Stumped!

When I met Peter Roebuck

2011-11-14T04:03:00.000-08:00

First published In Madras Musings in April 1998

“It’s a different kind of audience—so well behaved and appreciative of the finer points of cricket," remarked my brother Sivaramakrishnan, the former Tamil Nadu opener. "Test match crowds are so much more knowledgeable than the one-day variety, whose sole aim, it seems, is to have a good time, the cricket be damned," he continued, warming to the theme that Chepauk draws a good, old-fashioned segment of the population to watch Test matches staged on its turf. "It also produces some wonderfully competitive cricket and, yes, the crowd is distinctly different from its one-day counterpart," agreed Mike Coward, the Australian cricket writer and broadcaster.

Yet another honorary Australian, cricket critic Peter Roebuck of Somerset — he fraternises with the old enemy rather more than the average Englishman, spending six months of the year in the former colony writing for newspapers there — thoroughly enjoyed his stay in Chennai, especially the comforts and friendly ambience of the Madras Cricket Club where he stayed for the duration of the Test match. (After the match, he took a train to Mysore and a breather from the cricket.) Roebuck proved a friendly, amiable visitor, ever willing to talk cricket with the locals. He had a special word or two of encouragement for Rohit Mahendra and Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan, youngsters who bowled to both the Indian and Australian batsmen in the nets. To the sixteen year-old left arm spinner Vidyut, he gave some words of advice on why a good education was as important as bowling, batting and fielding — "What happens if you get knocked down by a bus and can never bowl again?" To which the youngster quickly added: "Yes, and there could be a world war and no cricket for the next five years. At least that's what my mother says." "Mothers! They get it right every time, don't they?" mused Roebuck, and in this great state of mother worshippers, he will find many who will agree with him.

Neil Harvey, the stylish Australian left-hander — he was delighted to meet so many ardent fans of his batting in Chennai 35 years after his retirement from Test cricket — endorsed the view that the Chepauk Test had brought a superior type of spectator to the ground. Harvey simply detests one-day cricket. He loved every moment of the Test.

Harvey considers Sachin Tendulkar the best batsman in the world. "His thinking is like my thinking on cricket. Just the way I decided to go after Subhash Gupte 40 years ago at Bombay, he decided to attack Shane Warne here." And how!
Harvey remembers that a Bombay newspaper had carried a titbit on what Gupte had allegedly said he would do to the Australian batsmen. "I was at the breakfast table at CCI, Brabourne Stadium, when my captain Richie Benaud walked up to me and without a word, put a clipping of that newspaper story on my breakfast tray and walked away. I took up the challenge and managed to knock Gupte’s bowling around, getting a hundred in the process. Soon, they dropped him from the team and we were delighted. He was a fine bowler."

Another pressman I ran into after a long gap was Rajan Bala who in the Seventies loomed large on the Indian cricket scene. He is now a great admirer of Mumbai cricket. "No player who has to take a train from Mulund or Virar to Churchgate every day to practise in the nets would like to fail in a match." This was Bala's 210th Test match as a reporter/critic and from the unending flow of cricket conversation and impromptu calypso songs that poured forth from him late into the night, it was obvious age had not dimmed nor custom staled his love for the game. Some of his comments on some of the players on view were unprintable but uncomfortably close to the bone.

The talking points of the Chennai Test other than Tendulkar's batting were Rajesh Chauhan's bowling action and the umpiring, particularly in the fourth innings. Several spectators were convinced that Chauhan threw the odd ball ("What does it matter when he throws so badly?" remarked one cheeky youngster). The question uppermost in their minds was, why aren't the umpires calling him? As for the umpiring, "That must be Venkat's first mistake in a Test," said a long-time cricket enthusiast and former TNCA office-bearer, referring to one of his dismissals. His neighbour in the stands was quick to point out, "I am sure he has made mistakes before, after all, he is human, but he is a fine umpire, one of the best".

Will India play safe?

2011-11-01T21:00:00.001-07:00

The most interesting aspect of the new-look Indian team to meet West Indies in the forthcoming Test series is the presence of three spinners in the squad. One of them, Pragyan Ojha, is a proven quantity in Test cricket, quite unlucky to have missed the tours of the Caribbean and England.

The left-arm spinner has immaculate control, and makes it well nigh impossible for most batsmen to dominate the bowling, thus facilitating the fall of wickets at the other end even when he is only containing the flow of runs. He can be an attacking option, too, when he is on song.

Off spinner R Ashwin and leg-spinner Rahul Sharma are similar in that they both rely on subtle changes of pace and trajectory in planting doubt in the batsman’s mind in limited overs cricket and both display excellent control.

Ashwin, who seems certain to play in the first Test next week, can look forward to his moment in the limelight. With the West Indies not too formidable an opponent, he has a great chance to prove that he is a Test match bowler ready to step into Harbhajan Singh’s shoes. If he does well in the series, the selectors may be tempted to replace the sardar with him on a more permanent basis. While there seems no doubt that he has big match temperament and a sharp cricket brain, the big question is: Does Ashwin have the genuine spinning ability to win Test matches for India? Can batsmen play the waiting game and fare better than they have against him in ODIs and twenty-twenty cricket?

The Indian selectors also have an opportunity to play three spinners in the side plus two seam bowlers at the expense of one of the batsmen, as a moderate opposition in Indian conditions should be the ideal scenario for such experiments. Knowing the general conservatism of the five wise men, such adventurism can however safely be ruled out.

The music of cricket

2011-09-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

25 Aug 2003 18:40:30
Cricketislife!

http://www.chennaionline.com/musicseason2k/features/musiccricket.asp

The music of cricket
..............................................
V Ramnarayan

The late MLV, we are told, in the year she got the Sangita Kalanidhi, spent the whole day at Chepauk and then in the evening set off for her concert at the Academy. This set us thinking and we requested good friend V Ramnarayan, no mean cricketer and a music buff, to pen his thoughts. - Editor, www.sangeetham.com

+++++++++
As the train was entering the Western ghats, my heart was filled with happy recollections of how well my first season in first class cricket had gone for me and the exalted company in which I was now moving. My teammates were getting ready for dinner, putting away the card packs after a long session of rummy and ridiculous games invented on the spot by the man sitting next to me, the former Nawab of Pataudi, and by far India's most charismatic cricket captain. I was reading a much
reread old PG Wodehouse favourite and whistling a Lata Mangeshkar song from the film Mughal-e-Azam, hardly aware I was doing it. "Do you know what raag that is?" my neighbour asked in a schoolmasterly tone that obviously did not expect an answer.

I happened to know the answer to that one and promptly replied: "Kedar." Tiger, for that is how Mansur Ali Khan was known to everyone in cricket circles, was suitably impressed and he actually lifted one eyebrow to show he was, just as Beach the butler would have done in his salad days.

The conversation that followed went along predictably enthusiastic lines, as it often happens when two people have discovered a common interest. I learnt in the next half hour of the many wonderful concerts Pataudi had listened to in his ancestral home at Bhopal, of a particularly memorable recording of a great Hindustani vocalist performing for the royal family when he was very drunk. "You must come home and listen to it one day," he said, now in an expansive mood after a few drinks himself. Unfortunately, I never got round to listening to that gem by that celebrated Ustad who happened to be my favourite!

Pataudi's family was keen on music and reputed to be close to Begum Akhtar the great exponent of ghazals, dadra and thumri and Tiger was known to play the tabla well enough to accompany professional musicians in private concerts.

Ravi Kichlu was my teammate in Calcutta where I turned out for Rajasthan Club during the 1968-1969 season. He was an opening batsman who played Ranji and Duleep Trophy cricket but his greater claim to fame was as one half of the well known Kichlu brothers, vocalists of the Agra gharana if I remember right. Ravi passed away a few years ago but his brother Vijay is the director of ITC's Calcutta-based Sangeet
Research Academy. I don't know if he played cricket, but I spent delightful hours fielding in the slips listening to my neighbour Ravi giving me impromptu samples of alap and khyal.

Many, many cricketers of my time were fans of the Hindi film playback singer Mukesh, a trend started by the incomparable leg spinner B S Chandrasekhar. A couple of them were good singers in their own right. Bombay's left arm spinner Padmakar Shivalkar sang well enough to give light music concerts and so has Sanjay Manjrekar been in recent years, just as his father Vijay was in his time.

Closer home, I have had the pleasure of playing cricket with Radhakrishnan of Bunts Cricket Club fame, as well as his son Unnikrishnan, who might have gone on to play at least state level cricket had he not decided to concentrate on developing his
considerable musical talent instead. Sivakumar and Burma Shankar, were both my team mates in the TNCA cricket league in the sixties.

Sivakumar as we all know is D K Pattammal's son and a mridanga vidwan in his own right besides being the father of Carnatic music's new star Nityashree Mahadevan. Burma's son, the hugely talented Sanjay Subrahmanyan is crazy about cricket too. I believe he spends more time thinking about cricket than about Carnatic music!
When I first met Sanjay in the Music Academy foyer during a concert, I introduced myself as an admirer of his music. There were a number of friends surrounding him and he acknowledged my compliment modestly. But after I had walked away from him, he shouted: "I have been a fan of your cricket, too", to my utter surprise and delight.

I am sure the annual cricket match among leading Carnatic musicians is common knowledge by now. I happened to officiate as umpire in one of those some years ago. The intensity of the competition had to be seen to be believed. Ravi Kiran, T M Krishna, Sanjay and Unni would give nothing away; there were a few other equally fierce competitors but I don't remember their names. At least one of them gave me a withering look when I gave him out lbw, a decision that obviously did not satisfy him. That was when Vijay Siva whose idea it had been to invite me, must have had second thoughts about the wisdom of my appointment.

I may add that I have never again been asked to umpire in this gala affair, but I do hope I will get another chance in the future. Who knows, I may have the pleasure of giving a Sangita Kalanidhi out, provided the Music Academy relaxes the age criterion a bit in honouring its vidwans.

Music lovers and musicians are few and far between among cricketers, but the few I know are diehard rasikas. Kedarnath, an accomplished opening batsman of yesteryear, was a trained mridanga vidwan, who forsook music for cricket. He is a wonderful mimic who can imitate some of Carnatic music's greats. His takeoff on MD Ramanathan is pretty impressive, but he can do an equally creditable Pattammal. His ontemporary, the late Devendran, played the mridangam on the concert stage.

Fast bowler Kalyanasundaram - the man who once took a hat trick against Bombay -- is a dedicated concertgoer whose knowledge of music seems to be good enough for him to discuss its technical aspects with musicians and even advise them sometimes. I must ask Unni what he thinks of Kalli's expert observations, as I believe he has reserved
him for special attention, having known him as a cricketer.

M O Srinivasan is well known in music circles as the founder of Dasanjali, a one-man crusade to teach a large number of school kids music especially of the bhajan or light classical variety. I wonder how many people in music circles know that he played for India as a wicket keeper in what were known as unofficial Tests in the late forties-early fifties. He was highly respected as an efficient wicket keeper and stubborn batsman. His son M O Parthasarathi, naturally known as Mop to one and all, was a Ranji and Duleep Trophy player, who bowled fastish leg breaks with a Paul Adams like action, except he was a right arm bowler. He was also a hard hitting batsman, somewhat unorthodox, but extremely successful. He learned Hindustani music and does a very reasonable imitation of singing -- he almost sounds like the real thing. He is a familiar figure at Hindustani music concerts in Chennai and has stopped listening to Carnatic music, I believe, after the demise of Maharajapuram Santhanam.

S D Sridhar the violinist, we all know, is the proud father of S Sriram who now plays for India. Sriram too learned the violin for a few years before the pull of cricket proved too powerful. Former Ranji trophy cricketer S V S Mani, an elegant batsman who played for Tamil Nadu and South Zone with considerable success in the sixties, and once fielded as a reserve against England, is the son of Kottamangalam
Cheenu, that talented singer, who faded away after a stint in films.

S Radhakrishnan (Ambi), a consistent batsman who could also bowl off spin, played for several seasons for Parry's in the league and Hindu Trophy,. Once, a century by him in the league led to a newspaper report which said Radhakrishnan, the son of Semmangudi Srinivasier, had scored a century, thus revealing to the world at large his musical ancestry only friends had hitherto known about.

Pataudi and Hyderabad cricket

2011-09-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

First published in the Times of India on 24 September 2011

Hyderabad’s cricketers and cricket lovers had the redoubtable Ram Prakash Mehra and his fiefdom, the Delhi and Districts Cricket Association, to thank for MAK Pataudi’s transfer from Delhi to Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy.

He was already India captain when he fell out with the DDCA administration and his close friendship with ML Jaisimha, the Hyderabad skipper, brought him south, with his sister’s address in Begumpet giving him the necessary residential qualification.

Thus began Tiger’s over-a-decade long love-hate affair with Hyderabad cricket, with most of his new teammates and the local crowds welcoming him with open arms and a lunatic fringe of sons-of-the soil partisans opposing the transplant.

What Tiger’s arrival in the twin cities did to Hyderabad cricket was to double the glamour quotient of the team, which already had Jaisimha—with his matinee idol looks and inimitable swagger--and Abbas Ali Baig with his boyish charm that once induced a pretty young thing to run on to the middle at the Brabourne Stadium, Bombay and kiss him.

There were at times as many as six Test cricketers and almost the entire South Zone eleven in the squad—Tiger, Jai, Abbas, Abid Ali, Jayantilal, Krishnamurti, Govindraj, Mumtaz Hussain, Abdul Hai, Narasimha Rao, Noshir Mehta and so on—who formed as exciting a line-up as anywhere.

The seniors were naturally older and altogether more experienced and polished than the rest of the team, but for all the awe that their stature demanded, we were a remarkably relaxed lot in the dressing room if generally on our best behaviour.

Tiger, who never led Hyderabad, was ever mindful of who the boss was, not once hinting by action or word at his own exalted position in the cricket world.

In fact, some of us were once witness to what came close to a ticking off by the captain, when he pulled up Tiger for going off the field without sufficient cause, suggesting that he had taken a cigarette rather than a toilet break during a painfully long session.

On a personal level, I was his teammate for exactly one season during 1975-76, though we remained in touch afterwards.

My first season for Hyderabad was his last. He had just retired from Test cricket after a thrilling series as captain against Clive Lloyd’s West Indies, though a poor one as batsman.

The rapport between us was instant, and his approval of my cricket did wonders for my morale.

Imagine coming into a team with at least four stars you ahd watched and admired from a distance—in my case at the ripe old age of 28, when I had given up all hope of playing first class cricket!

It was nothing short of a dream, to drink in the special atmosphere of the Hyderabad dressing room, to enjoy the long train journeys to Ranji Trophy matches, the interesting, sometimes electrifying conversations about cricket and cricketers that taught you more about the game than any coaching manual, the card games from bridge and rummy to the most absurd games of pure chance that Tiger invented, the conviviality inspired by Mr. McDowell, in short, the sheer camaraderie of it all, with every member of the team included in all the fun.

Several mental images of that debut season have stayed with me. The first memory is of Jaisimha, Tiger and Abid joining me and my roommate Prahlad in the balcony outside our hotel room just as we were about to turn in, the night before my debut at Trivandrum.

“Nonsense,” Tiger’s and Jai’s voices boomed as I said good night. “Have a drink with us.”

I didn’t realise it then, but it was their way of ensuring that in trying to sleep early, the nervous debutant did not toss and turn all night in anticipation of the morrow.

Next morning, when I took my first wicket, it was Tiger who ran up to me and said, “Wish you many more wickets, but for God’s sake, stop bowling rubbish.” It was just the wake-up call I needed to overcome my nerves and start bowling my normal stuff.

Tiger’s sense of humour and his pranks were well known. During that match at Trivandrum, he quickly sized up as a cricket ignoramus a magazine journalist who sought an interview with him.

What followed was so hilarious it was extremely difficult to keep a straight face.

Poor Mr Pillai! What horror he must have undergone when he filed the story of
Pataudi’s great successes and failures as Test batsman and captain—such as a double century against Belgium, an innings victory over Argentina and defeat at the hands of Netherlands!

V Ramnarayan, former Hyderabad and South Zone off-spinner

Tribute to Tiger

2011-09-23T00:55:00.001-07:00

“When I saw the English bowling,” was Mansur Ali Khan’s pat reply to a British journalist at a press conference immediately after his maiden Test hundred at Madras against Ted Dexter’s visiting England side in 1961. The question had been about when after the loss of one eye he had started believing he could play Test cricket again.

In his autobiographical Tiger’s Tale, Pataudi recounted how he decided to have some fun in the middle in that game. “The crowds here have rarely seen Indian batsmen take the aerial route,” he told his batting partner and skipper Nari Contractor, and proceeded to play some delightful lofted shots, including a couple of sixes, in an innings that broke away from the defensive mould of the time.

Pataudi was the first superstar of Indian cricket, arguably more charismatic than anyone before or after him to don India colours. The reasons were not far to seek: his brilliant wit and repartee as much as his striking good looks, superb athleticism and positive cricket.

He was inarguably the first Indian captain to demand consistently hard work in the fielding department, though there had been the occasional flash in the pan before his time. He set a marvellous personal example, patrolling the covers with lissome authority—those fortunate enough to watch the early Pataudi believed that he was not only a genius of a batsman but also a world class slip fielder, before he became blind in one eye. One of the first things he is said to have told his team after taking over as Sussex captain was: “Gentlemen, let’s see some scuffed trousers and bruised knees and elbows.”

Acknowledged as one of the world’s best fielders of his time, he was once invited by a television channel to compete in a fielding contest with Colin Bland, South Africa’s original Jonty Rhodes, to be telecast live, but Tiger declined because it involved getting up early on a non-match morning!

I write this hours after his death and almost every tribute I have watched has stressed his major influence on the self-belief of Indian Test cricketers hitherto known for their defeatist attitude (though Tiger himself was known to have acknowledged the role played by such predecessors as GS Ramchand).

Add all these ingredients and what you get is the magic of Tiger Pataudi, whose heroic exploits in a losing cause once earned him the newspaper headlines His Excellence The Nawab of Headingley. This was during the 1967 tour of England and he made 64 and 148 as India scored 510 after following on, forcing England to bat a second time. Next year, he was leading India in Australia, where after being forced to miss the first Test by a hamstring injury, he earned the sobriquet of Captain Courageous with his brave batting in the remaining three Tests—“with one good eye and on one good leg.”

It has been suggested that his 2793 runs at an average of 34.91 are ordinary figures, but these statistics have to be seen in the right perspective. For the major part of his career he averaged around 40, which was not far behind the performance of the leading Indian batsmen of his period. His failure against the West Indies at both the start and end of his career it was that brought down his average considerably. At the peak of his career, he modestly dismissed any excessive praise of his batting by claiming that most of his runs were scored against medium pace bowling! In rare moments, he however admitted that with two eyes, he might have equalled the great batsmen of the game.

I had the privilege of playing for Hyderabad when he was still a member of the team, with my first season his last. I walked on air the whole season, thanks to the sheer joy of sharing the dressing room with the likes of Tiger, my captain ML Jaisimha, Abbas Ali Baig and Abid Ali. I wonder if there has ever been a more glamorous outfit in domestic cricket than the Hyderabad side of the 1970s. I was very lucky to win the approval of these nawabs of Hyderabad cricket, even if the sojourn was all too brief, for Tiger and Abbas retired after that season and Jai and Abid soon afterwards.

Two memories linger from that season: one a totally unexpected cameo by him in a match against Andhra, when following an off-drive off my bowling, the batsman MN Ravikumar dived back to his crease after starting a second run as he saw Tiger pick up the ball in a feline swoop and fling it—feign a throw, in fact—only to see him walk up to where the ball had actually stopped on a damp outfield and retrieve it casually; another a masterly 198 against Tamil Nadu after demanding a promotion in the batting order and promising the captain a double hundred.

I remember suggesting to Pataudi that his decision to retire from Test cricket at the end of the 1974-75 series India lost 2-3 to Clive Lloyd’s West Indies. His reply was heartbreaking. “I don’t want to be killed on a cricket field, Ram,” he said, referring to his inability to see the express deliveries of Andy Roberts and Co.

In the midst of the swirling surge of emotions the news of his passing has caused, my thoughts keep going back to a moment at the end of my first Ranji Trophy season. We were sitting on the terrace at the Wankhede Stadium after losing to Bombay a match we should have won. I had had a good match personally, and Pataudi was quietly happy about it in the manner of a kindly senior. “Seven wickets against Bombay!” he repeatedly muttered, but adding a disclaimer. “Next year, wickets will be harder to come by, because every batsman will take you more seriously.” Prophetic, those words turned out to be, though I did not take them seriously then.

What he said next devastated me. “All the best, Ram. I won’t be playing next year. I am announcing my retirement from first class cricket.” It was Hyderabad cricket’s irreparable loss then. Today, cricket is poorer without him.

The author was MAK Pataudi’s Hyderabad teammate in the 1975-76 season. An off-spinner, he played in the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, Deodhar Trophy and Irani Cup.

Third man

2011-03-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

The trouble with an interview for television or youtube is that you cannot say everything you want to say, nor can the producers of the show include everything you say. The result is that you could come out sounding slightly different.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/site/worldcup2011/rbtc/index.html
In my recent conversation with the superb young team of Jaideep Varma and Gokul Chakravarthy, I spoke at length about my first class cricket career that ended thirty years ago—for the first time in my life. It was also the first time that anyone asked me to speak about it! We discussed the highs and lows of my career, with special reference to my exclusion from first class cricket when I was still hoping to make it to the Indian team. While on the subject, either I did not mention it or the editing process eliminated it, but there are things I wish I had done better in my cricket, even if I firmly believe I deserved a look-in by the national selectors on the evidence of my performance. I wish I had worked harder, bowled better, perhaps developed a doosra—with a legal action—improved my physical fitness and my fielding beyond being a safe fielder to a brilliant one, even my batting, AND made those strategic moves that I confessed in the interview I did not make.

I should have also stressed the fact that Venkataraghavan and Prasanna were world class cricketers, though they do not need a certificate from me. I cannot claim to be a close friend of either of them, though I played a lot of cricket with Venkat right from my boyhood, but I must mention one instance involving Venkat and me here.

I was really in seventh heaven when my name—along with my brother V Sivaramakrishnan’s—was headlined in The Hindu sometime in the second half of 1977, when both of us were included in the shortlist of 29 players to attend a physical conditioning camp at Chepauk, Madras, prior to the selection of the Indian team to tour Australia that winter. I prepared hard and when the camp conducted by Darshan Tandon, an ex-gymnast from the National Institute of Sports, Patiala, started, I was fit and raring to go. Four more players—including a certain Kapil Dev Nikhanj—were last minute inclusions in the camp, so that we were now 33 probables.

The first few days of the camp were sheer bliss, though Tandon put us through the wringer in the Chepauk cauldron. I was happy that I was proving equal to the exacting demands of our trainer, while some of the players were struggling, though after the first week almost everyone attained a good level of fitness. It was also the occasion my brother and I became close friends with Rajinder Goel, that great left arm spinner and lovely human being. Around the third day or so, Paji, as we called him, strained his calf muscle, which became a hard lump and made it impossible for him to move around, except inside his hotel room. Every evening, as we called on him, he would ask anxiously, “Is everyone fit? Ashok Mankad? Prasanna? Even Parthasarathi Sharma?” and feel extremely let down if we told him that all these players not known for their supreme athleticism were showing no signs of breaking down.

My idyll was broken by an injury I sustained during fielding practice, with our coach Polly Umrigar’s assistant PK Dharmalingam hitting a flat head-high catch for me to take. I ran towards the ball and lost sight of it against the sun, and trying to protect my face with my hands, dislocated a finger. Venkat, an expert in such matters, pulled out my skewed finger and there was some immediate relief, but the rest of the camp was ruined for me, not only because I could not bowl for a few days, but also because my injury was blown out of proportion. I do not know whether it was used against me, but 32 of the 33 attendees played in the Duleep Trophy tournament immediately after the camp, while I was not included in the South Zone 16. Ironically, the South Zone selectors, led by my former captain ML Jaisimha, met to pick the team at the very Chepauk stadium where the camp was held. It was a huge blow, and I was almost reduced to tears by the seeming injustice of it all. I tried to console myself with the thought that with the South Zone captain Venkataraghavan and Prasanna in the eleven, I would have been the third off-spinner in the squad (we were the only three off-spinners in the whole camp), but I realized that it had five opening batsmen and three wicket keepers. It was hard to escape the feeling that it was a deliberate slight.

Something that happened then made the whole situation slightly more bearable. Bharath Reddy, one of the three wicket keepers in the squad that also had the no. 1 keeper Syed Kirmani and KN Charan of Andhra, brought Venkat to my room. The skipper expressed his regret for my omission. “I am very sorry Ram,” he said, “I was not invited to the meeting and had no say in the selection. I feel very bad for you.” This time, it was hard to stop the tears.

