Guru Bishan Singh Bedi

"OUT OF 24 hours, you spend six hours on the cricket field. What do you do with the rest? Do you read? Go to the theatre? Listen to music? You must have a life beyond cricket. Cricket is a game that demands intellect, maturity, independent decision making ability, and all this, you cannot acquire by merely playing cricket."

This was Bishan Singh Bedi, left arm spinner extraordinaire from Indian cricket's fabled past of 30 years ago. He was addressing a young spin bowling prospect, during a practice match arranged at Chennai to provide exposure to slow bowlers who had arrived from Australia to polish their art with the help of India's past masters. The visitors belonging to the Australian Cricket Academy were in Chennai, courtesy the MRF Pace Foundation, to learn a few lessons from great spinners like Bedi and Erapalli Prasanna. This has obviously been seen as a successful experiment, as the ACA has been sending its boys here for the last couple of years.

Between watching the match in progress and making notes on his wards' performance, Bedi was dipping into a book on leadership. He also found material relevant to his theme of the inter- relatedness of sport and other facets of life in The Hindu's Folio on 'Reaching Out' and encouraged his trainees to read it, as part of a mind-expanding exercise.

The sardar is a firm believer in the key role that the psychological aspects of cricket play in the success or failure of a player or a team. "I am not spending too much time on technique with these boys," he says. Instead, he is concentrating on instilling self-confidence in his young pupils, the ability to reflect calmly when under siege, and thinking a batsman out. The thought processes and confidence level of each bowler are reflected in his field placings, for instance. An off spinner who needs a sweeper cover is obviously lacking in self-belief, and he has just told the batsman and the whole world that he is making contingency plans for bad bowling. In his playing days, Bedi was a practitioner of yoga to stay physically and mentally fit and he had a few followers among international cricketers, wicket keeper Alan Knott of England one who took serious lessons from him.

All round knowledge and thinking ability are essential not only for sportsmen but also for sports administrators, says Bedi. Illustrating what can happen when these are absent, he recalled how India foolishly agreed to a proposal by England that as part of the playing conditions of India's tour of England in 1979, the number of fielders on the onside would be restricted to five. This spelled disaster to the Indian spinners, especially the off spinners, as it forced them to have one fielder more than they needed on the offside and one fielder too few on the legside. What is worse, they were simply unused to a field like that, and could not make the necessary adjustments to bowl well in the Test series.

Bedi was constantly challenging the boys to think for themselves, and to articulate their views on a variety of topics. "What is the difference between joy and happiness?" he asked one of them. The boy made a brave attempt and Bishan was quick to appreciate the effort, but he provided the answer himself, to set the youngster thinking on the right lines.

"Imagine your father has bought you a new car for your 21st birthday. How do you feel when he hands over the keys to you? Don't you feel joyous and excited? But what happens after a couple of months? You are still happy to drive a car, but that sense of unbridled joy will be missing, won't it?" he asked. "Enjoy your cricket. Don't let the joy factor disappear. That's the key to a successful cricket career."

Bishan the Magician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Other Side of Dennis Lillee

FIRST PUBLISHED IN SUNDAY EXPRESS MANY YEARS AGO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best of them all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maverick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Laker

By V Ramnarayan

His autobiographical “Over to Me” was not a book meant to inspire a young cricketer. It was  a continual rant against his skipper Peter May, manager Fred Brown and other cricket personalities of the time, but I read it from cover to cover because at age ten I was already an ardent fan of his bowling.

Jim Laker was my role model as an off-spinner. I never saw him in flesh and blood because he did not play Test cricket in India, never watched him in action elsewhere in the world, because we had no TV then, leave alone satellite telecasts. My only acquaintance with him was via radio broadcasts in the voices of Norman Yardley, John Arlott, et al, and photographs. 

His immaculate bowling action captured by still cameras was forever etched in my mind. I had a perfect image of his easy run-up, high-arm action, viciously spinning fingers, and perfect follow-through imprinted permanently in my mind’s eye. Growing up in a complex of three independent houses with no compound walls separating them, I never walked between them, always bowling imaginary but unplayable deliveries in my hero’s action, getting imaginary batsmen bowled, caught or leg before innumerable times every day. Years later, I was to admire his dry, laconic wit as a no-nonsense broadcaster, but reading about his incredible cricket exploits (193 wickets in 46 Tests at an average of 21.24, an economy rate of 2.04, a strike rate of 62.3,best innings figures of10.53, best match analysis of 19/90) in real time gave me a high never equalled afterwards.

