the team, come what may.

That is when my friend Dr Harsha, an orthopaedic surgeon, arrived on the scene like some angel of mercy. He correctly diagnosed my condition and offered to give me a cortisone injection in the affected part. “The injection pain will kill you but after a couple of days of that hell, you will have a new heel. If you are lucky, the relief could be permanent.”

I took the chance and decided to brave the injection pain. Just as Harsha had promised, the pain was real hell, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Two days later, I woke up in the morning, completely free from pain! It was as if I had a new heel, a new foot, a new left leg!

I was then playing for Andhra Bank, led by Vijay Paul in the absence of Narasimha Rao who was away playing league cricket in Ireland. We had stars like Jyotiprasad, Ravi Kumar, H Ramprasad, Meher Baba, Chandran and many more and we were about to play the first round of the Ghulam Ali memorial knockout tournament. I don’t remember the early rounds, but I clearly recall our encounter with the Jaisimha-led Marredpally Cricket Club in the quarterfinals. I was delighted to claim Jai’s wicket for the first time and finish up with five wickets. We won despite a fighting, elegant 85 by Vivek Jaisimha. In the semifinals, I took seven wickets against State Bank of Hyderabad, another star-studded team, and we entered the final in style.

Syndicate Bank were our opponents in the final, which was a 2-innings match limited to 75 (8-ball) overs a side in the first innings and 35 in the second. Our opponents were a strong outfit, even though their Test player Shivlal Yadav was away playing for the country. Led by Vinod Reddy, they had in their ranks Jugal Kishore Ghia, Chamundeshwarnath, Sainath, Shivkumar, Moses Nityanand and several other talented cricketers.

Winning the toss, we batted badly and were soon in a bad way. As our manager, the late C S Shyam Lal, and I took a walk around the boundary line, I told him, “Don’t worry, if we make 150 we will win,” so confident was I with my bowling form after the recent treatment. We managed to reach 169 with a small contribution from me in partnership with Jyoti and we were soon on the field. We claimed a couple of early wickets but the obdurate Shivkumar tested our patience with his complete mastery of whatever we sent down. In the last over before stumps, I managed to get one past him (by sheer mind power, I think) and we went home in a reasonably happy frame of mind. Next morning, our bowling really clicked and we bowled Syndicate Bank out for 125, with 7 wickets my share of the booty.

When we batted a second time, we fared much better, and I was again involved in a rearguard partnership with my good friend Jyoti. Syndicate Bank had to make 224 in 35 (8 ball) overs to win the match. Moses Nityanand and his partner (whose name I don’t recall now) blazed away, but our left arm spinner Meher Baba and I were able to put the brakes on the rampaging batsmen, and though Moses made a hundred or thereabouts, we managed to peg Syndicate Bank in their run chase. I bowled the 34th over, yielding only three runs and helping effect a run out (my second in the innings). I had taken six wickets, totalling 13 for the match. Meher bowled the last over with Syndicate Bank needing six runs to win the match. The batsmen ran like crazy between the wickets, there were run out attempts that missed the stumps by a whisker, until the last ball target was a mere two runs. The batsman swung and missed and they ran a bye. It was a tie!

Once the significance of the result sank in disbelief and joy replaced the disappointment of not winning and both teams were able to enjoy the rare occasion. I invited all the players of both teams home for beer and dinner, and my wife had the shock of her life when some 30 bedraggled, dirty, tired cricketers landed at her doorstep. The celebrations went on till well after midnight and many of the guests stayed overnight. Rarely in my personal experience have two rival teams enjoyed each other’s company as we did that night.

 

Alexander

A recent obituary notice in The Hindu announced the passing away of a John Alexandar, whose description fits the John Alexander I played along with for Presidency College back in the 1960s. Here’s a piece I wrote on him some time ago.

John Alexander was the character of the team. Stockily built, he batted with excellent technique and steely determination. Never one to run away from a good fight, he was at his best against the strongest opposition, particularly against Engineering College, the reigning champions.

Of Ken Barrington and David Steele, it was said that the Union Jack fluttered in the breeze in front of them when they went into bat. When John crossed the boundary line, it was easy to imagine the Presidency College flag proudly preceding him. 

Like Vijay Manjrekar, the great Indian batsman of the 1950s and 60s, on whose batting I suspect John modelled his, he curbed his strokeplay in the interests of the team. And he would have scored many more runs than he actually did, if only he would play more attacking shots. 

Though he reserved his best for our matches against the senior Engineering side, he played one of his most memorable innings against Engineering ‘B’, the college’s second eleven, when he scored an unbeaten half-century and won the match for our college in the company of No.11 SP Balachandran, adding more than 50 for the last wicket.

The duo returned to the pavilion to thunderous applause from all of us players and the small crowd that had stopped to watch the thrilling finale. John and Bala recall with great pride even today that Venkataraghavan, the captain of the senior Engineering team, and already a Test cricketer, who happened to be watching, shook their hands at the end of the match.

I don’t remember the sequence of events very clearly; I am not sure if we ran into the Engineering ‘A’ team in the final of the same tournament after nearly losing the first round match against the ‘B’ team, but I clearly remember Alexander’s defiance against the strong Engineering ‘A’ attack on more than one occasion. With his neatly creased shirt and trousers, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, shirt sleeves rolled up to three-quarter length, his moustache on his dark, handsome face slightly twirled up, he presented a grim visage and solid full-face bat to anything Venkataraghavan, Satvinder Singh and Co. sent down. In one fighting partnership, he was the dominant partner and I the supporting one, while he made about 75 runs in a losing cause.  He made the fight all the more enjoyable with his silent nonchalance, which boosted your confidence, too. John tended to be on the stocky side and that completed the Manjrekar-Barrington effect.  

After college, John joined the Customs department, where he rose to be Deputy Collector. Unfortunately, we did not stay in touch after I left for Hyderabad in December 1970. Bala and he had a few telephonic conversations during which they relived their famous last wicket partnership. He apparently complained that though I wrote quite a bit about cricket, I never did mention their great stand in my writings. He also complained I did not try to establish contact with him. Though I did eventually manage to write about the match, I never did indeed call him, the procrastinator that I am, like so many of us. And now it is too late.