SCHOOL CRICKET

2011-03-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

Organised cricket began for me when no doubt owing to my cousin Raman’s clout, I was inducted into the junior team of PS High School, Mylapore, a formidable combination of state schools level cricketers and other representatives of the finest Mylapore talent of the day. Before we were picked for the school team, of course, we had to prove our mettle in inter-class competition. First Form D to which I belonged was captained by R Prabhakar, later to become a bit of a legend in Madras cricket, thanks to his ability to hit the ball long, hard and frequently and his six-hitting prowess. From First Form B was PK Venkatachalam, Babu to close friends, a talented medium-pacer all rounder, who appeared even at that early age to be Test cricket material on the evidence of his technique, elegance and temperament. Cousin Raman was already a star of the school’s senior team, which had the likes of SVS Mani and S Veeraraghavan, elder brother of Venkataraghavan. Venkat was still in PS Secondary School off Kutcheri Road, to move to PS High only next year. Other sensational PS High school cricketers of the time included ‘Suspense’ Srinivasan, a medium pacer whose windmill action kept the batsman guessing, hence the prefix to his name, gentle Kadir or A Srinivasan, an elegant batsman, Kaattu Govindan, a brilliant fielder, NA “Kulla” Sivaraman, wicketkeeper and wit who kept us all in splits with his jokes and mimicry, and Sashikant, now famously known as Seth, a medium pacer who decades later took all ten wickets in a league match innings bowling off breaks.

Our physical director Ganesamurthy and his assistant Mohanakrishnan watched me and “Babu” PK Venkatachalam with amused tolerance, calling us tiffin players much to our embarrassment. We were the babies of the team, and never really stood a chance of making it to the playing eleven in inter-school matches, on account of our extreme youth, ten or eleven at the most, while our seniors were already teenagers. Tiffin players meant we made our presence felt only at lunch or tiffin time, tucking in enthusiastically without having worked for it by way of chasing balls on the ground.
Babu was a hugely talented young lad, a fine all rounder in the making. His elder brothers Ramakrishnan, Krishnamurti and Srinivasan were all good cricketers, with Krishnamurti the best of them, going on to play for the state. They were all tall, upright batsmen with a range of strokes and good medium pacers. Babu promised to surpass Krishnamurti with his youthful exploits. I left PS High School when my father was transferred to Tuticorin, and Babu and R Prabhakar became successful cricketers at the state level. Unfortunately, Babu did not fulfil his potential, led a troubled life and died an untimely death in the 1980s. Prabhakar became somewhat of an icon in Madras cricket with his six-hitting ability and effective swing bowling, not to mention his laconic, almost lackadaisical attitude. He had mixed fortunes at the Ranji Trophy level, playing a few outstanding innings, including one in a final against Bombay in 1967, a match in which he also bowled well.
Prabhakar came from a family of cricketers. His elder brothers R Nagarajan and R Chandrasekharan were both state cricketers. Another brother Mohan took to football rather than cricket and became State Bank’s goalkeeper. Chandrasekhar was a fine off spinner who delivered the ball from a height and obtained impressive purchase. He could bat a bit too, once making 176 in a State Bank of India inter-Circle match.

Whenever I think of Chandrasekhar, I cannot help recalling a campaign local cricket patron Don Rangan—more about him later—and Harinath Babu, the secretaryran on his behalf, distributing a cyclostyled critique of the state selectors who left him out of the Ranji Trophy squad. The man the pamphlet wanted Chandrasekhar to replace went on to play for India as an off spinner and even led it—S Venkataraghavan. The pamphlet also gave me a cheap thrill, as it mentioned me as another young off spinner the selectors had unfairly overlooked.

PS High School was a strong outfit, but it often ran into a hot property in Madras Christian College School. Unfortunately, my school cricket came to an end when IOB transferred my father to Tuticorin, a port town in Tirunelveli district, an overnight train journey away from Madras. There, I joined third form in a school called Subbiah Vidyalayam, and so did my brothers, while my sisters went to St. Aloysius School. I had no chance of playing any serious cricket at Tuticorin, and for the next year and a half, spent more time on track and field, thanks to my friends Subhash, Nargunam and Ravi. My father then went on a succession of transfers to Delhi and Bombay, with my schools at neither city fielding a team in inter-school cricket, and thus ended my school cricket career—even before it began. When I came back to Madras in 1961, my father back in the Madras office of Bank of India, I joined Vidya Mandir for my sixth form and the Madras Matriculation examination. Here again there was no organised cricket, and we had to make do with a hurried game during the 40-minute lunch interval.

It was during one of these frenetic games that I discovered I could bowl sharp off-spin, with a strange grip of my own invention. I held the ball with the seam pointing vertically, and my index and middle fingers on either side of the seam. I found I was getting sharp turn and bounce with this grip. On the uneven makeshift pitch in front of the high school block, I was pretty much unplayable, but as the batting was barely competent, I had no way of learning how good my bowling was against quality batsmen. As the school had no team and as no class had enough students to make up an eleven—mine had only 8 of us—we could not compete even at the inter-class level, so my new grip and action were not tested until the next year. I played plenty of table tennis during the year both on the school table and at the Mylapore Club of which my father was a member. Though I really improved my game at the club, it proved very costly for my father, as my two brothers and I regularly recovered from our exertions there by feasting on the delicacies supplied by the club’s famous canteen. I had the opportunity to play against some state and university players at the club, which helped me to improve my game vastly, and I even toyed with the idea of joining a coaching institute to try my hand at competitive TT. My brother Krishnan also faced a similar dilemma and in fact enrolled in the Tiruvengadam coaching camp, improving his game unrecognizably. In the end, both of us stuck to cricket.

How did I land up at the Vivekananda College nets next summer? It must have been courtesy my cousin Ramachandran, back home for the summer vacation from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore. The captain of the college team, Ram Ramesh, who had just completed the first year of his two-year MA course at the college, organised the practice, which went on throughout the summer. It was sheer heaven to attend regular net practice, which I had last done some five years earlier at the BS Nets, sent there by PS High School to attend the AG Ram Singh coaching camp. All rounder SV Suryanarayanan, medium pacer VR Rajaraghavan, lefthanded opener S Ramji, another left-hander GS Krishnan, and brothers Venu and Jaggu are some of the other cricketers I remember from that period. The camaraderie and idle chitchat afterwards, reclining on sand mounds into the night made it a transcendent moment in a young life, when you wanted it to go on forever, with not a care in the world.

Others might have nursed ambitions of becoming doctors and engineers, but for me, it was enough to savour the pleasures of cricket real and imagined—though I sometimes did fancy myself as a medical superman who saved lives—for more cricket was played in dreamland than on terra firma. More often than not I was Jim Laker tying Australians into knots in my dreams. It was not just the off spin of the Yorkshireman that I admired—I had grown to like his whole persona as revealed in his Over To You, on hindsight a rather self-centred account of his life on tour as England cricketer, in which he does not mince words while critiquing his captains Brown, Hutton and May.

Though it was a wonderful summer of never-ending cricket and cricket fantasying, I did not get to play a single match. I had to wait till the new season for that.

Cricket in the air

2011-03-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

Looking back, it had to be divine intervention or a completely benign arrangement of the stars in my favour that must have helped my cricket along, when there was no conscious effort to make a career of it, on the part of my parents or myself. The first time I held a bat was around 1952, in the backyard of our Quilon (now Kollam) home, in the company of my brother Nagan, a left handed, far more talented and stylish novitiate into the game at which so many in the family were good. I was barely five and for the next three years, the only cricket action we saw was provided by my father’s exploits in the game.

PN Venkatraman, Ramani to his siblings, cousins, and cricket mates, was Appa to us, his children—by then four of us, with the latest addition Krishnan arriving on 13 May 1952. Appa had been a stalwart of Mylapore Recreation Club, albeit a reclusive, even reluctant one, mainly because he was a bit of a hypochondriac and feared he would collapse on the cricket field, thanks to an imaginary heart condition a mischievous uncle or elder cousin had led him to believe afflicted him. (When I saw the Adoor Gopalakrishnan film Anantaram in the 1980s, a scene in it reminded me of my father’s unhappy experiences with elders in the extended family who casually planted in him fears and anxieties with far reaching consequences, preventing the full flowering of this gentle, shy, unusually talented young lad).

We must have come back to Madras during 1955 or 1956, for I clearly remember listening to the radio commentary in our first floor house on Murrays Gate Road when Jim Laker took 19 for 137 against the Australians at Old Trafford, the second time the off spinner claimed all ten wickets in an innings that season, having performed the feat for Surrey against the touring Aussies. I remember twiddling the knobs of our old Murphy valve radio to find the exact spot where the BBC commentary was at least half way audible. I was not yet ten and went to a Tamil medium school, so much of the commentary must have gone way above my head, even if I did manage to hear the voices of Swanton and Co. amidst all the static. I don't think John Arlott was as yet a member of the team, nor Brian Johnston or Christopher Martin Jenkins. It wasn't until much later that I began to recognize these much beloved voices as I did Rex Alston and Trevor Bailey. Still, there wasn't a single cricketing point that I—or my teeming army of brothers and cousins—missed. The explanation is simple: we belonged to a completely cricket-crazy extended family.

We lived on Murrays Gate Road, a quiet enough street then, extending east-west from Alwarpet Corner to Teynampet, the whole stretch a long straight line from the Santhome Church, via Luz Church Road, almost all the way to Mount Road. 'Suprabha' was our home, a two-storeyed bungalow facing north. We lived on the first floor, my father now the agent of the Mylapore branch of IOB, and downstairs lived my father's elder brother PN Sundaresan, Raja to family and friends, at the time a struggling reporter in the Indian Express, but soon to join the Hindu.

Raja was an attacking batsman who opened the innings for Mylapore Recreation Club 'A', one of the top sides in the Madras cricket league, whose clashes with arch rival Triplicane Cricket Club starring MJ Gopalan, CR Rangachari and the like, were known as the War of the Roses. MRC had many of its own stars, with most of Buchi Babu Nayudu's sons, nephews and grandsons turning out for the club at one time or another. The well known diplomat G Parthasarathi or GP, an aggressive leg spinner-batsman, CR Pattabhiraman, son of Sir CP Ramaswami Ayyar and the founder of the club, and opening batsman M Swaminathan were some of the MRC regulars.

My father's uncle PS Ramachandran or 'Pattu', the tall, wiry fast bowler who took 10 for 18 for MRC vs. TCC, was overlooked by the selectors who met the same evening to pick the 'Indians' for that season's Presidency Match. Pattu, like quite a few other cricketers of his time, was an orthodox brahmin, whose hairstyle consisted of a shaven head with a tuft of hair tied in a kudumi or chignon at the back. As he ran up to bowl his fast medium seamers, his knotted hair came off and fluttered in the breeze, and he almost instinctively reached for it to tie it back in place even as he was completing his follow through. In group photographs, he is seen wearing a black cap more like a Gandhi topi than a cricket cap.

Though he missed out on the Pongal match after that splendid burst in the Roses battle, he managed to impress the selectors enough to be included in a tour game for Madras against the visiting MCC team under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine. Pattu bowled well in both innings, picking up a couple of wickets. He was probably in his late forties when I first heard him describe the cricket he played in his youth. “Jardine said, “Well bowled” to me at the end of the match. He even patted me on my back.” When Pattu came home that evening, his mother, whose word was law in family circles, told him to wash even harder than usual, as he had made physical contact with a mlechha or outcaste!

Pattu lived and practised law in a gracious old bungalow in a sprawling compound on Eldams Road, parallel to and behind Murrays Gate Road, and his elder brother PS Venkatraman, a building contractor and a leading tennis player of his time, was his next door neighbour. Their two houses were named Sundar (after my great grandfather Justice PR Sundara Iyer) and Parvati (after my great grandmother). Pattu's three sons Sundaram, Venkatachalam and Viswanathan took after their father and became more than useful medium pace bowlers, two of them making it to the Ranji Trophy team and Venkatachalam almost getting there. My uncle Raja's sons Narayanan and Raman were both fine all rounders. While Kannan played Ranji Trophy, Ramachandran again just failed to make it. Add to these five, my brothers Nagan and Krishnan (V Sivaramakrishnan) and yours truly and we needed just three more for a complete eleven, though Sundaram was far too senior to play with all of us.

Coming to the point I have been building up to, no compound wall separated the two houses Sundar and Parvati on Eldams Road and Suprabha on Murrays Gate Road, and we energetic youngsters were constantly running from one house to another and playing a whole range of outdoor games, in which the girl children of the family were also included in all the games—except cricket. And as if all this were not enough to spoil us silly by way of sporting facilities, bang opposite Suprabha was a vast open field where we played the more organised cricket everyday after school. The 'ground', as we called it, is untraceable today, as it has been completely built over, a residential area called Venus Colony.

PS Narayanan was the most talented all round sportsman of the family, if a bit laid back. Everything he did, he did with style. It came naturally to him. He was of medium height, very slightly built, supple and agile, a smart ball game player who used the angles to advantage whatever game he played. In cricket, he was all wrists and timing, a very good eye and quick reflexes. I do not remember his exploits as a schoolboy cricketer. In fact, not until he completed his undergraduate studies from Vivekananda College and joined the Madras Law College did he blossom into a consistent opening batsman and an off spinner with an uncanny ability to break partnerships. In the 1960s, he became a mainstay of Jolly Rovers, the team that dominated Madras cricket for the next four decades, regularly outperforming his more glamorous teammates, and often giving the side a scintillating start, matching his partner KR Rajagopal stroke for stroke. Those who watched Raja in his prime will know that that is a high compliment—the wicket keeper batsman narrowly missed selection to the Indian team that toured Australia in 1968.

At the school level, it was Narayanan’s younger brother Ramachandran who came into prominence in representative cricket. He bowled vicious leg breaks and played attacking shots from the word go as an opening batsman. Of the three fast bowling brothers who were my father's cousins, Sundaram was a genuine quickie, who should surely have played more matches at the first class level than the solitary Ranji Trophy appearance he was allowed to make. His two brothers were good bowlers too, and all three were rated highly by the West Indies fast bowler Roy Gilchrist when he coached Madras's promising young pace bowlers handpicked by the selectors in the 1960s.

My brother Nagan, just a year younger than me, was a stylish left-handed batsman, who later played for Vivekananda College and IIT Madras. He never fulfilled his early promise, because he simply did not have the patience or temperament to build innings and chose to focus more on academics than cricket. Capable of attacking any bowling successfully, he was on his day a delight to watch. My youngest brother Sivaramakrishnan was the opposite of Nagan in terms of temperament. Five years younger than I, he was a thorn in the flesh from the time we let him join us older brothers and cousins, showing an annoying tendency to score double hundreds even at the age of ten. He went on to score more than 5,000 first class runs, coming close to selection as India's opener during the Gavaskar-Chauhan era.

Here, I have gone a little ahead of the story, as Sivaramakrishnan was not yet a force to reckon with during our Suprabha days, barely seven when we left Suprabha and Madras, thanks to my father's transfer to Tuticorin in 1960, and Delhi a year later. There were a few more good cricketers in the extended family, including my cousins GR Venkatakrishnan and PS Ashok, and all of us honed our cricket skills on the Venus Colony ground in the 1950s and 1960s. We were barefoot cricketers who wore no protective equipment, sometimes played on uneven, even dangerous wickets and unlike other kids always used a cricket ball and not a tennis ball. I describe our Venus Colony cricket in some detail elsewhere in this chronicle, but I am convinced that some of us would have been better batsmen had we played on good wickets during our formative years with a semblance of protection.

My most vivid memory of the Venus Colony ground is of being hit on the forehead fielding at short leg ridiculously close to the batsman who pulled a short ball from my leg spinner cousin, and the world around me going black. Once I came to, I was reluctant to miss the action that followed, but my mother who had been watching from home dragged me away, bleeding and concussed. Another time, I got a tooth knocked out while bending to stop a powerful cover drive, which got deflected by a pebble.

These two incidents probably determined my batting technique in the years to come, with my forward strokes characterised by an unconscious reluctance to smell the ball. Predictably, I became a better bowler than batsman, and after experimenting with medium pace and leg spin for a while settled down as an off spinner.
Quite a few members of the extended family played competitive cricket in adulthood, with Sivaramakrishnan and I progressing to the state and zone levels and figuring in the cricket board’s list of Test probables. S Nataraj, a talented and intelligent cricketer who played for both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the Ranji Trophy married my sister in 1973 played some splendid cricket in the Tamil Nadu league for over a decade.

Whom to blame

2011-03-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

I was one of those cricketers destined, it seemed, to be known and appreciated at the local, state level at best. I found even Ranji Trophy cricket out of my reach for a long time, unlike the several sterling cricketers just below the Test level with whom I rubbed shoulders. (As, bolstered by a few milligrams of the finest produce of Scotland, I once picked up the courage to declaim to a boastful Test cricketer, I strongly believe that we often played stirring cricket of an intensity comparable to the best that world cricket could conjure).

Until I was 28, it seemed I would never play first class cricket, thanks in the main to the timing of my birth—a few years after that of India’s greatest off spinner EAS Prasanna and just two behind his own rival for a spot in the Indian team Venkataraghavan—and the curious, often cruel concatenation of circumstances that always seemed to be conspiring against my chances of winning the selectors’ nod. More later about all that, and the amazing turnaround in my fortunes in 1975 which almost, but not quite, led to a fairytale ending to my cricket story, but I must confess that during my years in the wilderness, I often thought of writing a book I would call “Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Cricketer” in imitation of the title of Nirad C Chaudhuri’s great memoirs, because I always immodestly believed I belonged as an off spinner at the highest level—a view some wonderful cricket mates shared and nurtured—with a story to tell.

My story would also include in its sweep some of the best cricketers not to have played for India, though its bias would ever so subtly tilt towards the best South Zone cricketers I have had the privilege to partner or oppose on the field of play. KR Rajagopal, B Kalyanasundaram, S Vasudevan, V Sivaramakrishnan, P Ramesh, Abdul Jabbar, P Mukund, AG Satvinder Singh, N Bharatan, V Krishnaswamy (all Tamil Nadu), Mumtaz Husain, Noshir Mehta, P Jyoti Prasad, T Vijay Paul, Kanwaljit Singh, Saad Bin Jung, Shahid Akbar (all Hyderabad), AV Jayaprakash, VS Vijayakumar, Sudhakar Rao, Vijayakrishna (all Karnataka), D Meher Baba and MN Ravikumar (both Andhra) are among the fiercely combative cricketers and unforgettable characters I would profile in this tribute to the great game as I saw and played it.

In the evening years of my cricket career, however, I discovered I had excellent recall of the many experiences and personalities good, bad and mostly funny, which had enriched my days under the sun. That was when some of my friends began to urge me to write those stories for public consumption. The result was a column I called Curdrice Cricket, largely a lighthearted tribute to cricket in Tamil Nadu. Mostly about the players and unique flavour of cricket in my home state, but including very little about my own cricket, it later formed an important part of my first book, Mosquitos and Other Jolly Rovers: The Story of Tamil Nadu Cricket

My sojourn in Chennai was only one part of the story of my cricket. The decade I spent in Hyderabad was the more fruitful, rewarding part of my career and I had not touched on it in Curdrice Cricket or Mosquitos. I moved to Andhra Pradesh in 1970, joining State Bank of India as a ‘probationary officer’ and spending most of the first year of my tenure there at rural Anakapalle, before the glorious uncertainties of life took me to Hyderabad and a fresh opportunity to play cricket in July 1971. I was four months short of my 24th birthday.

The struggle to make a mark was long and hard. It took me well nigh two years to even gain a regular place in the bank’s star-studded team in the local league and two more to be selected to represent Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy. What followed was a minor miracle and I was an official Test probable within a year! While I savoured every moment I spent in the exalted company of my illustrious teammates and being recognized as someone with an outside chance of replacing Prasanna or Venkataraghavan in the Indian team, my swift dismissal from all forms of first class cricket five years later left me bewildered, hurt and angry.

Distance, or the passage of time, rather, lends enchantment and I turned to cricket writing once I was sure I could do so without bitterness, and that is how, aided by the devastating effects of a couple of poor career moves I made, I became a freelance journalist around 1994, starting with contributions to the Saturday Sports page of The Hindu. The demands from my close friends to write my cricket memoirs have continued over the decades—and, thanks to the encouragement I have received from some better known authors—I have finally decided to inflict them on the reading public.

The confidence and excellence of some of today’s cricket writers have been the biggest factors responsible for my finally taking the plunge, changing my long held perception that only international cricketers had any chance of succeeding as authors of cricket books. With their style, keen love of cricket, and sense of history, such accomplished writers as Suresh Menon, Harsha Bhogle, Rahul Bhattacharya, and Gideon Haigh have provided the inspiration; so you know whom to blame for my belated entry into the world of cricket memoirs.

They also played

2011-03-14T04:16:00.000-07:00

The world at large only knows the stars that wear the India cap and Indian colours. To a generation of cricket fanatics glued to their TV sets, even the names of past cricketers as accomplished as M J Gopalan or A G Ram Singh may mean little, much less the humble league cricketers, the devoted club secretaries, umpires, scorers, markers and other staff who have remained anonymous over the decades.

Early accounts of organised cricket in Madras state as it was called then bristle with the names of several personalities who enriched the game. Not all of them were champion performers; some of them added value by their passion for the game, their love of its nuances, and their loyalty to the clubs they supported. Some declared that their clubs were dearer to them than their wives! There was this devoted follower of the Palayampatti Shield league who went from ground to ground on his bicycle, stopping only to inform anxious fellow enthusiasts the scores at other grounds and to collect the details of the match in progress to share with other diehard fans elsewhere. This role of score-disseminator was performed with equal conscientiousness by the ubiquitous Rita ice-cream vendor and peanut seller.

But whether they were players, spectators, markers, umpires, scorers or club secretaries, the combined contribution of all these colourful elements to the fabric of Tamil Nadu cricket will always be greater than the sum, of that there can be little doubt. Who can ever forget Muthu of BS Nets with his trademark 'Last set Rajen' or his talented sons Padmanabhan, Arunachalam and Santosh Kumar who did him proud with the quality of their cricket? Or KRS Mani who spent a minor fortune on nurturing the game in his own way by supporting a club against overwhelming odds, neglecting his own financial security in the process, or his ecstatic celebratory run on the field in distant Pune when Venkat, Kumar and Kalli pulled off an improbable win in the Ranji semifinal? Will there ever be another 'Don' Rangan who today may be penniless and frail, but lorded over his Pithapuram grounds as the uncrowned monarch of all he surveyed, spotting talent, defying the mighty and rubbing shoulders with the great with the insouciance of a pirate king? Will we again see the likes of M G Bhavanarayanan, R Raghavan or Y Ramachandran who wheeled away long after youth had deserted them but not their love of the game or the ardour of their competitive spirit? Can sponsorship and cola wars ever produce another S Annadurai, with his nonchalant confidence in the efficacy of his methods of keeping fit and ability to pick out the promising from the merely flattering or the generous treats he gave his wards on tour paying the bills from his own pocket?

No, the march of time and technology can never produce another KS Kannan, that brilliant coach and lovable human being, whose murder of the English language entertained two generations of cricket. It cannot equal the pristine purity of the cricket played by those supremely amateur in spirit but possessed by the desire to excel--G Parthasarathi and the Bhadradri brothers; PS Ramachandran and his three sons, pace bowlers all; Ananthanarayan of the short-lived brilliance; the less known members of the Ram Singh clan—Kalwant, Satwant, Jarnail and Harjinder; J C 'Patba' Patel who habitually delivered the ball before the batsman was ready; 'Mandalam' Mani who as captain commanded the respect of far more gifted players; the ICF trio of J R Maruthi, K Chandrasekhar Rao and stylist S Jagdish, his brother S Nagaswami who migrated to the US and helped propagate the game there; 'Goofy' Subramaniam who had one splendid match versus the 1959 West Indies team; the elegant SVS Mani who once fielded in a Test match but never tasted real success, speed merchants Mohan Rai and Prabhakar Rao; champion 'poi' (literally, false or non-existent) bowlers from Najam Hussain to J S Ghanshyam; the elegant Haridas brothers Sushil and Sunil and their father CK before them; Arvind Gopinath, who could on his day bat in a manner reminiscent of his father CD; SK Patel who wheeled away for interminable hours at the BS Nets until he was ready one day to break a Rohinton Baria bowling record, and mysteriously one day lost it all; the deceptively lazy R Prabhakar who could explode with the bat; the list could go on forever and one could never do justice, because there would still be many a name left out.