A Yorkshireman by birth, James Charles Laker started his career in his home county as a batsman, but by the end of it, he had been acknowledged as arguably the best off-spinner of all time. It was Surrey that recognised his bowling potential, and invited him to join the county staff, after a sore 'spinning finger' had prevented his playing a 'trial' match for Essex.

What made Laker such a great spinner? According to John Arlott, English cricket's golden voice, "There have been off-spinners though few - who spun the ball as much as Jim Laker; some of them had comparable control. But no one has ever matched him in those two departments and had also, such a quality of intelligence.

"Physically economical of energy, he walked back six paces to his mark and came in up a short-stepping run which he deliberately varied from ball to ball, changing its pace or number of steps, a subtlety which made it difficult for the batsman to time his approach.

"Without any apparent change of action he bowled a topspinner and a ball which ran away a little off the pitch but, equally dangerously and far more unusually, he could and did, control the width of his break."

Often a batsman would find Laker's first ball pitched on a length and turning relatively mildly. The next ball would look innocuous enough, quite easily defended. Nothing much would happen off the next ball either, and the batsman would, if he did not already know Laker, conclude that here was just another off spinner. 

The next delivery would look no different from the earlier ones but bite, turn, hurry through and hit his stumps even before his bat came down.

Laker was a good bowler on all types of wickets. He spun the ball really viciously and ran through sides on turning pitches at the lowest possible cost. On good wickets, whether in cool England or in tropical conditions, he could bowl over after over of perfect length and line. On those, he set problems of length and flight.

Like all great spinners, he achieved flight by spinning the ball hard.

The ball left his hand and travelled towards the batsman in a perfectly controlled parabola, thanks to the spin imparted by strong and determined fingers that gave the ball and themselves - a fair rip. The flight of the ball was tantalising. Like a mirage that fools a thirsty traveller until he gets there, the Laker delivery was almost always not there for the batsman when he reached for it in defence or attack. Listen to John Arlott again: "He paid a painful price for his bowling. Like most men who spin the ball really hard, he often wore away the skin from the inside of his index finger. If he bowled on, it would harden, a corn would form and then, as it grew too hard, it would tear away, leaving the flesh exposed once more. (He) lacked the unusually long fingers of the savage off-spinners and to gain a similar degree of purchase, he had to take a grip which stretched his first two fingers to an exceptional and painful extent."

As a result, Laker's fingers became distorted and he developed an arthritic condition that ended his career sooner than expected. Yet, in only 46 Tests, he took 193 wickets at the meagre average of 21.23.

This is what a young spin bowler can learn from a great spin bowler like James Charles Laker or our own great slow bowlers. When you are told to flight the ball, it doesn't mean you toss the ball up in a gentle arc. Buying wickets doesn't mean giving away free runs. The idea is to fool the batsman into believing that free runs are to be had. And that, you can do, only if you genuinely spin the ball, only if you tear the skin of your finger by rubbing it hard against the ball to make it spin like a top, only if you practise so long and so purposefully, that in a match, good line and length are automatic, and you have the confidence to try variations at will. If you have never had spinning finger problems, you have never had blood oozing from that finger, you have never spun the ball. Forget spin bowling then, and switch to something easy like batting!

Gyan from cricket nawabs

By V Ramnarayan

Rarely do we read sensible writing on spin bowling. A very popular—and completely nonsensical—cliché is the description of a slow bowler that he "varied line and length intelligently". Nothing could be more absurd. Unless you are express fast and can bowl a good bouncer, you never vary your length except to modify it to suit the reach and footwork of the batsman. A tall batsman demands a slightly shorter length than a short one or a predominantly backfoot player; otherwise a “good” length is sacrosanct, though a halfvolley is always a better delivery than a rank short ball.