People like 'Nayana' Lakshmi Ratan and Ayyadurai who played host to visiting players, both Indian and foreign, before hotel accommodation became de rigueur, Murugesa Mudaliar of The Hindu or V Pattu who took the young under their wing and laid a solid foundation for their progress, others like PVH Babu, Netaji Ramanujam, PC Ramudu, VA Parthasarathy or TP Vijayaraghavan who spent a lifetime running clubs or institutional teams, yet others like K Radhakrishnan and S Ramabhadran left arm spinners of more recent vintage who defied physical handicaps to flight and spin like the best in the trade, incredible purveyors of exaggerated flight or swing like Gopalapuram's Kannan or Vivekananda College's Krishnan, competent cricketers who are better remembered for their wisecracks and puns like KC Krishnamurthi of Crom-Best, Rajaraghavan of Jolly Rovers, Ram Ramesh of IOB, and SJ Kedarnath of State Bank, and promising young talent lost to other fields of endeavour from Prem Kumar and Vasanth Kumar of the sixties to Unnikrishnan of the eighties, all these and many, many more outstanding individuals too numerous to mention here or elsewhere-here's an unqualified apology to all of them-have made domestic cricket what it is today.

I have had the good fortune to split my cricket career into three enjoyable parts—the first decade in Madras and the second in Hyderabad, followed by a third in Madras-Chennai—so I also came into contact with the characters who made Hyderabad cricket a rich variant of the game in the south.

Sobers Part II

2011-02-26T02:39:00.001-08:00

One of my friends has pointed out rightly that Wes Hall did not get to bat in the second innings of the Madras Test in 1967, while in the first innings he was out to Prasanna. I did my homework too and found out that Sobers was telling us a tall story. (I even checked the scorecards of the other two Tests of the series, but the facts did not match). I decided to keep the story anyway because it was such a delightful one, especially when Garry told it in his inimitable Barbadian singsong. I did not keep any notes so I lost out on some choice lines ten years down the line.

The ten or so of us who gathered at the MCC for cocktails that evening were there, thanks to SP Sathappan, Saucy to everyone (sitting next to Sobers in the photograph I have posted on FB), the club’s president who drew up the guest list. There were bigger names in Madras cricket, but we were the ones who got invited—my brother Sivaramakrishnan, TE Srinivasan, my tennis mate Bandhu Chandhok, and, among others, the unforgettable Mahidhar Reddy, the diehard Sobers fan who fell at his feet that night and wouldn’t let go of them for quite a while. I naturally did not mention that in my story, partly because it might draw attention to the quantum of Mahidhar’s lubrication, thinking he would be embarrassed by the story. Mahidhar was extremely offended that I ignored his part in the story and here goes: I have put the record straight once and for all.

Besides his infinite capacity for tall stories, we found another aspect of Sobers’s personality striking. He treated all of us as his equals, sharing his views on men and matters with utmost candour. He was, for instance, annoyed by the selective amnesia of a former Indian cricketer who not only was vague about his golf handicap (Why can’t he make up his mind, is it 18 or 12? It can’t be both), but also conveniently remembered an almost forgotten prior appointment and failed to return Sir Garry’s famous hospitality in the West Indies.

Sometime during the evening, Sobers waxed eloquent over the great bowling ability of Subhash Gupte whom he rated higher than Shane Warne as the best leg spinner of all time (I wonder if Sir Garry still holds the same view now that Warne has gone on to achieve greater heights in cricket). He then turned to me and asked me who I thought was the best orthodox leg spinner in India after Subhash Gupte. Was it Baloo Gupte, Subhash’s younger brother, he asked. I told him that many Indians agreed that Tamil Nadu’s VV Kumar was India's best leg spinner after Subhash Gupte. When he asked me why I thought so, I said that VV had this ability to make the ball hang in the air, had two different types of googly, and was the most economical wrist spinner I knew. Sobers nodded his head. He was in Chennai to assist Kumar at the MAC Spin Academy. “Yes, I can see what you mean. He still shows glimpses of those qualities when he has a bowl in the nets,” Sobers said, thoughtfully.

Besides being a great spin bowler, Kumar is quite a character, known for his unorthodox views. Rumour had it that far from endorsing the world’s most gifted all rounder’s views on spin bowling, he quietly advised his wards not to listen to the great man! And, according to my friend Vasudevan, who assisted him earlier, VV was the most improved bowler in the camp.

Reluctant to talk about his own cricket, Sobers revealed when pressed that no bowler troubled him, certainly no Indian bowler, not even Chandrasekhar. That is when he told us the story of how Sir Donald Bradman said, “Don’t worry Garry, you will sort him out,” pointing to Richie Benaud, when he thought Sobers was in a pensive mood. Sobers was puzzled and wondered what gave the Don the impression that he worried about Benaud’s bowling. His reply was the brilliant 132 in the Brisbane Test, which ended in a tie. Sobers also had a good laugh when reminded of his statement on the last morning of the Bombay Test in 1967 that he would finish the game in time to go to the Mahalaxmi races that afternoon. And he did, despite a rampaging Chandrasekhar who took all four West Indies wickets to fall.

Sir Garfield St. Aubrun Sobers

2011-02-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

First published in The Bengal Post

The greatest all rounder in the game never played in the World Cup. Sir Garfield Sobers had quit the international scene by the time the Prudential World Cup came round in 1975, and Clive Lloyd led his men to a grand win, with Sobers’s old friend and teammate Rohan Kanhai playing a key role in the final.
Garry Sobers was perhaps the one cricketer guaranteed to lend excitement and enchantment to a tournament such as the World Cup. The quintessential all rounder, he could bowl in three different styles, and once hit six sixes in an over, besides possessing in his arsenal three shots to every delivery. Add his brilliant fielding anywhere and his infectiously positive attitude and you have the perfect ambassador for instant cricket.

We in Chennai first caught a glimpse of him when he toured India with Gerry Alexander’s men in 1958-59. At the Corporation Stadium, he created quite a flutter as he walked out jauntily with his collar upturned. Though he scored only 29 and 4 in the Test, he impressed one and all with his every action. His bosom pal Collie Smith proved to be the crowd’s favourite, with his ‘donkey drops’ and antics near the boundary line.

Not long afterwards, Collie Smith was to be killed in a car accident, with Sobers at the wheel—something that scarred Sobers for life and made sleep impossible for him during match nights. The more he tried to get his eight hours on the eve of a match, the more he tossed and turned, haunted by the memory of his friend and what might have been.

“I never went to bed before the small hours of the morning during Test matches, but it did not affect my cricket,” Sir Garry told a small gathering of cricket lovers and former cricketers around him at the Madras Cricket Club, Chepauk, late one evening some ten years ago. ‘Don’t you dare follow my example!’ he told a young player in the audience.

I was one of those privileged to be present that evening, as the great all rounder spun a web of cricket tales, real and apocryphal in about equal measure. One particularly diverting tale had it that the West Indies manager Berkeley Gaskin caught him returning to his Karachi hotel room at 5 a.m. and nodded approvingly believing that like him, Sobers was going for a morning constitutional.

Talk turned to his superb 95 and 74 not out in the 1967 Pongal match that brought Test cricket back to Chepauk, and Sobers agreed with us that, fooled by the length and additional bounce of a BS Chandrasekhar special, he had changed his shot in the last nanosecond to send the ball sailing over the sight screen in that game. This was reminiscent of a similar straight six in the Brisbane Test in 1961, when the bowler to suffer had been Richie Benaud, in the course of Sobers’s 132 in 125 minutes.

As the stories flowed thick and fast, Sobers remembered how one of his teammates was constantly barracked by the Brisbane crowd as he was patrolling the ropes. “You are the ugliest cricketer I ever saw, mate,” one spectator cried out. The fielder’s instant response was: “Wait till you see my brother back in Jamaica.”

The Chepauk Test match was the first time in a long while that India had come close to defeating West Indies, with a new Prasanna-Chandrasekhar-Bedi spin combination in place. Sobers famously drew the game with a fighting unbeaten 74 in the company of tailenders Hall and Griffith, after his team had been perilously close to defeat on the last day. Sobers’s fertile imagination was evidently at work as he related the behind-the-scenes happenings of that evening. Here’s his version of a conversation as soon as Wes Hall came in to bat.

Hall: ‘Skip, I promise I’ll stay with you till the end. I have one problem, though. This Chandrasekhar, I can’t read him.”

Sobers: “What's new, Wes? Seymour Nurse, he couldn’t read Chandrasekhar. Rohan Kanhai, he couldn’t read him. Basil Butcher, he couldn’t read no Chandrasekhar, either.”

Hall: “Come now skip, be serious. Show me when he bowl tha googly, and when tha leg break.”

The two batsmen quickly agreed Sobers would stand a foot behind the umpire at the non-striker’s end, and put his right hand out every time Chandra bowled a googly, and Hall would faithfully follow the signal. A healthy partnership developed and Hall was the toast of the team at teatime. Seymour Nurse was particularly impressed. “How did you do it maan, when all of us batsmen struggled?” he asked Hall. “Oh, that’s simple Seymour old maan,” Hall replied in his best conspiratorial manner. “You know I watch the ball in the air, maan. Poor Garry, he can’t tell tha googly from tha leg break sometimes. Coz poor chap, he tries to read Chandrasekhar’s hand.”

Unfortunately for Hall, Sobers was standing just behind him overhearing the conversation. The first ball after tea, Chandrasekhar bowls a googly, and Sobers has his right hand firmly in his pocket. Exit Wesley Hall.

THE DON IS NO MORE

2011-02-22T08:10:00.000-08:00

DON RANGAN, ONE OF MADRAS CRICKET'S UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS, PASSED AWAY TODAY. HERE'S WHAT I WROTE ABOUT HIM A FEW YEARS AGO.

One of the teams that D Ranganathan—Don Rangan to all in the Madras cricket circles of the 1960s—ran was Nungambakkam Sports Club ‘A’ or NSC’A’. It was arguably the strongest team below the First Division and when promoted to the senior league, a competitive young side not to be trifled with.

Rangan is but a pale shadow today, very nearly a caricature, of the imposing personality he was in the 1960s, when he ran NSC ‘A’. He was monarch of all he surveyed at the Pithapuram ground at Nandanam, Madras, which he leased and maintained single-handedly, no doubt running through his family’s finances in the process. He ran a sports-goods business as well, which meant that his club always owed his firm substantial sums of money! In his heyday, he lived in style, dressed smartly, drove a Volkswagen, and offered net practice facilities round the year, insisting on his players attending these sessions without fail. The number of new cricket balls he made available at practice would be considered extravagant by any standards.

All this helped create a larger than life image of Rangan, and he took full advantage of that in putting the fear of God into his boys and demanding great performances from them. And he miraculously got the best out of them match after match. The Rangan influence over a whole bunch of young cricketers of the period was quite considerable. For years and years, they would rise to his defence against his numerous critics.

Rangan was a cocky little fellow, all muscle and sinew, very fit, a fiercely combative cricketer quite unlike the gentle Madras stereotype of his time. A competent, workmanlike but always positive opening batsman, he was aggression personified as a wicket keeper, not afraid to stand up to fast bowlers, and capable of the most convincing histrionics while appealing to the umpire. He was also a more than useful medium pacer, a facet of his cricket he never let us forget, resorting as he invariably did to the discarding of his gloves and pads in mid-innings to have a go at the batsman. His supreme confidence usually resulted in the breaking up of a troublesome partnership, enabling Rangan to crow over his success where others had failed. He always had a chip on his shoulder about being ignored as a player by officialdom and running his own club like a prince was his way of challenging the establishment. He not only scored tons of runs and won most of his matches, but made sure these victories were made possible by stellar contributions from other players the official selectors had overlooked. He was an original, not an imitation of some Test cricketer he admired. If there was anyone Rangan hero-worshipped, it had to be Rangan himself. Virtually unbeatable in the lower divisions of the TNCA league, his team was a dark horse capable of toppling the best in the senior division, once it was promoted to that level of combat.

I played under Rangan’s captaincy for exactly one season, at the end of which my uncles hijacked me to Mylapore Recreation Club, brainwashing me into believing Rangan was a bad influence on me. At any rate I was not ready, according to them, for the first division, where NSC ’A’ was now. The season I did spend with NSC was an exciting phase in my cricket, with some of the best practice facilities in Madras at my disposal at the Pithapuram ground at Nandanam, a superb home ground with a pacy matting wicket and a lightning fast outfield. If Rangan’s captaincy was eccentric, imaginative and defiant of convention and reputations, his loyal band of talented players were equally iconoclastic, partly out of fear and respect for Rangan, but also acquiring by osmosis the skipper’s in-the-face contempt for the opposition.

Rangan loved a fight and made it a point to get under the skin of opposing players. He taunted and teased them before, during and after matches. The bigger the reputation of the visitors to Pithapuram, the more hostile was the reception. He was notorious for his gamesmanship and his strenuous efforts to win at any cost. He was even credited with cheating at the toss, picking the coin up and announcing, ‘We bat,’ before the rival captain saw which way it fell.

We played matches every Saturday and Sunday, including so-called friendlies in the absence of official fixtures. On these occasions, Rangan enjoyed inviting strong opposition and defeating them with his young team. One such practice match was against the star-studded Jolly Rovers, who among others included Salim Durrani and S Venkataraghavan. The visitors ended our giant killing spree but not before we had put up a bit of a fight. Batting first, we were bundled out for 99, with Durrani, Venkat and the medium pacers doing the damage on a lively wicket. Going in at number 9, I made an unbeaten 15 or so, inspired by the occasion to defy Jolly Rovers’ top class spin attack. I was raring to go when it was our turn to field, wanting to do well against the stars whom a largish crowd had come to watch, Salim Durrani in particular. Our medium pacer KV Mahadevan, Maka to all of us, was in full flow and brought on early, I too, was all charged up, desperately wanting Durrani’s wicket. (I was barely 18 then and Rangan revelled in throwing his young ones in at the deep end, and cocking a snook at established reputations. My growth as an off spin bowler was accelerated by the supreme confidence Rangan showed in my ability).

Soon Jolly Rovers were some 40 for 4, Maka and I sharing the spoils equally. Durrani and Venkat came together and Rangan gave me an extraordinarily attacking field, with close catchers breathing down the batsmen’s necks. The wicket assisted Maka as well as me, and we were both transported to another, exalted zone by the excitement of the moment. We gave the batsmen hell and they had to bat out of their skins to survive, but survive they did, until they won the game without further loss—thanks to their skill, determination and experience, not to mention some dropped catches. At the end of the match, Durrani offered to coach me at the nets the Jolly Rovers captain S Rangarajan had organized at Farm House, The Hindu’s family estate. I was mighty thrilled by the offer, but being the idiot I was, did not follow up, succumbing to my uncles’ advice—the same uncles who would remove me from NSC ‘A’ at the end of the season.

Another memorable practice match from that period was one in which I played for a scratch combination under Ram Ramesh’s captaincy against NSC ‘A’. I don’t remember what I did with the ball that day, probably not much, as I would have remembered it otherwise, but do recall in clear detail being the junior partner in a century partnership with S Venkataraghavan. Even more vivid is the memory of facing the ultra-quick bowling of “Kuthu” Krishna Rao, who opened the bowling for Rangan’s eleven and later played as an off-spinner for the Services in the Ranji Trophy. Krishna Rao was a tall, strapping, handsome fast bowler, who struck terror in the hearts of batsmen on Rangan’s lively matting wicket. His action was a dubious one, the reason why the armed forces converted him into a slow bowler. On his day, he was quite a handful and this afternoon he was letting them buzz around your ears.

Whether I was promoted to No.3 because the team believed I had batting potential or whether I was a sacrificial lamb, I don’t know, but I do remember that Ramesh and Venkat who opened the innings with him put on a quick 60 or 70 before Ramesh got out. When I went in, I received the treatment from Krishna Rao and the other opening bowler Maka, and I can tell you it was a real baptism by fire for someone who had never played such pace or bounce before. Still, I was young and foolhardy, so I stuck around fearlessly, trying to stay with Venkat who led an astonishing assault on the quickies. He made a memorable hundred, hooking, pulling and cutting, to my 30 or so, as we coasted to a nine-wicket win. It was one of the most courageous batting displays I saw at close quarters. Those were pre-helmet days.

That was NSC’s and Rangan’s golden age. Even people who did not like him—and there were many such people, thanks to Rangan’s constant aggression on and off the field—admired and respected him for the enormous contribution he made to the development of the game in the city. Almost every league, state and national cricketer of Madras came to practise at the Pithapuram nets and play in the hundreds of games he organized there. Rangan met the needs of a whole generation of cricketers better than formal institutions.

Unfortunately, Rangan’s fortunes nosedived in the 1970s and steadily grew worse through the decades. As professionalism crept into cricket, it was no longer possible for individuals or clubs not sponsored by corporates to continue to support the game. Rangan who had been a non-smoker, teetotaller and an awe-inspiring figure for his wards, started adopting a more laidback lifestyle, eventually running into financial difficulties. Used to lording it over the many people whose cricket he touched, he proved incapable of holding a steady job into his forties and later. Today, he is in his seventies, and nobody takes his stories of the past and his grandiose plans for the future seriously, though nothing can stop him from weaving those tales. Young cricketers cannot see why the old timers still humour him, but any cricketer who came across Rangan in his prime is prepared to forgive him a great deal.

The Baig brothers

2011-02-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

(Stop if you have read this before!)

No one could have had a more sensational start to his Test career. 20-year old Abbas Ali Baig was a dashing young batsman at Oxford University, with a few exceptional performances under his belt in English county cricket, when the 1959 touring Indian team summoned him to play in the Manchester Test. It had been a severe drubbing for the tourists from Peter May’s Englishmen, but the handsome, fleetfooted Hyderabadi made a brilliant 112 on debut and in the company of Polly Umrigar (118) salvaged some pride for the Indians. Though England beat India in that and the next and final Test to make a clean sweep of the five-match series, Baig’s name was permanently inscribed in the pages of Indian cricket history.

Unfortunately, Abbas never repeated that level of performance in his Test career thereafter, though a defiant 50 by him against Australia in the Bombay Test next season, brought him an unexpected reward in the form of a kiss planted on his cheek by a young female fan in full view of the capacity crowd at the Brabourne Stadium. (The sensational act prompted veteran commentator Vijay Merchant to say to his colleague Michael Charlton, “I wonder, Michael, where all these enterprising young ladies were when I was scoring my hundreds!” Imagine this in Merchant’s singsong intonation).

Back in his native Hyderabad, Baig played a major role in the team's consistent performances at the league stage of the Ranji Trophy for well over a decade, though neither he nor his star colleagues Jaisimha, the captain, Pataudi and Abid Ali were able to achieve a title triumph in all those years. He was stylish in all he did, be it his thoughtful yet positive batting, his sophisticated contributions to team strategy or his urbane social skills.

His three younger brothers played competitive cricket. Murtuza, slightly younger in age, but older-looking and more sober and conservative in behaviour, was also an Oxford Blue, who played for Hyderabad with less success than Abbas. So did Mazhar, next to Murtuza, with a reputation of being a murderer of most attacks below first class level. If Murtuza was polished and rather understated in a British sort of way, Mazhar was relatively earthy, given to less patrician ways than his elder brothers. The youngest, Mujtaba, was the tiniest of them, with a batting style reminiscent of Abbas, a very nice, simple man, lacking the self belief of Abbas to put his talent to comparable use. I had the pleasure of playing a good deal of cricket with all four brothers at different times, and it was a pleasure and privilege to be their teammate.

Abbas—nicknamed Buggy by peers like Jaisimha and Pataudi—was often my captain in local cricket, when we both played for Hyderabad XI in the Zonal Tournament, the Hyderabad equivalent of Chennai’s Buchi Babu before 1968, when it changed from being a local zonal event into an invitation tournament for teams from all over India. He had great confidence in my ability, but it took me a while to realize that, as he nagged me constantly on the field of play, only to praise me generously at the end of the day. He also made it a point to spread the word whenever he felt a player had done exceptionally well. It was he who persuaded me to play in the 1975 Moin-ud-Dowla tournament, when I had doubts about my fitness. I did exceedingly well, finishing with eight for 75 against star-studded JK XI in the final, finally managing to convince the selectors with that performance, that I was good enough to play for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy. To my amazement, Abbas stopped tutoring me during that match; he must have thought I had come of age. His delight at my success in that match and throughout the season that followed was heartwarming.

As I said earlier, Abbas and Murtuza were of somewhat different temperaments, and sometimes did not se eye to eye on some matters. Once, as Murtuza and I, my senior in the State Bank, were preparing to go to the office after a match had been washed out, even as the other players decided to have a beer together, Abbas said in his best acerbic manner: "The State Bank will collapse if Murtuz and Ram don't turn up for work!"

In yet another instance of sibling rivalry, I bowled a faster ball, following a signal from Murtuza from slip, to incur Abbas's instant wrath. Marching up to me, he admonished me: "Didn't I tell you to flight every ball? Don't you dare listen to that Murtuz!"

Of the brothers, Murtuz was my closest friend, though a bit of a mentor as well. We share a birthday, but he is six years older. (I didn't take it very well when Murtuz and his selector colleagues dumped me unceremoniously from the state team, though I knew Murtuz was a perfect gentleman and it must have hurt him to be a party to my axing). But the day Abbas announced he would no longer be available to play for Hyderabad was indeed a sad day. It had been a double whammy as Tiger Pataudi too had come to the same decision at the same time. It was at the end of the 1975-76 season, after we had lost a quarter final match we ought to have won to Bombay. It was the end of an era.

Reverse swing

2011-02-19T00:16:00.000-08:00

First published in The Bengal Post

“Do you want to know how we made the old ball swing in Barbados?” The year was 1978, the man talking to us at the Lal Bahadur Stadium, Hyderabad one sunny afternoon in February or March of that year was one of the inventors of reverse swing, though it was yet to be known by that name. The tall, gangling, tousled-haired, moustachioed, side-whiskered Sarfraz Nawaz then proceeded to rub the fairly new ball on the bare ground just outside the boundary line until it became completely rough. He went on to polish the other side to make it shine like a mirror. The umpires looked the other way, as the match in progress between India XI and an International XI was the ML Jaisimha benefit match, not a first class fixture, though they did need a bit of arm-twisting by Sarfraz before they agreed to let him tamper with the ball.

What followed was a magnificent spell of fast swing bowling by the mad, mad Pakistani seamer, which was made more exciting by the efforts of his colleague from the other end to show everyone who was the quickest bowler around. Imran Khan had just a couple of weeks earlier been declared one of the fastest bowler in the world by some Australian commentators. “Bhai, hum donon men kaun zyada tez hai? (Brother, which of us is faster?)," Sarfraz kept asking us. Though all of us knew Imran was faster, none of us had any doubt about Sarfraz’s skill and wicket-taking ability. Only we did not dare say that aloud for fear of a boycott by Sarfraz.

In later years, I was to learn that Sarfraz had given us a demonstration of what became world famous as reverse swing, but I not speak about it, worrying that my audience would accuse me of making the whole thing up. I was relieved when Dilip Vengsarkar, who played in that game, gave a detailed account of that incident in his column in the Saturday Sports Special of The Hindu.

Three non-Test cricketers—M Narasimha Rao, Shahid Akbar and I—from Hyderabad were part of the International XI led by ML Jaisimha, as were former India captain Tiger Pataudi, Zaheer Abbas, Mushtaq Mohammad, Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz and a couple of Test cricketers who had been part of the Indian Test team that had just returned from a tour of Australia, but were not included in the India XI for this match. The Pakistanis were on their way back from the Kerry Packer World Series cricket. While Zaheer Abbas gave us a foretaste of things to come in the forthcoming Indian tour of Pakistan by hammering our great spinners all around the park, the two quickies gave us a devastating display of fast bowling, the likes of which we had not seen in Hyderabad.

The match started on a slightly damp wicket following an early morning shower. The wicket was certainly not fit for play, with a couple of wet spots threateningly close to the good length area. Chetan Chauhan and Anshuman Gaekwad opened the innings, sportingly agreeing to an on-time start because a large crowd had bought tickets for the benefit game. Unfortunately for the Indian openers, Imran and Sarfraz were intent on outbowling each other unmindful of the physical danger to the batsmen. The ball kept flying from a good length and both Gaekwad and Chauhan had a torrid time negotiating the pace and the bounce. “Come on Jai, what’s going on?” Chauhan complained to Jaisimha. “Why don’t you tell these guys to take it easy? No sensible batsman would have agreed to bat on this wicket, but these chaps don’t seem to care.”

The captain looked on helplessly while Pataudi sported a wicked grin as we slip fielders were jumping and leaping, trying to hold on to perfect defensive shots taking off first bounce over our heads.

Jaisimha solved the problem by bringing on the spinners soon after the first two wickets fell, with a grim-faced Chauhan and an equally upset Gaekwad trooping off. Though it should have been a great moment for me, my spirit was somewhat dampened by Mushtaq Mohammad walking in from mid-off every other delivery and saying, “Runs do, Bhai (give runs, brother)!” As if the great batsmen facing me, Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar needed any such help. But the unexpected did happen. While Vengsarkar helped himself to a flurry of boundaries, Alaska pulled a long hop straight into the hands of deep square leg Ashok Mankad.

That evening, at a dinner hosted by Jaisimha, Mankad was entertaining a small crowd that included the Pakistani visitors, Bishan Bedi the Indian captain, and me, with some great stories delivered with characteristic panache, when an intrusive guest asked him, “Mankad saab, is there any old rivalry between you and Sunil Gavaskar saab? After getting out, he came into the dressing room, flung his bat and said, ‘The chap drops catches in Test matches, but holds this one in a benefit match.” Mankad’s reply was a classic: “Sunil Gavaskar’s catch and me drop it? Wake me up at midnight and I’ll still hold it.”

A murderer of off spin

2011-02-13T17:38:00.000-08:00

WRITTEN SOME YEARS AGO

Nagesh Hamand was one of those cricketers you come across often wherever the game is played, someone who is very successful at the junior and university level but does not quite make the grade in first class cricket. He was one of the first cricketers I met at Hyderabad, and one of my dearest cricket friends, who for years advised and guided me, constantly appreciating my efforts and pointing out my mistakes. He was my State Bank colleague as well as neighbour, living in a quiet residential area originally called Walker Town and renamed Padmarao Nagar.

Nagesh had captained Hyderabad Juniors at Madras in 1969 when we beat his team by an innings. He had put up a lone fight with a brilliant 80 or so, the first time I saw the raw power and aggression of his batting. What I did not know then was what a good off spinner he was, as well. He bowled with a brisk, economical action, and, while he was perhaps not so classically side-on as the purist might wish, he made up with his whippy action and the sharp tweak he gave the cricket ball. He was a confident, aggressive bowler who always believed he could get the batsman out. Also capable of bowling medium pace quite effectively when the mood caught him, Nagesh was convinced he was a better off spinner than Noshir Mehta, who formed a successful pair with left armer Mumtaz Husain for years in Ranji Trophy cricket.

Happily for me, he believed I was a better bowler than both of them and never hesitated to pass me useful tips. It was as a batsman that Nagesh made his mark in university cricket. He was an explosive middle order batsman, who would often take the bowling by the scruff of its neck and give it a mauling. He was particularly severe on off spinners, and loved to go after poor Noshir in local cricket. I too received the brunt of his fury on occasion, though I probably tamed him more often than other purveyors of my trade. The one chink in Nagesh’s armour was his weakness against left arm spin, which he managed to conquer on matting, but surfaced, sometimes embarrassingly, on turf.

A shrewd student of the game and an excellent tactician, Nagesh was an astute captain, though he did not receive too many leadership opportunities in his career. He was however an invaluable part of the State Bank think tank for well over a decade. An all round sportsman who could play a very decent game of tennis or table tennis, he had the irritating habit of smiling mischievously at you after defeating you, often coming back from difficult situations.

In the cricket conversations that are part and parcel of the game at all levels, Nagesh was a frank participant who did not bother to pull his punches. Of the firm view that he was a better cricketer than a number of middle order batsmen the Hyderabad selectors preferred to him over the years, he made no secret of his feelings, regardless of who was present. Based on performance at the local level, it was difficult not to agree with him.

An employee of State Bank of India, Nagesh is a conscientious worker at the bank, who made a smooth transition from player to officer. Today, he keeps in touch with the game he loves through coaching, partnering another outstanding Hyderabad cricketer of the past, Vijay Paul. Future India star Ambati Rayudu is a product of the Nagesh-Paul stable.

Greatest all-rounder of all time

2011-01-14T02:04:00.000-08:00

“Comparisons are odorous,” said Mrs Malaprop. She was only partly right. In fact, comparisons are sometimes not even odious, especially when they are as inevitable as the debates on whether Jacques Kallis is the equal of Sir Garfield St. Aubrun Sobers. (I know that punsters will grab the chance to say that this particular comparison cannot be odious as Kallis has played vastly more ODIs than Sobers ever did). Here we are discussing the merits of two champion cricketers of two different eras.

The arguments have gathered strength after Kallis’s recent exploits against India: he not only got a notorious monkey off his back by recording his first Test double century, but went on to fully realize his strength in a grand show in the Durban Test that could be described as the viswarupa of this Hanuman of modern day cricket. Like the monkey-god, he often seems unaware of his own true potential. Sobers might have had his faults but self-doubt in cricket was certainly not one of them. He always backed himself to do well by himself and the West Indies.

A classic instance was when a hasty Australian media dubbed him Richie Benaud’s bunny after a single failure against the leg spinner in a tour match. Legend has it that Don Bradman, one of his greatest admirers, ruffled his hair and said to him, “Don’t worry, son. You will be able to sort him out,” while a pensive-looking Sobers sat with his pads on in the 1960-61 Brisbane Test, watching Benaud in action. Sobers was puzzled by this suggestion that he was capable of being worried about any bowler. Soon enough, he was facing Benaud in the middle. Misreading a googly, he still had the time to change his shot and send the ball to the boundary with a blistering, if uppish, straight drive, forcing the bowler to duck in self-defence.

The statistics of the two all rounders are remarkably similar. Kallis has a Test batting average of 57.43 to Sobers’s 57.78, 270 wickets and 166 catches in 145 Tests to the left hander’s 235 and 109 in 93 Tests. The South African’s relative longevity in international cricket is a testament both to his fitness and desire as well as the greater professionalism of his era compared to the West Indian’s. Like Sachin Tendulkar, Kallis seems to have gained second wind in a long, distinguished career and can be expected to play 175 or more Tests, and finish with an unsurpassable record as an all rounder.

I agree with Bishan Bedi, who entered the argument recently, that Sobers has the edge between the two great all rounders, but not entirely because I played and watched cricket during the great Barbadian’s heyday, though it can be difficult to eliminate bias in favour of your own generation. I will prove my overcoming of any such partisanship in a bit, but before that, let me substantiate my claim by referring to Sobers’s superior record as a match winner and match saver. His rearguard actions in partnership with his cousin David Holford were of the stuff fables are made of. He bowled in three distinct styles, fast medium, orthodox left arm spin and chinamen, and on occasion could be almost as quick as the fastest. He won a few Test matches with the ball against England and Australia, and his close-in catching was quite magnificent—standing almost intimidatingly near the bat at leg gully and picking them effortlessly in the slips. His six sixes in an over against Malcolm Nash of Glamorgan in a county match and his memorable 254 for World XI versus Australia were stunning displays outside Test cricket that served to invest him with the halo of cricketing immortality, but no less awesome were his many gems in Test cricket, some of them below a hundred runs.

Spectators at Chepauk were privileged to watch two innings of stunning effortlessness, the second of them in adversity, in the 1967 Pongal Test, when he saved the match in style for the West Indies with 9, 10 and Jack for company. A straight six in that match off a rampaging BS Chandrasekhar was reminiscent of that straight drive that nearly decapitated Benaud six years earlier—in that it was the result of a last moment change of shot; only Chandra did not have to take evasive action, the ball sailing well over his head.

Sobers’s versatility, self-confidence, enjoyment of the game, aggressive intent and his conviction that it is imperative for cricketers to entertain, make him the better all rounder in my estimation. Yet Kallis has time on his side, and who knows what new facet of his cricket he will unfurl in the years to come? I was one of those who believed that Sunil Gavaskar and GR Viswanath were greater batsmen than Sachin Tendulkar—until in the second innings of his career the Little Master proved beyond doubt that he had gone past his illustrious predecessors to the title with his incomparable performances against all comers, in all conditions, in all forms of the game. Perhaps Kallis will similarly out-Sobers Sir Garry some day.

TE is no more

2010-12-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

"I fell in love with his batting the first time I saw him play,” Mala, my friend and cricket mate TE Srinivasan’s wife said to me, as we stood next to his mortal remains, minutes before his funeral last Tuesday. “I knew nothing of cricket, though,” she continued, “TE’s batting had that kind of effect on you. It was like listening to Madurai Mani Iyer or MS Subbulakshmi for the first time, even if you knew no music.”

Srinivasan, TE to everyone who knew him, played a solitary Test for India, but had a huge fan following in the south, especially in Tamil Nadu, thanks to his carefree approach to the game and audacious strokeplay.

TE was also one of the characters of the game, quick-witted, mischievous and blessed with a zany sense of humour, bordering on the wild. This aspect of his personality must have impressed former England captain Michael Atherton to mention him in his autobiography. Unfortunately Atherton gets it all wrong like many English and Australian cricketers on matters Indian. He describes TE’s batting as “wild and unorthodox”, a blasphemous statement as anyone who ever watched TE bat would know. The swing of TE’s bat was a purist’s delight, it came down straight as an arrow as he took on the bowling, especially of the quicker variety, with aggressive intent, style and flair. Some of his theories on the game were unorthodox, but his technique was pure. He loved to hit the ball on the up and deal in boundaries rather than do anything as tiring as running between the wickets.

Atherton also reveals a talent for fiction in his references to TE, when he quotes Sunil Gavaskar as stating that TE might have played more Tests for India had he not been born in a low caste. This is a ridiculous assertion as TE was upper caste as they come, and surely Gavaskar knew that? Unless of course, TE fooled the Little Master with one of those crazy stories he liked to tell against himself sometimes, as when he misled Ghulam Ahmed, then chairman of national selectors. Greeting Ghulam at an airport, TE quickly realised that the veteran off-spinner, not unlike other selectors of the time, had not recognised him. “Good morning Sir,” he said, “I’m V Sivaramakrishnan sir, the opening batsman.” “Ah, Siva, good morning,” was Ghulam’s reply. Incredibly, he then asked TE, “How’s our friend TE Srinivasan?” giving him a glorious opening for one of his pranks.” TE’s reply was not only instantaneous but completely mad. “TE, sir? That rascal is up to no good sir, always drinking and getting into trouble.”

I played a lot of my early cricket in the company of TE, back in the 1960s. We were intercollegiate foes, and many were the stirring contests we were involved in. He honed his batting technique on a cement wicket at the Nungambakkam Corporation School, where he asked boys to bowl or even chuck at him from 18 yards. As a result, he was unusually strong against fast bowling, rare among domestic batsmen of his vintage. This proficiency also meant that he was slightly suspect against slow bowling, especially in the early part of his innings. He did not find instant success in first class cricket, his first hundred, a brilliant knock against a Karnataka attack led by Prasanna and Chandrasekhar, coming more than five years after his Ranji Trophy debut for Tamil Nadu. His first century at the Duleep Trophy level too came after a long wait. He began with a string of single-digit scores, cursing his luck at having to face “bloody left arm spinners” all the time on arrival at the crease. When it actually happened, the hundred against North Zone at Bangalore in the 1977-78 season drew a string of superlatives from the scribes and commentators watching the game.

TE is famous for his verbal jousts, sometimes with opponents feared by his colleagues. Teammates cannot forget the expression on the face of Aussie paceman Rodney Hogg, when TE cornered him after the first day’s play of a tour game at Hyderabad and told him, “Why don’t you stop bowling off spinners and try to bowl fast instead?” He is also reputed to have informed the media as soon as the 1980 Indian team landed in Australia, “Tell Dennis Lillee TE has arrived.”

TE battled brain cancer with great courage and good humour. When I said to Mala, “We all admire you for the way you took care of TE; how incredibly brave you have been,” she said, “On the contrary, TE looked after me even when he was desperately ill. He kept my spirits up with his good cheer, never complaining of his pain or suffering.”

Judged by his single Test appearance, perhaps TE was an underachiever, perhaps the selectors did not give him his due, but he gave spectators and colleagues sheer joy with his stylish batting, his bravado, his raffish gait reflecting his hero-worship of ML Jaisimha of Hyderabad and India. He was quite simply one of a kind.

Kiwis go to Kalakshetra and Vidya Sagar

2009-06-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

Sir Richard Hadlee turned to me and asked, “Raam! Does the protocol allow a couple of my boys to take off their shirts?”

The venue was a classroom in Kalakshetra, the year 2000. The man posing that question on native sartorial norms was indeed the great New Zealand fast bowler. We had just been witness to a brilliant demonstration of bharata natyam by a couple of girls and a boy, all three students of Kalakshetra.

This story is akin to the apocryphal (non) relationship between Abdul Khader and Amavasya. Back in 2000, I decided that a bunch of cricketing visitors from the antipodes needed to have their education enhanced by a visit to Kalakshetra among other places in Chennai. On a busman’s holiday from my day job of sports editor, I had taken a few days off to follow the trail of the New Zealand Cricket Academy team taking part in the Buchi Babu Memorial tournament conducted by the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. The academy went on to win the championship, though I don’t remember if they did it that year or the next. Many of the players in that side coached by Dayle Hadlee and managed by his brother Sir Richard Hadlee went on to play for New Zealand with the big boys in Test cricket if they had not already done so.

As a regular at the NZCA’s matches, I soon got to know the Hadlee brothers and some of the players well. During one of our conversations while watching a game, I asked Dayle Hadlee if he and his team had got round to seeing anything of the city. The answer was in the negative. The boys just went from their hotel rooms to the cricket ground, gym or swimming pool and back, when they were not attending boring parties, formal and prim and proper.

Dayle readily accepted my offer to take the cricketers on a tour of Kalakshetra and Vidya Sagar, formerly Spastic Society of India. I almost regretted my impulsive offer when I considered the logistics and expense of carting 20 New Zealanders all but two of them energetic youngsters whose idea of a day off from cricket would have been slightly different from a visit to such strange places! I struck gold when T A Sekar of the MRF Pace Foundation immediately offered the use of the foundation’s bus free of charge to ferry the cricketers that September morning.

My next great piece of luck was the prompt response I received from Kalakshetra Principal S Rajaram. He not only enthusiastically agreed to my request, but also arranged a 20-minute dance recital in one of Kalakshetra’s classrooms.

The New Zealand boys were a cheerful lot in the bus, but to my nervous eyes they seemed supremely indifferent to the entertainment I had laid out for them. There were a few moans and groans as some of the youngsters expressed reservations about an alien classical dance, which was sure to be a far cry from the popular arts of their choice.

The Kalakshetra atmosphere was the first brownie point I scored with my visitors. They found it beautiful and remarkably peaceful and quiet in the heart of our urban chaos. The Spartan classrooms and the lovely young ladies only strengthened their positive feelings. The crowning glory was provided by the impressive performance by the young students. The cricketers were totally bowled over, particularly by the dancers’ obviously high level of physical fitness.

Then came the climax of the morning. My reply to Richard Hadlee’s query about the cricketers’ proposed striptease act was that a bare torso was absolutely mandatory for men in Indian classical dance. What followed was an authentic display of the Maori hakka, complete with high jumps and war cries. The threesome including the Marshall twins, James and Hamish, received a standing ovation from the small crowd.

More groans and growls of protest prefixed our next stop, but the Hadlee brothers did not offer the cricketers the choice of opting out. The team trooped reluctantly into Vidya Sagar, at Kotturpuram. My friends there were thrilled to recive the cricketers as most of their wards were crazy about cricket. Unfortunately, the air-conditioner did not work, or the hall where we met the kids had none, and a very warm, sweaty session of interaction followed. The children, however, were unfazed by such minor inconveniences and put up quite a riveting show of entertainment. The crowning piece was a bright little speech by a seven-year-old. “One day cricket was very similar to life, he told us. Just as the batsman enjoyed great freedom in the first 15 overs, helped by the field restrictions, in life, too, children enjoyed freedom for the first 15 years, before the cares of life caught up with them, he said. The cricketers gave him a standing ovation and were visibly moved by the spirit and courage of the children. To a man, they came up to me and thanked me for giving them one of the most memorable days of their lives.

PSR

2009-06-23T20:13:00.000-07:00

My cousin Raman

Any mention of Coimbatore cricket reminds me of a number of exciting cricketers, most of them delightful people as well. Sundaresan, Giri to all, was an eccentric wicket keeper batsman in the 1960s. He was eccentric only on the cricket field. His orthodox ritualistic ways, which included cold showers in the morning followed by sandhyavandanam, were perfectly acceptable off the field to those used to such practices, but his continuance of these at the batting crease raised a few eyebrows. He constantly looked at the sun between deliveries and followed these glances at his favourite god with some earnest sloka muttering, severely testing the patience of the fielding side, waiting irritably for him to take guard. Imagine the plight of Bangalore Agricultural University when Giri scored a double century back in 1969.

I was Giri’s teammate for Madras University that day. One of the men he annoyed during that innings was P Mukund, the rival captain, who went on to do a masters degree at the Agricultural University at Coimbatore. He played for Coimbatore for the next couple of years. He was a fine all rounder, a great future India prospect, who unfortunately did not go beyond Ranji Trophy in any significant way. Mukund, Giri and that elegant and consistent batsman P R Ramakrishnan—equally unfortunate in his cricket career—are among the Coimbatore players I have admired and known personally over the years. In recent years, we have been able to meet and talk of the old times, largely through the efforts of Mukund.

The Coimbatore cricketer—if I may call him so based on his five years of cricket for PSG College of Technology and the district—closest to my heart was my late cousin PS Ramachandran, PSR in cricket circles, Iyer-Nadar at PSG, and Raman in the family, an attacking opening batsman and fastish leg spinner, who was enormously successful at schools and university cricket.

Raman was to all intents and purposes my elder brother, in true Indian extended family tradition. He was my first cricket hero and his exploits in schools cricket fired my imagination before I entered my teens. He was a leg spinner of considerable potential, the best in PS High School and the best in the city and state as I was to find out soon. He was an orthodox spinner then, who took wickets by the bagful and could bat a bit, known more for brutal power than finesse of any sort. He took eight wickets playing for the City Schools XI once and his photograph appeared in the newspaper, to the delight and pride of his growing band of young admirers in the neighbourhood and at school.

It was in college that Raman blossomed. He joined the PSG College of Technology at Coimbatore, where for the next five years he constantly hit the headlines. Very soon, he was opening the innings for his college, the District Colleges and eventually Madras University, besides bowling fastish legbreaks from a good height. He had abandoned his earlier slower, well flighted style when he shot up in his first year in college. He found he extracted considerable bounce and as most of the cricket at that level was then played on matting wickets, Raman was soon a successful and dreaded bowler. His batting was positive, full of attacking shots. He drove powerfully on the rise and, with strong wrists, he could flick the new ball over square leg or midwicket for six.

At the university and junior level Raman was a most successful cricketer. He was a contemporary of BS Chandrasekhar, the great Indian leg spinner, and bowling in a similar style, PSR was just as successful for Madras University and Juniors, sometimes outperforming Chandra to win matches for his side.

When he finished his engineering studies and found employment in Madras, he was expected to graduate to Ranji Trophy cricket, but unfortunately, his form deserted him. He had a miserable couple of seasons in the TNCA league, when he strung together any number of single digit scores. He worked hard, practising for long hours at the nets, where he looked to be in no discomfort, but runs just dried up. His bowling too seemed to have gone to pieces. He was hardly able to land the ball. I was his teammate, generally enjoying greater luck with my form, and it broke my heart to watch his cricket disintegrate.

Raman had other problems as well in the local league, in which matches were occasionally fixed to help one team to garner championship points or another to stave off relegation. He refused to be party to such unsporting practices and even walked out of a match half way through. Among his calculating peers and his secretary, he found no sympathy, but I respected and admired him for his honesty and integrity—which marked all aspects of his life, accompanied by a somewhat short fuse.

Raman later migrated to New Zealand and from there to Australia, where his cricket enjoyed a second innings. Playing grade cricket in Sydney, Raman was a team mate of a young man beginning to make waves in Australian cricket, Steve Waugh. His leg spin bowling had made a comeback when I met Raman in Sydney in the summer of 1986. I was touring Australia as a member of the late Ram Ramesh's team Madras Occasionals, consisting mostly of Madras Cricket Club players. He was happy to show me a newspaper clipping in which Steve Waugh had praised his bowling. I was delighted to meet my cousin at a time when he had regained his form.

Raman came to India a year later, but by then he was a condemned man, a victim of lung cancer. His enthusiasm for life or love of cricket hadn't waned one bit. He was there at Chepauk to cheer Tamil Nadu to its second Ranji Trophy triumph in the 53-year old history of the championship, and he had to endure great physical hardship to go to the stadium and climb the stairs to the pavilion terrace enclosure. (He refused to watch the game from downstairs because he enjoyed the view from the terrace). He was happy and proud that Tamil Nadu won, doubly so as my younger brother V Sivaramakrishnan played a key role in that victory.

When Raman went back to Sydney, we all knew that we would not see him again. The end came soon—the end of an honest, hard working career, in cricket and at work. He was a devoted husband and loving father to the end.

Raja

2009-06-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

K R Rajagopal came like a breath of fresh air to Madras cricket from Bangalore, when he joined the star-studded Jolly Rovers team of the 1960s. He quickly established himself as one of the most entertaining batsmen in the state, an opener crowds went miles to watch.

Rajagopal was one of the most aggressive opening batsmen around. He played his shots from the word go, shots based on a straight bat, free downswing and follow-through. With his keen eye, swift footwork, perfect balance and steely wrists, all buttressed by a sound technique, he looked for scoring opportunities all the time, and for a few years culminating in the 1967-68 season, he electrified both local and national matches played at Madras.

In an era of swing bowling, Raja had an equally delightful answer to the outswinger or the inswinger. He cover drove imperiously, but he also played a gorgeous ondrive. He loved to hook and cut.

Raja struck a fine partnership with his teammate and captain Belliappa. Both were openers and wicket keepers, and as state captain, Belliappa was the first choice behind the stumps, though Raja was brilliant in that department. When Raja was a strong contender for a place in the Indian team touring Australia in 1967-1968 after a magnificent domestic season as a batsman, another wicket keeper Indrajitsinhji was preferred to him on the pretext that Raja did not keep for his own state.

Raja is a simple man. For most of his playing days in Madras (he earlier played for Mysore), he worked at Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli, and took the night train to Madras to play league matches on the morrow for Jolly Rovers, the highly successful team sponsored by his employers. He brought as luggage a ridiculously small bag and went straight to the house of another “Raja”, P N Sundaresan, The Hindu’s cricket correspondent and the father of his teammate P S Narayanan.

On the morning of the match, Raja enjoyed the simple home cooking of Mrs Kamala Sundaresan, topped by the ubiquitous curdrice, jumped on to the pillion of Narayanan’s Lambretta, tousled hair, stubble on his chin, crumpled shirt and trousers and all, with his cricket shoes wrapped in an old copy of The Hindu. He might carry a bat with him, or simply pick one up from the team kit bag once he reached the ground.

Such was Raja’s pre-match preparation, but once he put on his pads and settled down to face the first ball of the innings, the change in him was electric. Slight of build and short in stature, he was a picture of poise as the bowler started his run towards him. Little notice did he give of the daring strokes he would soon play all round the wicket, but soon they sprang forth from his bat, audacious hits on the rise, dancing down the wicket, or swivelling effortlessly on to his backfoot as the mood captured him and the hapless bowler was left floundering.

Few batsmen in the history of Tamil Nadu cricket have given as much pleasure to so many, except perhaps those at the receiving end of his fury.

They also served

2009-06-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

Unsung TN cricket heroes
The world at large only knows the stars who wear the India cap and Indian colours. To a generation of cricket fanatics glued to their TV sets, even the names of past cricketers as accomplished as M J Gopalan or A G Ram Singh may mean little, much less the humble league cricketers, the devoted club secretaries, umpires, scorers, markers and other staff who have remained anonymous over the decades.

Early accounts of organised cricket in Madras state as it was called then bristles with the names of several personalities who enriched the game. Not all of them were champion performers; some of them added value by their passion for the game, their love of its nuances, and their loyalty to the clubs they supported. Some declared that their clubs were dearer than their wives! There was this devoted follower of the Palayampatti Shield league who went from ground to ground on his bicycle, stopping only to inform anxious fellow enthusiasts the scores at other grounds and collect the details of the match in progress to share with other diehard fans elsewhere. This role of score-disseminator was performed with equal conscientiousness by the ubiquitous Rita ice-cream vendor and peanut seller.

But whether they were players, spectators, markers, umpires, scorers or club secretaries, the combined contribution of all these colourful elements to the fabric of Tamil Nadu cricket will always be greater than the sum, of that there can be little doubt. Who can ever forget Muthu of BS Nets with his trademark 'Last set Rajen' or his talented sons Padmanabhan, Arunachalam and Santosh Kumar who did him proud with the quality of their cricket? Or K R S Mani who spent a minor fortune on nurturing the game in his own way by supporting a club against overwhelming odds, neglecting his own financial security in the process, or his ecstatic celebratory run on the field in distant Pune when Venkat, Kumar and Kalli pulled off an improbable win in the Ranji semifinal? Will there ever be another 'Don' Rangan who today may be penniless and frail, but lorded over his Pithapuram grounds as the uncrowned monarch of all he surveyed, spotting talent, defying the mighty and rubbing shoulders with the great with the insouciance of a pirate king? Will we again see the likes of M G Bhavanarayanan, R Raghavan or Y Ramachandran who wheeled away long after youth had deserted them but not their love of the game or the ardour of their competitive spirit? Can sponsorship and cola wars ever produce another S Annadurai, with his nonchalant confidence in the efficacy of his methods of keeping fit and ability to pick out the promising from the merely flattering or the generous treats he gave his wards on tour paying the bills from his own pocket?

No, the march of time and technology can never produce another K S Kannan, that brilliant coach and lovable human being, whose murder of the English language entertained two generations of cricket. It cannot equal the pristine purity of the cricket played by those supremely amateur in spirit but possessed by the desire to excel--G Parthasarathi and the Bhadradri brothers; P S Ramachandran and his three sons, pace bowlers all; Ananthanarayan of the short-lived brilliance; the less known members of the Ram Singh clan--Kalwant, Satwant, Jarnail and Harjinder; J C 'Patba' Patel who habitually delivered the ball before the batsman was ready; 'Mandalam' Mani who as captain commanded the respect of far more gifted players; the ICF trio of J R Maruthi, K Chandrasekhar Rao and stylist S Jagdish, his brother S Nagaswami who migrated to the US and helped propagate the game there; 'Goofy' Subramaniam who had one splendid match versus the 1959 West Indies team; the elegant S V S Mani who once fielded in a Test match but never tasted real success, speed merchants Mohan Rai and Prabhakar Rao; champion 'poi' (literally, false or non-existent) bowlers from Najam Hussain to J S Ghanshyam; the elegant Haridas brothers Sushil and Sunil and their father CK before them; Arvind Gopinath, who could on his day bat in a manner reminiscent of his father CD; S K Patel who wheeled away for interminable hours at the BS Nets until he was ready one day to break a Rohinton Baria bowling record, and mysteriously one day lost it all; the deceptively lazy R Prabhakar who could explode with the bat; the list could go on forever and one could never do justice, because there would still be many a name left out.

People like 'Nayana' Lakshmi Ratan and Ayyadurai who played host to visiting players, both Indian and foreign, before hotel accommodation became de rigueur, Murugesa Mudaliar of The Hindu or V Pattu who took the young under their wing and laid a solid foundation for their progress, others like P V H Babu, Netaji Ramanujam, P C Ramudu, VA Parthasarathy or T P Vijayaraghavan who spent a lifetime running clubs or institutional teams, yet others like the left arm spinners K Radhakrishnan and S Ramabhadran who defied physical handicaps to flight and spin like the best in the trade, incredible purveyors of exaggerated flight or swing like Gopalapuram's Kannan or Vivekananda College's Krishnan, competent cricketers who are better remembered for their wisecracks and puns like K C Krishnamurthi of Crom-Best, Ram Ramesh of IOB, and SJ Kedarnath of State Bank, and promising young talent lost to other fields of endeavour from Prem Kumar and Vasanth Kumar of the sixties to Unnikrishnan of the eighties, all these and many, many more outstanding individuals too numerous to mention here or elsewhere-here's an unqualified apology to all of them-have made Tamil Nadu cricket what it is today. It is a delightful amalgam of many-hued personalities and characters producing a brand of cricket that can often be exasperating in its failure to translate potential into performance, but can never, never be accused of being dull.

Platinum cricket: Hyderabad's jubilee

2009-04-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Hyderabad Cricket Assocation is celebrating its platinum jubilee on 14 April 2009. Here’s my tribute to its great cricketers during my time.

ML Jaisimha. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi. Abbas Ali Baig. Syed Abid Ali. What a constellation of stars! My peers and I were privileged to rub shoulders with these outstanding cricketers in the Hyderabad line-up of the 1970s. It was perhaps the most glamorous outfit in Indian cricket then, comparable with the Test team. People queued up, at least in the major centres, to buy tickets to watch our team in action. I remember the 30,000 strong crowd that watched Tiger Pataudi score 198 at Chepauk and the cricket mad fans at smaller centres. I remember the train journeys in which the team was closeted together sometimes for longer than 24 hours, and the relaxed atmosphere of those trips. I remember how knowledgeable and wise was our skipper Jai, the most stylish cricketer to walk on our grounds. I remember how dashing and handsome was our Abubhai, serious competition to the youngest team member in the department of sex appeal even in his thirties! I remember the brilliant all rounder Abid—who can ever forget him?—my brother, mentor and critic, without whom our dressing room would have been a dull place. I remember Tiger Pataudi, who blended so quietly into the strictly working class background of our team, even if he was the most charismatic cricketer India ever produced. Noshir, Mumtaz, Nagesh, Sultan Salim, Vijay Paul, Jayantilal, Krishnamurti, Prahalad, Narasimha Rao, Jyoti Prasad, Abdul Hai—a powerhouse of talent welcomed me into the Hyderabad team when I made my Ranji Trophy debut at the ripe old age of 28 in the 1975-76 season.

It was a great Hyderabad team all right—let nobody tell you otherwise—skilful, civilized, elegant, no matter that we did not win the Ranji Trophy. But allow me to digress a bit and talk of the many splendid cricket friends outside of that team who made my life in Hyderabad memorable. Let me speak of the day I reported at State Bank of India, Hyderabad LHO, on transfer from small town Anakapalle, not knowing what the telegram that read “Report to Hyderabad LHO on 1st July” meant, until I met the Personnel Officer who informed me I was to join the cricket team. My joy knew no bounds, as I hadn’t played the game for two seasons since joining the bank as a probationary officer. My benefactor Satyadev was someone I had never met; he was working at SBI, Vizag, and knowing my interest in resuming my cricket, he told his friend Prabhakar Raju who in turn informed his boss the personnel officer! Raju was soon my teammate and I don’t know if he and Satyadev knew that they had changed my life forever with that single act of kindness. Another guardian angel in the personnel department was VS Sudhir, who made sure I did not get transferred out of Hyderabad during the days I was yet to cement my place in the SBI team.

The SBI team was then almost as good as the Hyderabad team: Habib Ahmed, Govindraj, Krishnamurti, Mumtaz Husain, Murtuza Ali Baig, Mazhar Ali Baig, Ali Hassan, Manohar Sharma, Nagesh Hamand, Sultan Salim, Lyn Edwards, G Mohan, Abid Zainulabudeen and Prabhakar Raju. I am sure I am forgetting a couple of names, but there were a few guest players like Inder Raj, Muthukrishnan and Ali Hussain, Hassan’s twin brother, who did duty for us sometimes, as though the regular galaxy wasn’t enough to keep me out of the eleven!

Once the initial excitement wore out, I realised that I was no more than a filler in the team, especially as skipper Govindraj preferred G Mohan’s off spin and occasional skipper Habib Ahmed, already a veteran, did not know much about me. The many-splendoured Mumtaz Husain too did not approve of my bowling for a long time to come. My cricket career in Hyderabad would have died even before it was born but for the fantastic support I enjoyed from the likes of Krishnamurti, Nagesh and Salim and to some extent from Lyn, before he left for Australia. I will be an ungrateful wretch if I do not dedicate any success I enjoyed later in my cricket entirely to these wonderful friends, who, though of my age or thereabouts, mentored me and encouraged me, literally bullying me to keep fighting, when I was about to give up cricket altogether. This was after two years of hard work had not won me a regular place in the Bank’s eleven, my earlier experience as a Madras University bowler and the zillions of overs I was sending down in the nets not seeming to count at all.

This superb trio of friends would keep my spirits up by telling me I was good enough to play for India, leave alone the State Bank team in the local league. In fact, I had sort of ‘retired’ from cricket for a few months, when one Sunday morning in the 1973-74 season, some four of my teammates landed up at home and literally abducted me to play a match against Gujarati XI in the first round of Behram-ud-Dowla. I won’t go into the details, but that was the turning point in my cricket, because I took six wickets that day and never looked back. The team management had met a few days earlier and decided that I should be brought back into the team, by force if necessary and given a fair trial until I fulfilled my potential. By this time my seniors Manohar Sharma, Murtuza Ali Baig and Habib Ahmed had recognized the merit in my protest and decision to exit league cricket.

Other unforgettable personal memories are those of the great time I had playing for Hyderabad XI in the local zonal team under the captaincies of Abbas Ali Baig and Abid Ali, and the year I broke into the Ranji team as the 16th member of an already picked squad after taking 8 for 75 against JK XI in the final of the Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup, which Hyderabad won after a gap of 11 years. The captain was again Abbas.

The memories come in a flood: of the superb talent of Bob and Joe, Narasimha Rao and Jyoti Prasad. I think Bob, a stylish batsman and match winning bowler in the BS Chandrasekhar mould, would have been a greater cricketer had he not been obsessed with playing for India, and lost focus at a lower level. Jyoti was a brave all rounder, his big heart lifting his undeniable all round talent—sharp medium pacer, hard hitting batsman, brilliant short leg—to better than his best, especially when the chips were down. He would have walked into the Indian one-day squad had he played cricket a little later than he did. These two were for a while inseparable friends and loved by all their peers and seniors. Nagesh Hamand. What a murderer of all kinds of bowlers, especially off spinners. For quite a while, he had a paralyzing weakness against left arm spin which he overcame too late for him to defeat lack of opportunity, even unfair treatment, to become a force to reckon with in first class cricket. Sultan Salim was a boy prodigy who did not rise to the great heights expected of him. A stylish batsman, he was and is a stylish man off the field as well. Like Nagesh and Murti, he too is a loyal friend who loves to relive the wonderful days in the sun we all shared.

And Murti, Pochia Krishnamurti! When comes another like him? A brilliant wicket keeper and on his day an exciting batsman, he was good enough to play five Tests for India in the West Indies, before the start of the Syed Kirmani era. Off the field, he was a simple soul and a true friend. I owe my entire cricket to him. He and another dear friend CR Chandran were very close to me, except during an unfortunate episode when we were on opposite sides, and looking back, I feel my behaviour then was unforgivable. Both have left us, and I salute their memory. Chandran was a very talented opening batsman and new ball bowler, a handsome young man who tried always to look and walk like Amitabh Bachchan. He and Inder Raj gave the team flying starts. Unforgettable was one particular opening stand for Andhra Bank against the visiting Ceylon Tobacco XI. Their fast bowler Ranjan Gunatilleke was a genuine quickie but this unusual opening pair treated him with scant regard. Each batsman tried to outdo the other in the outrageous shots he played. Poor Ranjan!

Murtuza Ali Baig was already a part time cricketer by the time I started playing for SBI, but I caught a few glimpses of the calm, correct batsmanship that had stood him in good stead in his Oxford Blue days. I liked his quiet humour too, and many were the occasions we enjoyed smiles if not a laugh together. He was a manager and I a field officer at the time and I remember one league match when he and I left for the bank while the rest of the team decided to enjoy a nice communal beer after a match was rained off. The opponents too joined in the festivities and their captain could not resist taking a dig at us. “State Bank will collapse if Murtuz and Ram don’t go back,” he sneered. It was none other than Murtuz’s elder brother Abbas.

I happened to play for two brilliant sides in Hyderabad—State Bank from 1971 to 1976 and Andhra Bank from 1976 to 1980. I enjoyed both stints. It was a fantastic experience to share the spin attack with Mumtaz Husain and Nagesh for State Bank, and Bob, Meher Baba and MN Ravikumar forAndhra Bank. Mumtaz was a phenomenon in the 1960s when he wove magic in inter-university cricket with his bewildering mixture of orthodox left arm spin, chinamen and googlies, all bowled in a variety of ways. For most of his distinguished Ranji career, he stuck to orthodox bowling, but displayed his entire range in his last season for Hyderabad. Those lucky enough to witness his bowling against Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the 1978-79 season will never forget it. Nagesh was a brilliant off spinner, but luckily for me, he concentrated on his batting. He was also an effective medium pace bowler when in the mood, and a shrewd captain to boot.

The Andhra Bank team had a lovely bunch of cricketers, most of them considerably junior to me by the time I joined them, but I’ll speak of the spinners first. Narasimha Rao, Bob or Bobjee to everyone, was a magnificent athlete, who could field brilliantly anywhere. His batting was on orthodox lines, very straight and aggressive in intent, with strong wrists and a wide range of shots. His bowling was very accurate for its unorthodox style of fastish leg breaks and googlies. He was unplayable on some wickets and I remember occasions when wicket keepers were hit on the face off his bowling. His best bowling figures came against Tamil Nadu in 1980-81, but he was equally good against Bengal and UP in successive knockout round matches under his own captaincy in 1978-79.

Meher Baba was a fine all rounder who played for Andhra Bank and Andhra in the Ranji Trophy, except for one season when he turned out for Hyderabad. He was my teammate and constant companion, and a very dear friend. Unfortunately, like Murti and Mumtaz before him, he too was snatched away prematurely from us. Many were his sterling exploits for Andhra Bank, and he, Ravikumar and I enjoyed a nice partnership as spinners, with Bobjee away most of the time in Ireland. Meher had a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment and had us all in splits most of the time. To relate all his exploits will take up too much space here, so I will give just one example. Meher, Shivlal, Shahid Akbar and I were walking down Colaba Causeway during a trip to Bombay for a Deodhar game, when we passed the secretariat with the Ashoka Chakra on the façade and the national flag fluttering in the breeze. “Look Ram, Indian Embassy!” Meher said. When I gave him a long, hard look, he corrected himself hastily: “Oh no, that’s in Delhi, isn’t it?”

Ravikumar was a very talented all rounder, a fine opening batsman with a lot of time to play, and a delightful off spinner who never turned the ball, yet beat batsmen in the air. He once took nine wickets in an innings for Andhra Bank against State Bank of Hyderabad in my absence and never let me forget it, because my best for the bank had been an eight-wicket haul.

Jyoti, Chandran, Vijay Paul—one of the best domestic batsmen not to have played for India—Hafiz, H Ramprasad, Mujtaba Ali Baig, Mazhar, Dilip Reddy, Inder Raj, Meher, Ravikumar, Bobjee, Nihal Puri, Bhaskar Ramamurthy, KN Charan—these were my teammates for most of my four years in Andhra Bank, every moment of which I enjoyed thoroughly, but I’m sure I have left out a few names. Each of these was a fine cricketer and I can write pages about them, but I’ll reserve it for another day. We were a happy unit and were always in and out of one another’s homes. The most unforgettable experience was after a final between Andhra Bank and Syndicate Bank ended in a tie. Both teams came to my house for drinks and dinner and the fellowship was unbelievable. Vinod Reddy, Moses Nityanand, Shivkumar, Jugal Kishore and Sainath are some of the Syndicate Bank players I remember from that evening, though Chamundeswarnath made only a brief experience, with a black eye and other injuries he sustained after the match!

There were several others who supported us from behind the scenes—the late Blessington Thomas, Ramesam, Sam Ebenezer, Gopal, basketballer Yadgiri, footballer Rammohan, marker Babiah and others in State Bank of India and the indefatigable Mangeshkar and our smiling, indulgent big boss C S Shamlal of Andhra Bank. So many talented cricketers and wonderful human beings were part of our cricket scenario—N Ramprasad, John Tarachand, Khaja, Satyendran, Wahed, Zahid Ali Khan, Kaleem-ul-Haq, B Mohan, Abid Ali, Noshir, Prahlad and so many more from SBH made the evenings after cricket thoroughly enjoyable. Shivlal Yadav and Arshad Ayub were two off spinners who played for India when I missed out. Though they were both excellent cricketers and proved themselves at every level, the haste with which I was dislodged sure hit me hard.

PR Man Singh gave me my first break courtesy P Krishnamurti’s hardsell, when I was an unknown. He picked me in the Hindustan Breweries XI in the Gold Cup, but I got switched on the day of the match to the opponents State Bank of India, my employers. It was a great experience to bowl my first ball in that match to Rohan Kanhai and impress my captain Hanumant Singh, who taught me more about my own craft than any off spinner ever did. My cricket in Hyderabad gave me a chance to meet the great off spinner Ghulam Ahmed, and it was indeed a memorable experience. There were so many officials with whom I got on well and whose affection I enjoyed. I had the pleasure of travelling with the Hyderabad Blues when I got to know Ranga Reddy well, though I never toured with Man Singh whose hospitality was legendary. Ranga too was an excellent companion and made our life on tour pleasant and comfortable. Among the journalists, I remember Pillai of Deccan Chronicle and Radhakrishna of Indian Express, not to mention photographer Srinivasulu, who refused to acknowledge that his photo of “Sarfraz Nawaz” that Express carried during the Jaisimha Benefit Match in 1978 was in fact mine!

Returning to the subject of the Hyderabad Ranji Trophy team I started this story with, I have not mentioned the many fine young cricketers I played with after the Jaisimha era came to an end after the 1976-77 season. Saad Bin Jung was perhaps the best of them all, closely followed by Shahid Akbar, both openers, one right handed and the other left handed. It’s a pity neither of them made it big. Another Hyderabad cricketer who should have by right played for India was another off spinner, Kanwaljit Singh. He was as good as any after the greatest of us all—Ghulam Ahmed.

I have a few regrets—I only caught a glimpse or two of young Azharuddin, when he used to bowl in the SBI nets, and again in a local match, when I bowled to him. Unfortunately, I left Hyderabad in 1981, and therefore did not have any close encounters with him thereafter, nor did I ever get to play with or against Venkatapathy Raju or VVS Laxman, one of the finest batsmen India has produced. His 281 at Kolkata in 2001 will remain the high point of any cricket lover’s watching career.

I would have never played first class cricket if I had not moved to Hyderabad. It was my wonderful second home and I can never forget the many kindnesses of people connected with its cricket. It is impossible to mention all of them here, but I certainly will—in my cricket memoirs, which I am in the process of completing.

Farewell innings

2009-03-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

"Mr Ramnarayan must have his coffee", the sardonic voice behind me said. When I turned to look at the speaker, however, the gaze was friendly and the smile affectionate. It was 'Tiger' Pataudi, former India captain and now my teammate and mentor, who was making that comment on my habit of asking for the cup that cheers after lunch at the Lal Bahadur Stadium, something my Hyderabadi friends found amusingly idiosyncratic.

He then asked me whether I was planning to go to Madras to watch the Test match against England. When I answered in the negative, this is what he told me in his best solemn manner: "You may well be playing it, for all you know." Though I was bowling well enough that season, my second in first class cricket (1975-76), I found Pataudi's statement a bit farfetched, as both Prasanna and Venkataraghavan were firmly entrenched in the Indian squad.

This was in the middle of a Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup match, and I earned the singular honour of being complimented by Tiger at the end of the day's play for my fielding. When I started my first class career barely a year earlier, fielding was one department in which I needed to improve. I had worked very hard at it, so that I could chase hard and throw flat and accurate, almost as well as my younger colleagues. Coming from the former Nawab, who set a superb personal example in the field himself, and never dished out praise unless you really deserved it, that was a compliment for me to cherish forever. A little later in the evening, I came to know that I had been included in the Rest of India team led by Bishan Bedi to take on Bombay in the Irani Cup match to be played soon afterwards.

The news brought home to me the significance of Pataudi's mysterious remark at the lunch table. Though I never actually succeeded in breaking into the Indian team, despite good bowling in that Irani match and the few times I played for South Zone, I still remember that little gesture with gratitude. I realised that Tiger must have gently nudged the selectors to pick me for the Rest of India team.

Tiger Pataudi had been a great source of encouragement ever since he first saw me bowl at the nets a couple of years earlier, before the start of a Moin-ud-Dowla match. I had clinched the issue a season later by claiming eight for 75 against a star-studded team he led in the same tournament. He was one of two batsmen I did not dismiss in that innings; he was dropped off my bowling.

It was Tiger who ran up to congratulate me on my first Ranji Trophy wicket at Trivandrum, and wish me many more wickets, only to tell me to "stop bowling rubbish, for God's sake", and start bowling in my natural, sharp style. I ended up with six for 33 in that innings and never looked back. Again, at the end of my first season, when I took seven for 68 in the first innings of our quarterfinal match, he seemed thrilled beyond words, and kept muttering almost in disbelief: "Seven against Bombay!" He then warned me that wickets would be harder to come by in the seasons to come, as batsmen began to take me more seriously. He also informed me he had played his last match for Hyderabad, a stunning blow from which I never recovered. It was as if a loved one was leaving me for good. I felt utterly desolate.

Hyderabad cricketers will always remember a marvellous innings Pataudi played in December 1975 against Tamil Nadu at Chepauk. Here is the story behind that knock.

We were staying at Admiralty Hotel, at Mandavelipakkam, Chennai. As we sat on the lawns, enjoying a few drinks, as was customary for the Hyderabad teams of that vintage, a number of fans descended on us, mainly to catch a glimpse of the stars of the team, Pataudi, Jaisimha, Baig and Abid Ali.

Among the autograph hunters was a man originally from Hyderabad, who asked Pataudi some awkward questions.

Fan: Nawab Saab, is it true that you can't play Venkat and Kumar? They say you are Venkat's bunny.
Pataudi: (Mutters under his breath).
Fan: Beg your pardon?
Pataudi: (Aloud) Of course, Venkat is a very fine bowler.
I then politely showed the visitor out.
Pataudi: Jai, I'm opening the innings tomorrow.
Jaisimha: Like hell you will.
Pataudi: I'm dead serious Jai. I'm going to score a double hundred. Venkat's bunny, indeed!
Jaisimha: (By now mellow) Okay, Tiger, have it your way. You open the innings tomorrow.

The next morning, the atmosphere was electric as Jaisimha and Venkataraghavan went out to toss before a capacity crowd. Hyderabad won the toss and elected to bat. The mood in the dressing room was equally electric, with three batsmen padded up to open the innings. Pataudi was all set to go in first, to the surprise of the regular openers Abbas Ali Baig and Jayantilal. It took all of Jaisimha's persuasive skills to get him to agree to bat at No.3, still three places ahead of his usual batting position.

When his turn to bat came, Pataudi turned on the old magic. He started by playing some spanking shots against the brisk pace of Kalyanasundaram. He was equally severe on Venkataraghavan and debutant left arm spinner S K Patel, off whose bowling he was reprieved early. He raced to his hundred, playing strokes all round the wicket.

Pataudi was not satisfied with a century that day. He took fresh guard and dug himself in, his defence studiedly elaborate, as if to give his thoughtless caviller of the previous day a message. When he finally returned to the pavilion to a tumultuous ovation, he had made 198. Just two short of his own prediction.

None of us knew it then, but that was Pataudi's last innings at Chepauk. At the end of that season, he announced his retirement from first class cricket.

The Don of Madras cricket

2009-02-05T23:24:00.000-08:00

Don Rangan is but a pale shadow today, very nearly a caricature, of the imposing personality he was in the 1960s, when he ran Nungambakkam Sports Club ‘A’. He was monarch of all he surveyed at the Pithapuram ground at Nandanam, Madras, which he leased and maintained single-handedly, no doubt running through his family’s finances in the process. He ran a sports-goods business as well, which meant that his club always owed his firm substantial sums of money! In his heyday, he lived in style, dressed smartly, drove a Volkswagen, and offered net practice facilities round the year, insisting on his players attending these sessions without fail. The number of new cricket balls he made available at practice would be considered extravagant by any standards. All this helped create a larger than life image of Rangan, and he took full advantage of that in putting the fear of God into his boys and demanding great performances from them. And he miraculously got the best out of them match after match. The Rangan influence over a whole bunch of young cricketers of the period was quite considerable. For years and years, they would rise to his defence against his numerous critics.

D Ranganathan—for that is his full name—was a cocky little fellow, all muscle and sinew, very fit, a fiercely combative cricketer quite unlike the gentle Madras stereotype of his time. A competent, workmanlike but always positive opening batsman, he was aggression personified as a wicket keeper, not afraid to stand up to fast bowlers, and capable of the most convincing histrionics while appealing to the umpire. He was also a more than useful medium pacer, a facet of his cricket he never let us forget, resorting as he invariably did to the discarding of his gloves and pads to have a go at the batsman. His supreme confidence usually resulted in the breaking up of a troublesome partnership, enabling Rangan to crow over his success where others had failed. He always had a chip on his shoulder about being ignored as a player by officialdom and running his own club like a prince was his way of challenging the establishment. He not only scored tons of runs and won most of his matches, but made sure these victories were made possible by stellar contributions from other players the official selectors had overlooked. He was an original, not an imitation of some Test cricketer he admired. If there was anyone he hero-worshipped, it had to be Rangan himself. Virtually unbeatable in the lower divisions of the TNCA league, his team was a dark horse capable of toppling the best in the senior division, once it was promoted to that level of combat.

I played under Rangan’s captaincy exactly for one season, at the end of which my uncles hijacked me to Mylapore Recreation Club, brainwashing me into believing Rangan was a bad influence on me. At any rate I was not ready, according to them, for the first division, where NSC’A’ was now. The season I did spend with NSC was an exciting phase in my cricket, with some of the best practice facilities in Madras at my disposal at the Pithapuram ground at Nandanam, a superb home ground with a pacy matting wicket and a lightning fast outfield. If Rangan’s captaincy was eccentric, imaginative and defiant of convention and reputations, his loyal band of talented players were equally iconoclastic, partly out of fear and respect for Rangan, but also acquiring by osmosis the skipper’s in-the-face contempt for the opposition.

Rangan loved a fight and made it a point to get under the skin of opposing players. He taunted and teased them before, during and after matches. The bigger the reputation of the visitors to Pithapuram, the more hostile was the reception. He was notorious for his gamesmanship and his strenuous efforts to win at any cost. He was even credited with cheating at the toss, picking the coin up and announcing, ‘We bat,’ before the rival captain saw which way it fell.

We played matches every Saturday and Sunday, including so-called friendlies in the absence of official fixtures. On these occasions, Rangan enjoyed inviting strong opposition and defeating them with his young team. One such practice match was against the star-studded Jolly Rovers, who among others included Salim Durrani and S Venkataraghavan. The visitors ended our giant killing spree but not before we had put up a bit of a fight. Batting first, we were bundled out for 99, with Durrani, Venkat and the medium pacers doing the damage on a lively wicket. Going in at number 9, I made an unbeaten 15 or so, inspired by the occasion to defy Jolly Rovers’ top class spin attack. I was raring to go when it was our turn to field, wanting to do well against the stars whom a largish crowd had come to watch, Salim Durrani in particular. Our medium pacer KV Mahadevan, Maka to all of us, was in full flow and brought on early, I too, was all charged up, desperately wanting Durrani’s wicket. (I was barely 18 then and Rangan revelled in throwing his young ones in at the deep end, and cocking a snook at established reputations. My growth as an off spin bowler was accelerated by the supreme confidence Rangan showed in my ability).

Soon Jolly Rovers were some 40 for 4, Maka and I sharing the spoils equally. Durrani and Venkat came together and Rangan gave me an extraordinarily attacking field, with close catchers breathing down the batsmen’s necks. The wicket assisted Maka as well as me, and we were both transported to another, exalted zone by the excitement of the moment. We gave the batsmen hell and they had to bat out of their skins to survive, but survive they did, until they won the game without further loss—thanks to their skill, determination and experience, not to mention some dropped catches. At the end of the match, Durrani, offered to coach me at the nets the Jolly Rovers captain S Rangarajan had organized at Farm House, The Hindu’s family estate. I was mighty thrilled by the offer, but being the idiot I was, did not follow up, succumbing to my uncles’ advice—the same uncles who would remove me from NSC ‘A’ at the end of the season.

That was NSC’s and Rangan’s golden age. Even people who did not like him—and there were many such people, thanks to Rangan’s constant aggression on and off the field—admired and respected him for the enormous contribution he made to the development of the game in the city. Almost every league, state and national cricketer of Madras came to practise at the Pithapuram nets and play in the hundreds of games he organized there. Rangan met the needs of a whole generation of cricketers better than formal institutions.

Unfortunately, Rangan’s fortunes nosedived in the 1970s and steadily grew worse through the decades. As professionalism crept into cricket, it was no longer possible for individuals or clubs not sponsored by corporates to continue to support the game. Rangan who had been a non-smoker, teetotaller and an awe-inspiring figure for his wards, started adopting a more laidback lifestyle, eventually running into financial difficulties. Used to lording it over the many people whose cricket he touched, he proved incapable of holding a steady job into his forties and later. Today, he is in his seventies, and nobody takes his stories of the past and his grandiose plans for the future seriously, though nothing can stop him from weaving those tales. Young cricketers cannot see why the old timers still humour him, but any cricketer who came across Rangan in his prime is prepared to forgive him a great deal.

Playing for India

2008-11-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

Former England Test cricketer Basil D'Oliveira first showed signs of his class on a tour of the West Indies with Derek Robins's team. Young Kapil Dev impressed senior Indian cricketers with his phenomenal talent on a private tour of East Africa and not long afterwards, he was in the Indian team that toured Pakistan. Teams like Cricket Club of India and Hyderabad Blues have been excellent ambassadors of India, not only in the regular Test playing nations, but in other countries where a small minority pursue the sport with passion. They take young cricketers - and veterans - to some unusual locations of stunning beauty.

I can never forget the experience of playing for Hyderabad Blues before 35,000 paying spectators at Dhaka, in January 1978, long before any Test nation toured the newly-formed Bangladesh. We might have been a loose combination of players from all over India, but as our acting skipper Ajit Wadekar reminded us minutes before the toss, no matter what we were called, we were the Indian team and it was as good as a Test match. The match was played in all seriousness, like the rest of the matches on that tour of Australia, South East Asia and Bangladesh.`

Today, we have the A team concept and India's young hopefuls gain valuable exposure to international cricket in conditions they do not experience at home. In the 1970s, tours by clubs like the Blues or CCI filled this gap admirably. What they also did was to enable young cricketers to mingle with Test cricketers, past and present, and enrich their cricket education. Equally fortunate were cricketers who knew they had missed the bus and would never otherwise visit these nations and play against their Test and first class cricketers in superb cricketing conditions full of history.

An example of the kind of preparation such tours afforded youngsters was the experience of playing in Australia, where even club grounds have 85-yard boundaries. Anyone who has chased the ball to the fence and thrown it back to the keeper on one of these vast grounds is more likely to go home and strengthen his throwing arm than a stranger to those conditions. You also learnt to bowl and bat on wickets vastly different from Indian pitches.Private tours make for greater interaction with people of the host nation than Test tours do. Very often, the visiting cricketers are billeted with cricketers' families and the resultant friendships are sometimes lifelong.

My own unforgettable memories include playing against and sharing a few beers back in 1978 at a Perth clubhouse, with a young Englishman called David Gower, who we thought was not a bad little player! Gower opened the innings for the club Claremont Cottesloe, and treating our medium pacers with scant respect, got away to a flier, making 30 odd in no time. His innings was all too brief, for the wicket yielded some purchase, and the two off spinners of our side, my skipper Jaisimha and I, created serious problems for the young lefthander. To my disappointment, a couple of chances went abegging off my bowling and Gower eventually fell to Jai, though I took five wickets in the innings.

That evening, Gower and the secretary of the club asked me if I would play for the club as a professional the following season as Gower was not returning. This was not only a huge honour but a tremendous opportunity as well, but I refused the offer as it would clash with the Indian first class season. I was at the time close to selection to the Indian team and did not want to jeopardise my chances with the long awaited tour of Pakistan round the corner. As it turned out, I did not even make it to the probables list before the tour, despite my record. Thus are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities missed by those who want to play safe.

That innings was one of the high points of my bowling on that tour in which I led the pack with 35 wickets. Another was my performance under gruelling conditions in Penang against an RAF side, when Jai cursed me fluently after I asked to be taken off (the only time in my life), having run out of shirts and trousers, drenched in perspiration as never before or after in my career, and unable to grip the ball, the sweat simply pouring out from every pore in my body. “Stop giving me f---ing excuses! Can’t grip the ball indeed! God save me from bloody sissies!” he said. I had no option but to go on.

My final figures of 30-8-47-8 leading to a thumping win were more than adequate compensation for all the trouble, but even more pleasurable was the praise Jai dished out over a couple of drinks—again for the first time in my life, because cricketers, especially those belonging to the old school, generally don’t believe in praising you to your face.

If these were some of the high points, I had a few low ones as well on that tour, starting with our first match—against Kowloon Cricket Club at Kowloon, Hong Kong. Both leg spinner Narasimha Rao (Bobjee) and I bowled badly in that game, nearly losing it for us. Occasional medium pacer K Jayantilal, our opening batsman, came to our rescue, bowling an unplayable spell of swing and seam, and picking up some seven wickets for next to nothing. That night, we received our first dressing down of the tour, with Ajit Wadekar telling us for the first time that we were the Indian team, no less. He also confessed how much he had benefited from Jai’s wise counsel on the victorious West Indies tour of 1971.

We quickly recovered from that initial shock on the morrow, when we beat the stronger Hong Kong Cricket Club by a big margin, with my brother Sivaramakrishnan and his fellow left hander P Ramesh scoring hundreds at the top of the order, and me acquiring the only hat trick of my life. Ajit Wadekar took two splendid diving catches at backward short leg, reminding us all what a brilliant close-in fielder he was.

Our experience against Singapore Cricket Club, later on the tour, was even worse. In a near replica of the Kowloon match, we were again rescued from a fate worse than death by Jayantilal, who picked up six wickets after the regular bowlers had proved to be profligate. Jai was never known to be a gracious loser, and this time was no exception. The hospitality in the barroom of the club was long and expansive, but Jai was quite happy to put our hosts firmly in their places for the crowing they had indulged in earlier when the game seemed to be heading their way. Well past closing time, everyone except Jai and the unhappy threesome of Vinod Reddy, Bobjee and I, had left, after the hosts had offered in vain to drop us home, failing to persuade our angry skipper to get up from his perch. We finally left after the staff started shutting doors and windows pointedly.

Soon we wandered out, walking extremely carefully with the kind of dignity only the inebriated can muster, but soon realised that all our hosts had gone home. There was no taxi in sight either, and Jai was ranting and raving by now, cursing his extreme bad luck that made it necessary for him to play cricket with such nincompoops. Still unable to locate a cab, we walked on, trying not to pay any attention to the captain’s lecture, not realising that we had drifted into a freeway where no vehicle would stop. We saw several taxis fly past us not heeding our desperate pleas and fluent curses in chaste Hyderabadi. All of 90 minutes later, a kindly taxi driver going in the opposite direction, took pity on us, and stopped for us. He of course had to go all the way to where we started before he could take a U turn and drop us at the hotel. It was three in the morning when we reached there!

Coming back to the match at Dacca, Bobjee and I again went wicketless on a white, gleaming clay wicket, which yielded turn but extremely slow turn. Batting first, we made over 400, with Ajit Wadekar making a hundred and Sivaramakrishnan and Jayantilal playing substantial knocks. The Bangladesh team made a decent reply, some 300 plus for seven or eight, batting out nearly two days. It was slow, excruciating attrition and the Hyderabad bowlers had to be content with containment. Tukaram Surve, our veteran wicket keeper conceded 69 byes and was mercilessly teased by Wadekar, leading the team in the absence of Jaisimha, already back in Hyderabad to finalise the arrangements for his benefit match. “You were in great form, Godfrey,’ he said, calling Surve by his nickname on the tour—after the former England great Godfrey Evans. Surve’s retort was quick and angry: “How do you expect me to keep to these spinners? One of them bowls off breaks on the leg stump and the other his googlies outside it!”

Later that evening Wadekar told Surve that both Bobjee and I were deeply hurt by his remarks. A very contrite Surve then sought me out and apologised profusely. “I’m so sorry, Rama. You actually bowled well for the first time on the tour!”

Kaka of Bombay

2008-11-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a perfect day. It was my 61st birthday; my kids called me from abroad; I went to a great concert (Sanjeev Abhyankar); my blog started getting noticed thanks to Sriram Veera and Cricinfo; an eccentric informal group I belong to—the Raga-muffins—got written about in the Times of India; and I found out I shared my birthday with Brett Lee as I do with another cricketer, Murtuza Ali Baig.

Yesterday was a perfect day. Or so I thought, until my brother called with the horrible news—our old cricket mate, wicket keeper H Sundaram, had accidentally fallen to his death from the roof of his house.

Sundaram, Sundu to most of his friends, was an unusual left hander among wicketkeepers. His lefthandedness showed in his keeping, as he often gathered with one hand, the left hand. It often produced spectacular results, especially in the form of legside stumpings. He loved to stand up to the medium pacers and remove the bails in a flash. In the 1970s, he was regarded as the best stumper in Tamil Nadu, and even played for the State briefly, until one fine morning, miffed at being overlooked in favour of the young Bharat Reddy, he wrote to the cricket association asking them not to consider him any more for selection.

Sundu was a close friend of my brother Sivaramakrishnan, and a member of a cricket 'gang' who have stayed in touch over the decades. He played for the Indian Overseas Bank team in the local league and later became a state selector. He and I played together for Madras University in Rohinton Baria back in 1969, when we reprieved a young Bangalore University batsman fresh from a tour of Australia with the Indian Schoolboys. The talented Brijesh Patel survived to score a hundred that day, and he and Sundu were among those who went on to play for South Zone University that year in the Vizzy Trophy.

This has been a bad year for cricketers. Not long ago, K Ganapathi, an outstanding off spinner-opening batsman whose career coincided with that of Test off spinner S Venkataraghavan, died in almost identical circumstances. Ganpa was a good friend of mine.

Just when I was recovering from that blow came the news of Ashok Mankad's unexpected death in his sleep. Kaka, as he was known to one and all, had been a cricketer I greatly admired for his phenomenal feats as a batsman in domestic cricket and his astute leadership. And 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.

That was the first time I 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 brilliant impersonation of how Bishan would come into the stadium for training on his first morning in the camp and find no-one 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!"

We all knew that the two Bombay mates had enormous respect for each other, but that did not mean they could not indulge in the kind of friendly rivalry and banter at each other's expense that make competitive sport so memorable. The laughter that greeted Mr Reddy's unintended, indiscreet humour was loud and long. And laughter is what true sportsmen would want to be remembered with, I am sure.

Mumtaz Hussain

2008-11-06T22:46:00.001-08:00

This is your last chance Taz. You'd better give it all you've got. I don't know what you'll do, but you must get wickets. If you don't, I'll have no choice but to drop you for the next game at Madras.

Abid Ali, the Hyderabad captain, spoke these words in a matter of fact voice, but his heart was heavy as he uttered them, because the man he was addressing was the seniormost player in the eleven after the captain himself. The selectors had told him in unequivocal terms that his senior left arm spinner was on trial.

Mumtaz Hussain, the recipient of the bad news, was close to the end of a distinguished career in which he had taken 173 Ranji Trophy wickets at less than twenty runs apiece. He had been a vital part of the Hyderabad spin attack, forging a successful partnership with off spinner Naushir Mehta, no longer a member of the team, having been replaced a few years earlier by me. The occasion was a Ranji Trophy match against Kerala at Kollam.

Initially depressed and dejected, Mumtaz decided on calm reflection, that it was time to unveil the rare bag of tricks he had kept hidden from public view for over a decade. In his Ranji Trophy career, he had stuck to bowling left arm orthodox spin, never attempting the bizarre variety he had unleashed on unsuspecting batsmen in the inter university matches for the Rohinton Baria Cup in the late 1960s. He then had the standard left arm spinner’s stock delivery which left the right hand batsman, bowled a chinaman using his wrist, a googly from the back of the hand, and both these deliveries with a finger spin action for variety. Batsmen were completely foxed by his changes of grip and action, or the lack of either, as they misread ball after ball, until they were bowled, caught, lbw or stumped, simultaneously looking very, very foolish indeed.

One famous victim was Sunil Gavaskar of Bombay University in 1970. He describes in his autobiographical 'Sunny Days' how he shouted to his partner Ramesh Nagdev that he had learnt to read Mumtaz, only to be completely fooled by one that looked like a perfect Chinaman but went the other way.

Wicket-keepers were not immune to the Mumtaz magic either. They had to resort to secret signals to anticipate what would come their way from a Mumtaz Hussain in midseason form.

The first innings was over at Kollam and Kerala was heading for defeat. Not bringing Mumtaz on even for a solitary over in the first innings, Abid Ali tossed the ball, barely seven or eight overs old, to the left arm spinner in the second. He dearly wanted his old teammate to perform well today and save him the embarrassment of being dropped.

In his very first over, Mumtaz attempted a chinaman, despite the newness of the ball. The ball pitched short, but the batsman did not take advantage of the long hop. Very soon, Mumtaz’s length improved reasonably but more important, he bowled a few unplayable deliveries and ended up with a bag of six wickets, though his loose deliveries were hit to the boundary.

The next stop for the Hyderabad team was Chepauk, Madras. The Tamil Nadu batting line-up was formidable, with V. Sivaramakrishnan, V. Krishnaswamy, T. E. Srinivasan and Abdul Jabbar prominent in it. Once again Mumtaz displayed his wares, for the second time after his university days. He was now up against a foe of great talent. There would be no meek surrender this time. He would not find the edge or a defensive blade as often as he encountered in the previous match. Still, Mumtaz claimed five utterly bamboozled batsmen, including Sivaramakrishnan, who went chasing a delivery outside the off stump like one hypnotised, and Krishnaswamy, who was bowled trying to withdraw his bat.

There was a brief moment in cricket history when fame and fortune flirted with Mumtaz Hussain, teasing him and cheating him in the end. He had just completed taking 48 wickets for the season in Rohinton Baria, a record until then, and had been included in the Board President's team to play against the touring West Indies led by Gary Sobers. The other left arm spinner in the squad answered to the name of Bishan Singh Bedi, a young bowler of immense promise. The chairman of selectors was former India captain Ghulam Ahmed--who belonged to Hyderabad--intent on being seen to be scrupulously fair as a selector. When it came to a choice between Bedi and Mumtaz, the local boy naturally lost out, or so the story goes.

Ghulam Ahmed's decision was justified by subsequent events, as Bedi took six wickets in the match and went on to become arguably the world's greatest left arm spinner of all time. But had fate been kind to the Hyderabadi in selection terms, what might have been his future in the game? When Indian batsmen found him practically unreadable, what chance did batsmen overseas enjoy of surviving his wiles and tricks? Had he played against West Indies at Fateh Maidan the day Bedi made such an impressive showing, could the Hyderabadi have made a sensational impact on the world stage?

These questions are merely hypothetical and not for a moment is it being suggested that Mumtaz was a greater bowler than Bedi, but it remains an unsolved mystery of domestic cricket why the former gave up his delightfully mysterious wares, and toed the line as an orthodox spinner in Ranji Trophy cricket, untouched by the greatness that might have been his, had he chosen the other path. Did his captain and seniors tell him to do so in the interest of economy and accuracy, as claimed by his teammates or did he do so of his own volition, as some others have suggested? What heights might he have reached had he continued, considering the way he resumed his old magic from where he left off after a gap of ten years, without any substantial loss of effect?

Mumtaz Hussain is no more today, a victim of cancer. Essentially happy go lucky, he had more than his share of woes in his short life of 52 years. The loss of a daughter a few years earlier was a grievous blow. Yet the enduring image of my old team mate and colleague is that of a man of a cheerful disposition, given to grinning wickedly at batsmen he had fooled.

Lawrence of Madras

2008-11-05T18:50:00.001-08:00

‘T.E.’ The initials can mean only one person in Madras: not the English genius T E Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia, but T E Srinivasan, one of the better batsmen Tamil Nadu cricket has produced over the decades. And like ‘El Aurans’, our own TE is not your conventional hero but a man of quite a few parts, each of them as intriguing and eccentric as the other.

But first things first. TE was a brilliant player of fast bowling in his time, whose better innings were reserved for the big occasion. And he was completely self-made, an original who honed his batting technique on the concrete wicket at the Nungambakkam Corporation School ground. Even as a youngster playing for Vivekananda College when I was turning out for Presidency College—for that’s how old TE is, though he hardly looks it—TE had the foresight and ambition to realise that he had to play pace well if he wanted to play international cricket. Towards this end, he regularly hired bowlers from the neighbourhood to bang them in from 15 to 18 yards on the fast surface.

In first class cricket, TE was a bit of a late bloomer, mainly because he was very uncomfortable against spinners who hounded him along the way. I remember a string of poor scores in the Duleep Trophy before he hit the big time, when he would complain bitterly: ‘Ennada, what kind of cricket is this, you have to face bloody slow bowlers all the time!’ I think he first broke the jinx by scoring a brilliant hundred against North Zone at Bangalore in the 1977-78 season. TE went on to play many more attractive innings in the Duleep Trophy, against touring teams, and an all important Irani Cup match which earned him a berth in the Indian team that toured Australia under the captaincy of Sunil Gavaskar.

That TE had a reputation as one of the characters of the game, whose big mouth cost him quite a bit, is constantly brought home to those of us who played with him in our interactions with the cricket watching public. Even today, at cricket conversations, people ask me if it is true that TE told Gavaskar during the Australia-New Zealand tour what was wrong with his (Sunil’s) backlift, and if that is what cost him (TE) his career! I find it difficult to believe that even TE was capable of such effrontery or that it could have made any difference to Sunil Gavaskar’s attitude to his cricket. Of course, another story that has done the rounds since that tour, is even more spectacularly funny: that of TE landing in Australia and informing the press, ‘Tell Dennis Lillee TE has arrived!’

Whether either of these stories is true or not, I can confirm that TE successfully riled another Australian fast bowler Rodney Hogg by confronting him on the lawns of a hotel in Hyderabad during a tour game and begging him ‘to please stop bowling flipping off spinners.”

If the other TE was known to seek anonymity following his high pressure Arabian adventure--he once enlisted as an ordinary soldier in the army under the assumed name of Ross, the central character of the eponymous play by Terence Rattigan--our own TE loved playing the fool with officials by pretending to be someone else, just to prove that some of them did not watch cricket. Sure enough, no sooner had he once introduced himself as Sivaramakrishnan to a national selector than he asked him, “And how is TE Srinivasan?” TE’s response was classically zany. He said, ‘That fellow TE is thoroughly irresponsible, he’s always smoking and drinking and neglecting his cricket.’ On other occasions, he has passed himself off as a visiting overseas dignitary at five star hotels, even sung ‘Ceylon bailas’ on stage as Cheena from Colombo, all totally impromptu, and with no intent other than that of having some fun.

This is what I wrote a few years ago about TE: “Today, Cheena runs a coaching clinic. The way his bat comes down whenever he demonstrates technique to his wards is still a purist’s delight, though his advice may often be unconventional. In his mid fifties, he looks decades younger and has the waistline of a teenager. He has even become a grandfather recently, but a less credible senior citizen it is hard to imagine. TE will always be TE!”

I must have really tempted fate with those words, for not long afterwards, came the bad news of a major setback to TE's health. His battle with cancer, a saga of courage, has been told elsewhere (Nirmal Shekar, for instance, paid him a moving tribute in The Hindu) and I am one of many friends and admirers who pray for his recovery. No praise is too high for his wife Mala who has looked after him devotedly. God bless them both.

Syed Abid Ali

2008-11-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

The non-striker in the photograph of Tony Greig lifting Gundappa Viswanath in Cricinfo’s “Photographic Memory” is Syed Abid Ali, the popular all rounder who was an important part of the victorious Ajit Wadekar-led Indian team of 1971.

"Kya bole?" (What did you say)? Abid is credited with asking this classic question of Viswanath, when they met three quarters of the way down the pitch, with GRV rooted to the spot and repeatedly shouting "No!" at the top of his voice, and Abid still charging down regardless for a run. This no doubt apocryphal story of an incident in a Test match was told with much relish by the Karnataka batsman, at the expense of the Hyderabad all rounder, who had a reputation for getting mixed up in run outs. Abid Ali was about twice as swift between wickets as most other batsmen and was always on the lookout for quick singles. He was more than once stumped off the first ball he faced, because he had taken off for a single even before playing the ball.

I was fortunate in the number of self-appointed mentors I had in Hyderabad soon after my arrival there in 1971. My State Bank of India teammates spread the word about me in cricket circles, and that is how Abid came to watch me in action in the practice nets behind the bank's local head office at Kothi, Hyderabad. Abid straightaway decided to take me under his wing. For the next few years, I was to enjoy that protective umbrella and benefit from his willingness to share his experience and knowledge with me.

His way of helping me become a better off spinner was to hit my best deliveries repeatedly out of the ground during net practice, so that I would learn to adjust my flight when confronted with batsmen who could do that to me in matches. He was of course completely innocent of the damage to my morale he was actually doing . Even in matches in which we were pitted against each other, the lessons continued, ruining my bowling analysis in the process. Of course, on the rare occasion I got him out, he had a perfect explanation for the accident that had nothing to do with good bowling!

Abid Ali was a genuine character among cricketers, an original in many ways. For instance, he set high standards of physical fitness for a generation of cricketers known for its lackadaisical attitude to such matters. The punishing regimen of training he followed was often the subject of anecdotes, perfect entertainment in the evening after a long day at the ground.He practised his fielding with devotion and became an acrobatic close-in fielder and an athletic one in the outfield, with an unerring, flat throw. He developed enough variations in his military medium pace bowling to keep the batsmen guessing. He also had the knack of making the ball skid on most wickets. He was demonstrative in an age when most bowlers tended to hide their emotions. His appeals to God when he beat the edge, and his sardonic grins at batsmen blessed by the Lord - unfairly in Abid's opinion - were sights to see and remember.

When Abid took over the Hyderabad captaincy from the cerebral and celebrated M L Jaisimha, he was determined to make a strong impression. He was solemnity personified as he addressed the team just before taking the field in his first Ranji Trophy match as captain. "Boys, I want you to play tight, mean cricket. I want us to give not LESS than 40 runs in the first hour." He had meant to say "not MORE than 40 runs," and the giggles and suppressed guffaws that interrupted him, spoiled his speech somewhat, but it was a happy Hyderabad team that took the field that morning.

When the mood captured him, Abid could be the life and soul of the party. He was great company while travelling with the Hyderabad team, taking part in crazy card games devised by M A K Pataudi, or singing calypso songs he learnt in the Caribbean. His favourite line was "Great India bowler Abid Ali" which he sang with gusto.Few cricketers exploited their talent better. Abid Ali was an honest-to-goodness medium pacer, who could also bat aggressively. He made a sensational Test debut in 1967 when he took 6 for 55 against Australia at Brisbane, following it up with two brilliant innings of 78 and 81 opening the innings in the Sydney Test.Abid took his cricket with him when he migrated to the USA by the end of the 1970s. There, he was an active participant in the local cricket scene in Los Angeles and coached many Indian, Pakistani and other immigrant groups still passionate about cricket. He always wanted to come back to India on a coaching assignment and even had stints as the coach of the Andhra team. He has also coached the UAE team.

When I look back on those treasured days of essentially amateur cricket with gratitude for my good fortune in getting to rub shoulders with the likes of Abid, I tend to remember the lighter moments rather than the grim ones of toil in the sun. Especially memorable was a team meeting at Bangalore after Abid had launched a typically unorthodox assault on Karnataka’s world class spin attack of Prasanna and Chandrasekhar, pulling the straight deliveries from off stump, cutting vicious off-breaks leaving all three stumps completely unguarded for boundaries, and randomly charging down the wicket without regard to length or line. “I was very relaxed today, Skip,” he told Jaisimha at the meeting. Pat came the retort from one of his senior colleagues: “Of course, you were relaxed. Only for us watching you was the tension unbearable.”

More tales from Moin-ud-Dowla

2008-10-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

“Match nahin dekha to hum ko bahut dukh hota ba,” little G R Viswanath said in his pidgin Hindi to an intruder into the players' enclosure blocking his view as he sat with pads on. The place was the Lal Bahadur Stadium, Hyderabad and the occasion a Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup match. His teammates in the State Bank of India team knew that Vishy simply had to watch every ball while awaiting his turn to bat, getting up from his perch only during the drinks break to go into the dressing room to do some shadow practice or wrist exercises with the steel presses he constantly carried with him. This was around 1974 or so, and Vishy was already a Test veteran of some six summers, but he was still a boy at heart, polite, humble, his quiet, mischievous sense of humour part of his charm.

An apocryphal story of the time had it that he turned up for a game without thigh pads, and was wandering around trying to borrow one from one of the other players, when one of them advised him to ask Salim Durrani. To Vishy's innocent query, Durrani's alleged retort was revealing if completely unhelpful. “Look young man, do you see that huge picture in the dressing room? (He was referring to a blow-up of Wesley Hall). I never wore thigh pads when facing him. Do you expect me to one now?”

The lefthanded genius was the author of one of the many great stories you were privileged to listen to during that golden era of the Gold Cup, if you happened to be a player taking part. When we were not playing we watched other matches in rather distinguished company including the likes of Salim Durrani and M L Jaisimha, V V Kumar and E A S Prasanna, to name a few. The conversation on one occasion veered around to the practical jokes MAK Pataudi reportedly played on some of his cricket friends. Durrani came up with this particularly diverting version of a popular episode of that genre. (The story of a stage managed dacoity in the vicinity of Bhopal, Pataudi's maternal ancestral home has been told elsewhere. Palace servants disguised as dacoits came rushing to where the young Karnataka players Viswanath and Chandrasekhar were in the woods after a gunshot was heard and announced that Prasanna had been killed. The youngsters burst into tears, believing the yarn).

According to Durrani, Vijay Manjrekar, retired from Test cricket, and an officer in Air India then, handed over his watch to one of the "dacoits" and told him that was all he possessed. “Please let me go, I'm an LDC (lower division clerk) in Morarjee Mills, basic pay Rs.300, DA Rs.225, HRA Rs.150. I'm a poor man with a family to support.” At this point, Raj Singh Dungarpur, unable to control his laughter, ran off towards a nearby hideout to join Pataudi's mother and sister, watching all the fun from there. Manjrekar, who Durrani said maintained to his dying day that it was a real dacoity, is said to have insisted later that Raj Singh had beaten a cowardly retreat. “Sala, Rajput bolta hai, darke bhag gaya.”

Somasundaram grounds

2008-10-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

Mylapore, Triplicane and Egmore-Purasawalkam were the strongholds of Madras cricket in the early years. The league matches between Mylapore Recreation Club (MRC) and Triplicane Cricket Club (TCC) were even dubbed the local version of the War of Roses between Yorkshire and Lancashire in English county cricket. M J Gopalan and C R Rangachari were the stalwarts of TCC while the descendants of Buchi Babu moved from Madras United Club, or MUC, where he first defied the British, to Mylapore, to make MRC a strong force. While Mylapore, Triplicane and south Madras beyond the Adyar continued to produce cricketers of merit in independent India, a new centre of cricket emerged in T Nagar and the surrounding areas, known as Mambalam, West Mambalam and so on.

A whole new generation of talented and enthusiastic cricketers followed the birth of Mambalam Mosquitos towards the end of the 1940s. The trend continued and grew in strength, so that by the time the 1970s came round, Mambalam was as much a stronghold of cricket as the traditional nurseries of the game.

If there is one place in Chennai where cricket is played with a fervour and in numbers unmatched by any venue outside Mumbai’s maidans, it is the Mayor Somasundaram ground in T Nagar, though in recent times, the Marina ground, belonging to Presidency College, presents a similar picture.

I refer in particular to the number of cricket games that can be in progress simultaneously. Anyone who has stood and watched the mind-boggling number of informal cricket ‘matches’ that can be on at any given time on Mumbai’s Azad Maidan or Cross Maidan will understand what I refer to here. At Somasundaram ‘ground’ too, a young collection of cricketers can walk in and pitch their stumps in a territory they informally come to own over a period of time, and start an evening’s practice session or ‘sign match’ at will. It can be confusing for the onlooker when he finds the third man of one ‘match’ literally rubbing shoulders with the first slip of another (or occasionally even with someone, God forbid, involved in some other sport), though the players themselves suffer from no such handicap, as they focus on their own game to the exclusion of
everything else.

In the 1980s and nineties, I was an occasional visitor to watch my younger friends who were regular players at ‘Somasundaram ground’. It was a revelation to me how many state level ricketers active in Chennai during that period owed their beginnings to that venue. The TVS and lwarpet Cricket Club wicket-keeper Venkatasubramaniam, popularly known as ‘Bondu’, was one f them. Anyone who had watched his brilliant takes behind the wicket and his attacking batsmanship, especially against short-pitched bowling, could easily guess where he learnt to hook and pull with such power. His quick reflexes and footwork were unmistakable products of tennis ball cricket honed over the years at the ground bearing the former mayor’s name.

Another fine batsman who comes to mind immediately is K Bharatan, the Railways batsman who made waves in the eighties and nineties. Leg spinner S Madhavan and fast bowler T A Sekar are a couple of other cricketers who were often seen there in their youth.

With the increasing urbanisation of our times, parks like Somasundaram grounds are fast becoming a rare commodity and children and young adults no longer enjoy the luxury of such open spaces, often being forced to adopt streets as their playgrounds. But as long as these open spaces survive, they will continue to delight young players not only of cricket but a wide a variety of games, often changing with the season.

Promise unfulfilled

2008-10-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

Two innings by a young batsman stand out in memory whenever I think of Hyderabad cricket. The first was a fearless century against a West Indies pace attack consisting of Malcolm Marshall and Vanburn Holder. The second one was another hundred, this time against Tamil Nadu on a square turner at Chepauk a couple of years later. The batsman was Saad bin Jung, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi’s nephew, barely 16 when he took on the might of the pace bowlers from the Caribbean at Lal Bahadur Stadium, opening the South Zone innings, no matter that Marshall was a raw colt and the other bowlers were not exerting themselves unduly in a tour match.I had been silently critical of his inclusion in the zone team, following a fifty against the tourists playing for the Indian Under-19 or Schoolboys XI. He was an unknown quantity at the first class level, not having made his Ranji Trophy debut yet. The only glimpses we had had of his batting had been at the local league level, where he represented Hyderabad Public School. There were whispers that he was in the team because of his pedigree and proximity to the chairman of the selection committee, M L Jaisimha.

We, the critics, were proved wrong and Jaisimha was proved right by what happened when South Zone won the toss and batted first. The young Hyderabad batsman played the fast bowlers as though he had played them all his life. He had this uncanny ability of seeing the ball early and playing it late. Pace and bounce did not trouble him, nor movement in the air or off it. He played a calm, collected innings worthy of his seniors in the side like G R Viswanath.Secure in defence, he was unequivocal when it came to playing attacking shots. He cut, drove and pulled with insouciance, and when he came back to the pavilion with a century under his belt, chubby cheeks and all, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

If after this display against genuine pace, we entertained any doubts about Saad’s ability against quality spin, these were dispelled a couple of years later, when he made 113 and 37 not out against Tamil Nadu in conditions inimical to batting. The wicket was a minefield with the ball rearing and turning viciously. Venkataraghavan, Vasudevan and Santosh Kumar were the spinners in operation, and no batsman was secure, especially in the second innings.

The exception was Saad bin Jung, who used his feet in a masterly fashion to the spinners, dancing down the wicket and smothering the spin with his body. The second innings cameo was really worth its weight in gold, as it saved the match for Hyderabad. At the end of the match, Venkataraghavan paid Saad a generous compliment when he appreciated his batting as some of the best he had seen against spin on a turning wicket.

Saad faded away soon after that magnificent performance. Part of the blame must lie with him, because he perhaps got carried away by all his early success and began to focus less on cricket than the trappings going with it. The administration too was perhaps unhelpful; and uncaring, and instead of nurturing an unusual talent, came down heavily on him when he did not toe the line. An extremely promising career got cut even before establishing itself.

Off to Hyderabad

2008-09-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

A minor miracle took me to Hyderabad, and a renewed cricket career, in July 1971. As a Probationary Officer of State Bank of India, I had been working at a small town called Anakapalle, some 20 miles from Visakhapatnam. I hadn't played cricket for more than a year, while at Anakapalle. Now I was transferred to Vijayawada, the second of the four branches I had to serve at in an 18-month training period.

I had missed the first part of the 1970-71 league season at Madras waiting for the SBI appointment letter. The great leg spinner V V Kumar, a State Bank officer at Madras, had asked me not to play for Alwarpet CC, the team I had represented the previous year, as he had inside information I had been selected by the bank after my entrance exam and interview.

Unfortunately, by the time the letter came, almost half the season was over. VV asked me to play a single game for the bank's B team, also in the first division, before I left for Anakapalle. Played on the Marina ground, my home ground for all of five years in Presidency College, it was a match against my previous team. I had a good match, claiming two wickets including that of the elegant S Nataraj, who was to marry my sister Sarada a couple of years later.

VV had advised me to contact Habib Ahmed, former captain of the bank's team at Hyderabad, if I wanted a Hyderabad posting, but I did nothing of the sort, being the introverted chap I was then. I was at Anakapalle for over six months, learning the ropes at every counter of the branch, except for a month-long training programme at New Delhi in between. The bank's POs spent time at four branches during their probation, followed by a stint at the local head office at Hyderabad, before they were confirmed as officers of the bank. I soon learnt that Vijayawada was my next branch. My wife who had been studying at Madras joined me at Anakapalle, and we were all packed and ready to go, when a string of coincidences led to the cancellation of my Vijayawada posting and our departure for Hyderabad instead. My benefactor in this sudden change in my fortunes was S Satyadev, captain of the SBI Vizag team—someone I have never met—played a key role,.

"Report to Personnel Department on July 1," said the telegram from our Local Head Office at Hyderabad. The cryptic message left me wondering whether I was now transferred to Hyderabad or summoned there on a brief errand. With hope in my heart and disbelief that my fortunes were taking a turn for the better, I duly met the Personnel Officer at the appointed hour. "It seems the cricket team wants you," the old man—he couldn't have been older than 50, but he looked ancient to my young eyes —told me with about as much enthusiasm as if he had found a fly in his soup.

The reason for the SOS was that the strong SBI team at Hyderabad was now without five of its regulars, with the new season about to start in a week's time. Three of them, Manohar Sharma, G Mohan and Mumtaz Husain were touring East Africa as members of the Hyderabad Blues team and two others, D Govindraj the fast bowler, and P Krishnamurti the wicket keeper, were in the West Indies with the Indian team that was making history under Ajit Wadekar's leadership.

A letter from me asking Satyadev if he could help get me a Vizag posting to enable me to play cricket there had been forwarded to him at Hyderabad where he was attending a training course. Just then his friend and colleague M N Prabhakar Raju, working in the Personnel Department had been entrusted with the task of finding a temporary replacement for these absent players, and one thing led to another.

It was exciting to walk into the Local Head Office of State Bank of India and meet so many outstanding cricketers there. Perhaps the first player I met was Nagesh Hammand, an attacking batsman who had pulverized university attacks in the Rohinton Baria championship in the three preceding seasons. He was also a more than useful off spinner, capable of sharp spin and thinking batsmen out. A brilliant fielder anywhere, Nagesh had been hugely successful at that level of cricket. We had played against each other at the Marina ground the previous season, when he had led Hyderabad juniors in an Inter-Association match for the P Ramachandra Rao Trophy. There was Ali Hassan, an opening batsman, who too had played in that match which Madras had won by an innings. Soon I was sitting down in the bank canteen and enjoying a coffee with these two, when we were joined by another talented cricketer, Lyn Edwards, the tall, handsome medium pacer.

I didn't know it then, but Nagesh, Lyn and Sultan Salim were to adopt me soon as their responsibility to shape as a bowler, because they believed in my talent. Not long afterwards, Krishnamurti, the wicket keeper, would join that band of young mentors. It was quite extraordinary that these cricketers took such an active interest in a fellow player, considering that each of them was no more than 23 to 25 years old.

The SBI team of that year was pretty formidable. At full strength it read: D Govindraj (captain), P Krishnamurti, Murtuza Ali Baig, Manohar Sharma, Nagesh Hammand, Sultan Salim, Mumtaz Hussain, Ali Hassan, M N Prabhakar Raju, G Mohan, Lyn Edwards, Mazhar Ali Baig, and Abid Zainulabuddin, with me bringing up the rear. Most of the players had played for their state or zone in the Ranji and Duleep Trophies, and Govind and Murti had already represented India. Add veteran Habib Ahmed, occasionally taking a break from his official responsibilities to assist us, and we had perhaps the strongest outfit in Hyderabad, closely followed by State Bank of Hyderabad, led by the redoubtable all rounder, Syed Abid Ali.

The Gold Cup Part II

2008-09-12T09:44:00.001-07:00

A year had passed since Hanumant's wager. My cricketing prospects were getting dimmer by the day. My workload at the bank was heavy and I was one of a few officers of the public sector State Bank targeted by a boss keen to cover his posterior in the face of some crude attempts by an all powerful ruling party to find scapegoats for their failures in priority sector lending. I had given up all hope of making it to the Hyderabad team in the Ranji Trophy and even walked out of a zonal match midway with a high fever, something I would not have done in earlier years.

Miraculously, my luck turned one fine morning. My rival Noshir Mehta was drafted into the State Bank of India team for Moin-ud-Dowla—like Abid Ali, he belonged to our subsidiary State Bank of Hyderabad and qualified to play for SBI. This opened a vacancy in the Hyderabad team for the Gold Cup and the selectors included me in the squad ahead of younger contenders like future Test off spinners Shivlal Yadav and Arshad Ayub, who were both still university students.

I wasn't exactly overjoyed. I had had a couple of false alarms earlier and my enthusiasm was now singularly lacking in the first fine rapture. As I said earlier, I hadn't been in the best of practice, having missed some games during the season. The work pressure at the office was high and I had been smoking quite a bit. So it was that I trudged reluctantly to the Hyderabad nets on a wet afternoon long after the scheduled start of practice. I had a bad cough and cold, and told my captain Abbas Ali Baig I was unfit for the game on the morrow. It had been raining and the practice wickets were wet, so Abbas was having a knock outside the nets with a young marker throwing a few balls at him. “Come and bowl,” he ordered me, and I obliged, still in my working clothes. After some ten minutes, he said to me with finality, “Nothing wrong with you. Sleep well tonight and come back in the morning. You are playing.”

As the host team, we had been given a bye, and we were already into the second round. Our opponents were Vazir Sultan Colts, some of India's most promising youngsters bunched together into a motley crew. They were led by Anshuman Gaekwad, a young batsman from Baroda who had made a gallant debut against Clive Lloyd's West Indies team that toured India the previous season. Kapil Dev, Dilip Vengsarkar, Arun Lal and P Ramesh were some of the other youngsters in the side to have made a mark in first class cricket.

The Colts won the toss and elected to bat. We shot them out for 73, my share of the spoils being 4 for 22 in some 15 overs or so. My spin partner Mumtaz Hussain took three of the remaining wickets. Mumtaz was a huge talent at university level, holding the record for the highest number of wickets in a season, at 49. The record had stood from 1968 or so but would soon be broken by S K Patel of Madras University, another left arm spinner. Mumtaz was still a brilliant fielder and attacking batsman as he had been in his college days, but his bowling no longer posed the multiple threats to batsmen it had earlier, when he used to send down a bewildering array of unreadable deliveries. He was now an orthodox left arm spinner, accurate and intelligent, but no match winner.

Mumtaz and I were colleagues in the bank, and I was a great fan of his cricket, yearning for his approval of my bowling. Unfortunately, for most of our careers, Mumtaz remained a critic of my cricket—my bowling, my fielding, my attitude, all of which he looked at with a somewhat jaundiced eye. That day, too, his praise of my bowling was muted. “You should have finished with seven or eight wickets, today. You didn't bowl as well as you can.” I don't know what his intention was, but these remarks stung me to the quick and strengthened my resolve to do well in the matches to follow.

We won the match comfortably and qualified to meet U-Foam XI in the semifinals. It was led by M L Jaisimha, the man who had been Hyderabad captain for over 20 years then. It was because players like Jai turned out for other teams in the Gold Cup, that people like me got into the Hyderabad team. That year there were as many as six players in the second string Hyderabad team who were not part of the Ranji Trophy squad already selected. U-Foam were formidable. Besides Jaisimha, they had players like Brijesh Patel, Parthasarathi Sharma, Mike Dalvi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar, Kailash Ghattani and a number of promising young Hyderabad players.

The first two days' play was completely washed out by rain. The ground was very wet on the third day too, but it had stopped raining. After a number of inspections by the umpires, it was decided to play a 30 overs a side match. The only alternative was to decide the winner of the match through a toss. “Jai is so confident he can beat us, he has bullied the umpires to start the game,” my friend and teammate Vijay Paul said. “That would be better than risking the toss.” He was probably right, as the ground was so soggy and muddy, no match would normally have started in those conditions.

If Jai thought his team would rout us in the shortened game, he could not have been more wrong. We had in our team younger legs and greater experience of over-limit cricket than our opponents. Batting first we made 99 for 8 in the allotted thirty overs, with our openers C R Chandran and Inder Raj giving us a flying start. The score was equal to about 200 in normal conditions, so difficult it was to score boundaries or even twos and threes on it, except when a fielder found it tough to reach the ball through the slush. When U-Foam batted, they found our medium pacers Jyoti Prasad and Govind Raj too hot to handle. They were bundled out for exactly 60 runs. I didn't have to bowl at all. We were through to the final!

The final was against a superb all round team led by Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi—JK XI. Two prolific scorers in domestic cricket, Laxman Singh and Rajeshwar Vats of Central Zone, opened the innings. Abdul Hai, Salim Durrani, Surinder Amarnath, Pataudi, Mohinder Amarnath and Karsan Ghavri followed. The tail was brought up by wicket keeper Ved Raj (or was it someone else?), off spinner Ranjan Baindoor and left arm spinner Rajinder Singh Hans.

As you can see from the list, there were five left handers in the batting line-up, including Hai, Durrani and Surinder Amarnath in the top order. JK batted first. There was much start-stop-start as it rained intermittently. I think I came on to bowl in the last hour of play. I enjoyed a big stroke of luck, once I overcame my nervousness and settled down to a length. Laxman Singh miscued an on drive and the ball ballooned over Nagesh Hammand at mid-on. It should have been a simple catch, but as Nagesh took a couple of steps back to get under the ball, he slipped and nearly lost balance. A superb athlete and fielder, Nagesh managed to recover quickly and hold on to the catch.

As it often happens, that first wicket improved my bowling—and my confidence—miles. At that very moment, another piece of luck came my way. In walked the brilliant left hand batsman, Abdul Hai, known for his strokeplay and tall scores in domestic cricket. The one thing in my favour as he took guard was that we played against each other regularly in Hyderabad. And I invariably got his wicket—a twin advantage now, as I was confident I could get him, and he must be nervous against me. Abdul did not last long as he became my next victim.

Wonder of wonders! The next batsman too turned out to be one against whom I felt I had a chance. I had once bowled to Salim Durrani on a fiery matting wicket in Madras, beating him many times. Having a few catches dropped off my bowling, I did not dismiss him that day, but now, when I saw him, I felt a great adrenaline surge. I was all fired up to do my best against a world class batsman, with my memory of that long ago day spurring me on. I fired a vicious off spinner on the off and middle and Durrani edged it into the wicket keeper's gloves.

The ball I bowled to dismiss Surinder Amarnath was perhaps the best delivery I ever bowled. Going round the wicket, I bowled what could only be described as a right arm bowler's arm ball to a left hander from wide of the crease. Suri went to cut but his middle stump was knocked out before he could bring his bat down. I had Tiger Pataudi dropped by Inder Raj and Mohinder Amarnath played a beautiful unbeaten innings as JK crashed to 175 all out. My tally was 8 for 75 and I had nailed all five left handers.

Despite a few hiccups along the way, we won the Gold Cup after a lapse of 11 years. At the end of the match, the state selectors added my name to the already announced Hyderabad Ranji squad as its 16th member. I had arrived at last!

Many circumstances had conspired to bring about this happy conclusion, beginning with Noshir's inclusion in the State Bank team, and the decision to hold a 30 overs a side semifinal between us and U-Foam, enabling us to enter the final, without my having to bowl an over. The catch Nagesh held despite slipping, the sight of Abdul Hai and Salim Durrani at the crease, each bringing out the best in me for a different reason, all these were serendipitous occurrences that helped me along.

One other crucial factor was Abbas Ali Baig's captaincy. I had played a number of matches under him for Hyderabad Zone in the local zonal tournament, and he had invariably nagged me constantly on the field of play, only to praise me to the skies after the match. Nothing I ever did seemed to please him on the field, yet he kept me on for long spells. In the Moin-ud-Dowla final, he suddenly stopped harassing me with his constant advice and admonition. He let me be my own man for the first time. Perhaps I had earned my spurs with him. Whatever the reason behind his change of manner, he was happy and proud that one of his boys had come good, and that we had regained the Gold Cup.

The Gold Cup Part I

2008-09-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

There was a popular theory in the 1970s that the Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup was Hyderabad’s answer to drought. Usually the season opener, the tournament had some of the best combinations in India fight for a gold cup in the name of a former local aristocrat. It was held in August-September, and invariably rain interfered with the progress of the event. Even on the few occasions the tournament was conducted at other times of the year, the rain gods decided to visit Fateh Maidan where the cricket was in progress. When in 1972 or thereabouts, a severe drought was broken by thundershowers and a truncated final, people were convinced that it was divine retribution or mercy at play, depending on whether they belonged to the cricket association or the water-starved general public.

It was without doubt the premier cricket event in India outside of Test matches. All the Test players and the best of the rest took part in this invitation tournament. The Lal Bahadur Stadium wore a festive look for a fortnight, all the matches being played at the same venue up until the 1980s. They were three-day affairs and regarded as first class fixtures until over limitation was introduced in 1974 to make for results and exciting finishes as opposed to drawn games. These were not slam bang affairs, at least in the first innings of 90 overs each, but sometimes the second innings of 40 overs could produce exciting run chases. The decision to withdraw first class status was an unfair one, as much of the cricket on view those days was superior to most inter-state matches. It also meant players had fewer first class runs and wickets against their names. In a limited career, I for example, finished with 96 wickets in 25 first class matches, while recognition of Moin-ud-Dowla would have given an additional fifty or so. Worse was the case of a number of excellent cricketers, who, in such a scenario, would have been eligible for the BCCI's pension plan for former cricketers. I managed to qualify by the skin of my teeth, having played exactly 25 first class matches, but my friend Nagesh Hammand fell short. He would have gained if Moin-ud-Dowla had continued to be treated as first class cricket.

I played in the tournament for five or six years in the 1970s, bowling my first ball at that level of cricket to Rohan Kanhai. Behind that most unusual occurrence lay a tale—a tale so astonishing that I might have been forgiven for believing that I was destined for international recognition. (I have described in an earlier chapter the miraculous circumstances which took me from Anakapalle, a tiny but thriving business centre in Andhra Pradesh, to Hyderabad and inclusion in the State Bank of India's star-studded cricket team, followed by a long wait for a permanent place in the playing eleven. Throughout that frustrating period, when my captains Habib Ahmed first, and D Govindraj later, preferred another off spinner, G Mohan to me, a few of my teammates—Indian wicket keeper P Krishnamurti, Nagesh Hammand, Sultan Saleem and Lyn Edwards—had kept my morale up, by constantly encouraging me to believe I was India material, when I was not even a local regular).

Going earlier than reporting time to the Nizam College ground for a league match one morning in 1974, I found my friend and mentor, the late Krishnamurti, already there, sitting on a cement bench under a tree. By this time, I had more or less lost interest in cricket, with time spent at home with a young wife and new-born daughter a vastly more exciting prospect than continuing to work hard at cricket with no prospect of breaking into the big league, as Noshir Mehta was firmly entrenched in the Hyderabad team. I had actually begun to be casual about my cricket gear, having more or less decided to quit the game to focus on my work at the bank.

Krishnamurti took one look at my footwear and burst out in a volley of abuse. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he said to me. “Are you a G Division player, wearing these cheap Bata shoes only rickshawallahs wear? Do you look like someone about to play for an international XI in Moin-ud-Dowla?”

I was astonished and thrilled when Murti explained he had persuaded HCA secretary P R Man Singh who fielded the Hindustan Breweries XI in the tournament to include me in the team as the top off spinners Prasanna and Venkataraghavan were not available and Noshir Mehta was playing for Hyderabad in the Gold Cup. Man Singh had been scouring the length and breadth of India to find an off spinner good enough to play alongside Pataudi (captain), Kanhai, Budhi Kunderan, Anura Tennekoon, Duleep Mendis, David Heyn, Russell Hamer, Tony Opatha, Krishnamurti,Kailash Ghattani and William Anderson Bourne, a West Indies-Warwickshire fast bowler who promised much but never graduated to Test cricket. Man had been on the verge of calling Rehmat Baig, a Hyderaabd-born NIS coach serving the armed forces at the time, when Murti somehow managed to convince him that I was good enough to belong in that exalted company.

It was a proud moment when I received my official call-up letter, with my name appearing at the bottom of a distinguished list of players. Readers of the newspaper announcement of the team must surely have been perplexed to find my name in the team, as I had never played for the state, nor even for the all India State Bank of India team, our prospective opponents in the first round. It was an even prouder moment, when, seated behind some senior cricketers watching an earlier match in the Gold Cup, I overheard my former skipper Habib Ahmed—the one who had once laughed patronisingly after I took three wickets in an over in a league match (“Not bad, this guy has come in useful”, he had said)—tell my new captain MAK Pataudi, “Look out for this lad Ramnarayan, he's a great prospect.” And Pataudi soon asked me to bowl to him in the nets, where, in my eagerness to impress, I gave him a torrid time on an unplayable drying wicket, a very unprofessional thing to do to a batsman looking for some practice. 'Tiger' was sporting enough not to mind my immature exhibition; he in fact went so far as to tell Habib I was a match winner.

A huge surprise awaited me the next day at the nets. I had barely sent down a few deliveries, excited beyond words by the august company I was keeping, when Pataudi called me aside. “Ram, go and bowl in the other nets. Chhotu wants you there.” Nonplussed, I went over to meet Hanumant Singh, the Chhotu Tiger was referring to, and a former prince like the Nawab of Pataudi, who was also the captain of the State Bank of India team, our opponents of the morrow. Hanumant explained to me that he had decided to hijack me from the Breweries XI. I was going to play for State Bank tomorrow! I immediately saw the hand of Syed Abid Ali, Indian all rounder, who was grinning at me from behind Hanumant. Abid had been one of my great supporters in Hyderabad cricket, and he had put a simple question to Hanumant: “Why should our off spinner play for our opponents?”

I was both disappointed and elated at the turn of events. I had looked forward to playing for the Breweries XI, which was truly international in its composition, with my boyhood hero Kanhai from the West Indies, five cricketers from Sri Lanka and Budhi Kunderan now settled in Scotland. At the same time, selection to the bank's all India team was a huge promotion, as I had not even been picked for its Hyderabad team in its inter-circle tournament. It was as star-studded as the Breweries XI too. G R Viswanath, Hanumant Singh, Syed Kirmani, and Abid Ali were Test cricketers and most of the other members were knocking on the doors of Test cricket.

We won the toss and batted first. Our openers Gopal Bose and Madhu Gupte gave us a flying start, Viswanath and Kirmani ran into mid-season form and we made over 400 in rapid time. Poor William Anderson Bourne was belted all over the park and had to be content with a solitary wicket—mine. When Hindustan Breweries batted, they lost an early wicket. In walked Rohan Kanhai to a grand welcome by the crowd and all of us on the field as well. I couldn't believe my luck when Hanumant handed me the ball as soon as Kanhai took guard. Nervous as hell, I bowled my first ball a little wide of the off stump, and Kanhai, obviously rusty from lack of practice, flashed at the ball; and missed! Despite that encouragement, I did not bowl the rest of the over very well and the veteran picked a couple of easy runs. That was the last over of the day.

The weather gods decided to smile on us. It rained in the early hours next morning. Only those who have played cricket in our era, when it was allowed to leave the wicket uncovered, can appreciate the difficulties of batting on a wicket drenched by rain, once the sun starts beating down on it afterwards. The ball tended to turn and jump alarmingly. It was a dream wicket for an off spinner to bowl on, and I was licking my fingers in anticipation. Play started about an hour late, and Hanumant straightaway started the proceedings with spin—unfortunately, not with me. Fellow off spinner Arun Ogiral (Rajasthan) and Zahid Ali Khan (Hyderabad) ran through the top order, Ogiral in particular proving to be devastating. He took five wickets including Kanhai's scalp, and Zahid took three. I did not get to bowl until towards the end of the innings. The wicket improved by then and though I took two tail-end wickets, I did nothing of great note.

Worse was to follow. We won the match by virtue of our first innings lead and entered the final of the tournament. I was looking forward to bowling to the U-Foam XI batsmen—the likes of Brijesh Patel, Parthasarathy Sharma, Mike Dalvi and M L Jaisimha, when Hanumant Singh summoned me to his room on the first floor of the stadium. The rooms overlooked the cricket ground, and you could watch the action from the front veranda. Chhotu seated me there and made me feel comfortable with his affectionate conversation and a couple of beers, before dropping a bombshell. He was dropping from the eleven for the final. The great Haryana left arm spinner Rajinder Goel was to replace me. The U-Foam batsmen were all very strong against off spin bowling, so the captain had decided to go into the final with two left arm spinners—Goel and Zahid. There was no question of dropping Ogiral, as he had taken five wickets in the semifinal. Moreover, he had been going through a rough patch, even dropped by his club in Bombay, and this was just the encouragement he needed.

Hanumant Singh went to assure me that I was a better spinner than Ogiral and Zahid and that I had a bright future. Hyderabad skipper Jaisimha and Pataudi thought highly of my bowling and I would soon find myself in the Hyderabad Ranji Trophy squad. “You must work harder, though. I hear you miss practice sometimes, saying you are busy at work. The bank lets off cricketers to practise, doesn't it?” I tried to explain that my career was more important to me than cricket with the uncertain future it held for me. There was no way the state selectors were going to replace Noshir Mehta with me. His father was the chairman of the committee and I didn't see the other selectors proposing my name ahead of his son's, even if the old man was willing to give me a fair break. “You are being unfair to the selctors, Ram,” Hanumant said. “I'll take a bet you will play for Hyderabad this year. If you don't, I'll eat my words. I'll retire from first class cricket.”

Hanumant's solicitude greatly reduced my disappointment. During our conversation, he gave me plenty of technical advice on my bowling, advice I never forgot. It was to stand me in good stead throughout my career. When I failed to get into the Hyderabad team that year, I toyed with the idea of sending Chhotu a telegram reminding him of his threat to quit cricket, but did not actually do it. He had taken so much trouble over my cricket, when he hardly knew me. It made me a better, stronger cricketer.

My cousin Raman

2008-09-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Raman was to all intents and purposes my elder brother, in true Indian extended family tradition. He was my first cricket hero and his exploits in schools cricket fired my imagination before I entered my teens. He was a leg spinner of considerable potential, the best in PS High School and the best in the city and state as I was to find out soon. He was an orthodox spinner then, who took wickets by the bagful and could bat a bit, known more for brutal power than finesse of any sort. He took eight wickets playing for the City Schools XI once and his photograph appeared in the newspaper, to the delight and pride of his growing band of young admirers in the neighbourhood and at school.

It was in college that Raman blossomed. He joined the PSG College of Technology at Coimbatore, where for the next five years he constantly hit the headlines. Very soon, he was opening the innings for his college, the District Colleges and eventually Madras University, besides bowling fastish legbreaks from a good height. He had abandoned his earlier slower, well flighted style when he shot up in his first year in college. He found he extracted considerable bounce and as most of the cricket at that level was then played on matting wickets, Raman was soon a successful and dreaded bowler. His batting was positive, full of attacking shots. He drove powerfully on the rise and, with strong wrists, he could flick the new ball over square leg or midwicket for six.

At the university and junior level Raman was a most successful cricketer. He was a contemporary of BS Chandrasekhar, the great Indian leg spinner, and bowling in a similar style, PSR was just as successful for Madras University and Juniors, sometimes outperforming Chandra to win matches for his side.

When PSR finished his engineering studies and found employment in Madras, he was expected to graduate to Ranji Trophy cricket, but unfortunately, his form deserted him. He had a miserable couple of seasons in the TNCA league, when he strung together any number of single digit scores. He worked hard, practising for long hours at the nets, where he looked to be in no discomfort, but runs just dried up. His bowling too seemed to have gone to pieces. He was hardly able to land the ball. I was his teammate, generally enjoying greater luck with my form, and it broke my heart to watch his cricket disintegrate.

Raman had other problems as well in the local league, in which matches were occasionally fixed to help one team to garner championship points or another to stave off relegation. He refused to be party to such unsporting practices and even walked out of a match half way through. Among his calculating peers and his secretary, he found no sympathy, but I respected and admired him for his honesty and integrity—which marked all aspects of his life, accompanied by a somewhat short fuse.

Raman later migrated to New Zealand and from there to Australia, where his cricket enjoyed a second innings. Playing grade cricket in Sydney, Raman was a team mate of a young man beginning to make waves in Australian cricket called Steve Waugh. His leg spin bowling had made a comeback when I met Raman in Sydney in the summer of 1986. I was touring Australia as a member of the late Ram Ramesh's team Madras Occasionals, consisting mostly of Madras Cricket Club players. He was happy to show me a newspaper clipping in which Steve Waugh had praised his bowling. I was delighted to meet my cousin at a time when he had regained his form.

Raman came to India a year later, but by then he was a condemned man, a victim of lung cancer. His enthusiasm for life or love of cricket hadn't waned one bit. He was there at Chepauk to cheer Tamil Nadu to its second Ranji Trophy triumph in the 53-year old history of the championship, and he had to endure great physical hardship to go to the stadium and climb the stairs to the pavilion terrace enclosure. (He refused to watch the game from downstairs because he enjoyed the view from the terrace). He was happy and proud that Tamil Nadu won, doubly so as my younger brother Sivaramakrishnan played a key role in that victory.

When Raman went back to Sydney, we all knew that we would not see him again. The end came soon—the end of an honest, hard working career, in cricket and at work. He was a devoted husband and loving father to the end.

Suprabha

2008-09-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

We must have come back to Madras during 1955 or 1956, for I clearly remember listening to the radio commentary in our first floor house on Murrays Gate Road when Jim Laker took 19 for 137 against thse Australians at Old Trafford, the second time the off spinner claimed all ten wickets in an innings that season, having performed the feat for Surrey against the touring Aussies. I remember twiddling the knobs of our old Murphy valve radio to find the exact spot where the BBC commentary was at least half way audible. I was not yet ten and went to a Tamil medium school, so much of the commentary must have gone way above my head, even if I did manage to hear the voices of Swanton and Co. amidst all the static. I don't think John Arlott was as yet a member of the team, nor Brian Johnston or Christopher Martin Jenkins. It wasn't much later that I began to recognize these much beloved voices as I did Rex Alston and Trevor Bailey. Still, there wasn't a single cricketing point that I—or my teeming army of brothers and cousins—missed. The explanation is simple: we belonged to a completely cricket-crazy extended family.

We lived on Murrays Gate Road, a quiet enough street then, extending east-west from Alwarpet Corner to Teynampet, the whole stretch a long straight line from the Santhome Church, via Luz Church Road, almost all the way to Mount Road. 'Suprabha' was our home, a two-storeyed bungalow facing north. We lived on the first floor, my father now the agent of the Mylapore branch of IOB, and downstairs lived my father's elder brother P N Sundaresan, Raja to family and friends, at the time a struggling reporter in the Indian Express, but soon to join the Hindu.
Raja was an attacking batsman who opened the innings for Mylapore Recreation Club 'A', one of the top sides in the Madras cricket league, whose clashes with arch rival Triplicane Cricket Club starring M J Gopalan, C R Rangachari and the like, were known as the War of the Roses. MRC had many of its own stars, with most of Buchi Babu Nayudu's sons, nephews and grandsons turning out for the club at one time or another. The well known diplomat G Parthasarathi or GP, an aggressive leg spinner-batsman, C R Pattabhiraman, son of Sir C P Ramswami Ayyar and the founder of the club, and opening batsman M Swaminathan were some of the MRC regulars.

My father's uncle P S Ramachandran or 'Pattu', the tall, wiry fast bowler who took 10 for 18 for MRC vs. TCC, was overlooked by the selectors who met the same evening to pick the 'Indians' for that season's Presidency Match. Pattu, like quite a few other cricketers of his time, was an orthodox brahmin, whose hairstyle consisted of a shaven head with a tuft of hair tied in a kudumi or chignon at the back. As he ran up to bowl his fast medium seamers, his knotted hair came off and fluttered in the breeze, and he almost instinctively reached for it to tie it back in place even as he was completing his follow through. In group photographs, he is seen wearing a black cap more like a Gandhi topi than a cricket cap.

Though he missed out on the Pongal match after that splendid burst in the Roses battle, he managed to impress the selectors enough to be included in a tour game for Madras against the visiting MCC team under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine. Pattu bowled well in both innings, picking up a couple of wickets. He was probably in his late forties when I first heard him describe the cricket he played in his youth. “Jardine said “Well bowled” to me at the end of the match. He even patted me on my back.” When Pattu came home that evening, his mother, whose word was law in family circles, told him to wash even harder than usual, as he had made physical contact with a mlechha or outcaste!

Pattu lived and practised law in a gracious old bungalow in a sprawling compound on Eldams Road, parallel to and behind Murrays Gate Road, and his elder brother P S Venkatraman, a building contractor and a leading tennis player of his time, was his next door neighbour. Their two houses were named Sundar (after my great grandfather Justice P R Sundara Iyer) and Parvati (after my great grandmother). Pattu's three sons Kalyanam, Dorai and Thambi, took after their father and became more than useful medium pace bowlers, two of them making it to the Ranji Trophy team and Dorai almost getting there. My uncle Raja's sons Kannan and Raman were both fine all rounders. While Kannan played Ranji Trophy, Raman again just failed to make it. Add to these five, my brothers Nagan and Krishnan (V Sivaramakrishnan) and yours truly and we needed just three more for a complete eleven, though Kalyanam was far too senior to play with all of us.

Coming to the point I have been building up to, no compound wall separated the two houses Sundar and Parvati on Eldams Road and Suprabha on Murrays Gate Road, and we energetic youngsters were constantly running from one house to another and playing a whole range of outdoor games, in which all the girl children of the family were also included in all the games--except cricket. And as if all this was not enough to spoil us silly by way of sporting facilities, bang opposite Suprabha was a vast open field where we played the more organised cricket everyday after school. The 'ground' as we called it is untraceable today, as it has been completely built over, a residential area called Venus Colony.

Kannan, or P S Narayanan, to give his official name, was the most talented all round sportsman of the family, if a bit laid back. Everything he did, he did with style. It came naturally to him. He was of medium height, very slightly built, supple and agile. He was a smart ball game player who used the angles to advantage whatever game he played. In cricket, he was all wrists and timing, a very good eye and quick reflexes. I do not remember his exploits as a schoolboy cricketer. In fact, not until he completed his undergraduate studies from Vivekananda College and joined the Madras Law College did he blossom into a consistent opening batsman and an off spinner with an uncanny ability to break partnerships. In the 1960s, he became a mainstay of Jolly Rovers, the team that dominated Madras cricket for the next four decades, regularly outperforming his more glamorous teammates, and often giving the side a scintillating start matching his partner K R Rajagopal stroke for stroke. Those who watched Raja in his prime will know that's a high compliment—the wicket keeper batsman narrowly missed selection to the Indian team that toured Australia in 1968.

At the school level, it was Kannan's younger brother Raman (P S Ramachandran) who came into prominence in representative cricket. He bowled vicious leg breaks and played attacking shots from the word go as an opening batsman. Of the three fast bowling brothers who were my father's cousins, Kalyanam or P R Sundaram (by now the reader would have guessed that each of us have two names; throughout this story, I will use the names we were known by at home rather than our 'school' names) was a genuine quickie, who would surely have played more matches at the first class level than the solitary Ranji Trophy appearance he was allowed to make. His two brothers were good bowlers too, and all three were rated highly by the West Indies fast bowler Roy Gilchrist when he coached Madras's promising young pace bowlers handpicked by the selectors in the 1960s.

My brother Nagan, just a year younger than me, was a stylish left handed batsman, who later played for Vivekananda College and IIT Madras. He never fulfilled his early promise, because he simply did not have the patience or temperament to build innings. He was capable of attacking any bowling successfully and was on his day a delight to watch. He chose to focus more on academics than cricket. My youngest brother Sivaramakrishnan, Krishnan to all of us at home, was the opposite of Nagan in terms of temperament. Five years younger than me, he was a thorn in the flesh from the time we let him join us older brothers and cousins, showing an annoying tendency to score double hundreds even at the age of ten. He went on to score more than 5,000 first class runs, coming close to selection as India's opener during the Gavaskar-Chauhan era.

Here, I have gone a little ahead of the story, as Krishnan was not yet a force to reckon with during our Suprabha day, barely seven when we left Suprabha and Madras, thanks to my father's transfer to Tuticorin in 1960, and Delhi a year later. There were a few more good cricketers in the extended family, including my cousins G R Venkatakrishnan and P S Ashok, and all of us honed our cricket skills on the Venus Colony ground in the 1950s and 1960s. We were all barefoot cricketers and wore no protective equipment, sometimes played on uneven, even dangerous wickets and always used a cricket ball and not a tennis ball unlike other kids. I describe our Venus Colony cricket in some detail elsewhere in this chronicle, but I am convinced that some of us would have been better batsmen had we played on good wickets during our formative years with a semblance of protection.

Appa

2008-09-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

The first time I held a bat was around 1952, in the backyard of our Quilon (now Kollam) home, in the company of my brother Nagan, a left handed, far more talented and stylish novitiate into the game at which so many in the family were good. I was barely five and for the next three years, the only cricket action we saw was provided by my father’s exploits in the game.

P N Venkatraman, Ramani to his siblings, cousins, and cricket mates, was Appa to us, his children—by then four of us, with the latest adddition Krishnan arriving on 13 May 1952. Appa had been a stalwart of Mylapore Recreation Club, albeit a reclusive, even reluctant one, mainly because he was a bit of a hypochondriac and feared he would collapse on the cricket field, thanks to an imaginary heart condition a mischievous uncle or elder cousin had led him to believe afflicted him. (When I saw the Adoor Gopalakrishnan film Anantaram in the 1980s, a scene in it reminded me of my father’s unhappy experiences with elders in the extended family who casually planted in him fears and anxieties with far reaching consequences, preventing the full flowering of this gentle, shy, unusually talented young lad).

Appa therefore never reached the heights he was expected to as a cricketer and indeed in his professional career. He was too inhibited to exploit his talents fully. That made no difference to us kids who all hero-worshipped him. He was easily the most loving father in the world. He doted on us—whenever he found the time. His work as the manager of the Quilon branch of the Indian Overseas Bank Ltd (they were called agents back then), was demanding and involved long hours at the bank. It helped though that we lived in quarters attached to the office.

Appa had played cricket in Madras in the company of some of the greatest names of the city—
M J Gopalan, Ram Singh, the Bhat brothers, G Parthasarathi or GP, and his own uncle P S Ramachandran or Pattu who once took 10 for 18 in an innings for Mylapore Recreation Club against Triplicane Cricket Club in a league match. Appa was a medium pace bowler with a high arm action with the intention of bowling fast 'offbreaks' as he described them in the fashion of the day. They did not call them cutters or seamers in Madras then, but I suspect Appa did exactly that—bowl ferocious in-cutters, made deadlier by the matting surfaces on which he played most of his cricket. What made his bowling diabolical was his almost unconscious ability to swing the ball away from the batsman before it landed and broke back. There were no TV cameras in world cricket and therefore not many Test bowlers were known to have such ability, Alec Bedser being a notable exception. Appa's friends in cricket often likened his bowling to Bedser's.

Appa quickly formed a team in Kollam. It included, besides himself, a couple of IOB men and other friends like Monappa, a stylish man in his thirties with an aquiline nose, sharp features, dark, brushed back hair and a moustache. Like other Coorg-born men, he was athletic and sunny tempered as well. The Anglo Indian railway guard Clifton was built on strong lines and was fair skinned like a European.

I vaguely remember that Monappa was a lithe, stylish all rounder. Clifton was a powerful batsman. Though Appa's forte was his bowling, I remember some lusty hits by him at the Fathima College ground where I watched some of his matches. When he smote the ball once over midwicket for a six—a rare occurrence those days—my joy knew no bounds.

Inspiration was also provided by the newspaper accounts of the England tour of Australia, made memorable by England's great comeback after Len Hutton won the toss and inserted the opposition in the first Test, only to lose the match by an innings. 'Typhoon Tyson', a quiet schoolmaster who later migrated to Australia, struck terror in the hearts of Australian batsmen and almost single handedly won the series for England with his hostile fast bowling. The Hindu came to Kollam around four pm, and I eagerly grabbed it to read the cricket headlines, which I only vaguely understood . Still, Colin Cowdrey and Peter May, Denis Compton and Godfrey Evans became my heroes during that and subsequent series. I had to wait until 1956 for my biggest cricket hero to steal the limelight decisively once and for all from his spinning colleagues. Jim Laker was to take 19 wickets in a single Test match against the touring Australians that season, but we are going ahead of the story.

The most exciting cricketing moments in Kollam came when our cousins Kannan and Raman visited us soon after their upanayanam or thread ceremony, which meant that they both sported an unusual hairstyle, with the front half of the head shaved and the back part ending in a dangling tuft of hair. For some strange reason, this was called an appala kudumi. Kannan and Raman were slightly older at 9 and 11, and they were avid cricketers who brought a touch of class to our informal matches in the vast, snake-infested grounds of the new bank quarters we had moved into in distant Tangaserry on the backwaters or kayal of Kollam. Our games were vigorous and competitive, and the players included besides the four boys, one sister, Sarada and one female cousin, Rama, as well as the domestic staff.

Soon after the cousins went back to Madras, Nagan and I accompanied Appa on a trip to Trivandrum, where he played in local matches for Sasthamangalam Cricket Club, a strong outfit led by the elegant and accomplished Balan Pandit, Kerala's most successful cricketer till then. Appa bowled well in the matches we watched, and SCC won the local league. Over the years, I have managed to lose what was a precious possession--a group photograph in which Balan Pandit looked regal in his spotless gear that included a stylish scarf worn like a muffler, and Appa tall and handsome. Of the two youngsters squatting for the photograph in front of their seated seniors, one was a smart young man who would go on to play for India in unofficial Tests as a medium pacer--C K Bhaskar. I was to play some inter-collegiate cricket with Bhaskar in Madras in the 1960s, when he was a student of Madras (or Stanley) Medical College, and league cricket against his elder brother Vijayan who was also in the group picture.