As an off-spinner who began his career in the 1960s, I had partly intuitively been following precisely these bowling fundamentals. Both length and direction were unvaried in your arsenal of sharp off spin, faster deliveries, floaters and leg-cutters, not to mention the occasional outswinger, and this is something you learnt very early. My first mentor (excluding my cousin Venkatachalam who had often shared his cricket wisdom during conversations indoors when I was still in my arai nijar) had been medium pacer VV Rajamani, my senior in the Presidency College cricket team.

The one aspect Rajamani stressed was arm-speed from the top of my delivery stride to my finish (“that doesn’t mean you push the ball through; you whip the ball as if you were spinning a top; the arm comes down fast, but the ball travels in a parabolic loop”), with my left leg ramrod straight and right arm falling to the left of my left thigh. A pivoting action was essential on your delivery stride, and for this your left foot needed to grip the ground firmly. In all these years of cricket reading, I have not for decades come across a reference to arm speed, the Rajamani gem that helped me so much in my development as a spinner. (Among world class spinners, Shane Warne provides an exceptional example of this factor, his strong back and shoulders compensating in this regard for his short run-up; a longer, quicker run-up would normally provide the the necessary momentum).

In my adult life, I learnt some of my best bowling lessons from Hanumant Singh, the Rajasthan and India batsman under whose captaincy I played for State Bank of India for a couple of seasons in the 1970s. I made my debut for the bank’s all India team when he was captain; he softened the blow of my being dropped for the next game and final to make way for Rajender Goel, by complimenting my efforts and giving me some great insights into the game, spin bowling in particular. This is when he confirmed the correctness of my instinctive understanding of the game. “Whatever you are doing, bowling at your normal pace and trajectory, flighting the ball a little extra, pushing the ball through quicker, or bowling the wrong ‘un, make sure that the ball invariably lands on the same spot—same length, same line. This way the batsman is always in doubt, while you are giving nothing away by way of width or poor length.”

“Length is mandatory, while line is optional,”  EAS Prasanna one of the best off-spinners of all time, has been quoted as saying. This could easily be misunderstood to mean that you can change your direction from ball to ball, over to over—unless you grasped the proper import of Prasanna’s words. No captain can set a field for you if you bowled on both sides of the wicket all the time. I believe Prasanna has  other ideas: that you decide your line on the basis of the nature of the wicket, the amount of turn it is yielding, on whether you are attacking or defending, and on whether a right hander or left hander is batting. Once you decide your line of attack for the day (or the session in case conditions have suddenly changed), you pretty much to stick to it.

I played under a great captain for Hyderabad. Though there was not much  spoken communication on the field between ML Jaisimha and the bowlers, all of us knew his cricket thinking and quickly learnt to bowl to his plans. For one thing, the field—sometimes extremely attacking—that he set for you clearly demanded a certain line of attack. Even on a typical first day wicket, he always gave the off-spinner two short legs—forward and backward. We would start with a slip, point, cover, mid-off , deep square leg, mid wicket and mid-on besides the two short-legs, with square leg the only deep fielder, some three quarters of the way to the boundary. All the other fielders except those in the close-in cordon were at single-saving distance from the bat. After a few overs, when he was confident I had settled down, he’d say, “All right, Ram?” and then proceed to bring in point to silly point, leaving that region totally unprotected. The field would then be slip, silly point, cover, mid-off, mid-on, mid-wicket, forward and backward short-legs and deep square leg. (You had to be absolutely accurate around off-stump; you simply could not afford to stray outside it the way you could with a less attacking offside field).

Once the batsman settled down, either slip or silly point was removed and only much later would a deep midwicket be added to the onside field, with the offside field reduced to point, cover and mid-off. Unless the batsmen really flourished and some 400 runs were on the board, the two short-legs were a constant. Even when one of them withdrew into the outfield, it was rarely the forward short-leg or bat-pad fielder that left his post.

This was a standard field deployed for a good off-spinner by the leading captains of the day, say Tiger Pataudi for India, Jaisimha for Hyderabad, V Subramanyam (succeeded by Prasanna) for Karnataka, or Venkataraghavan for Tamil Nadu.  I have a serious suspicion that this kind of attacking field placement originated in the south, perhaps when Subramanyam was leading Karnataka, and evolved through brainstorming among all these greats of the period. And if I am not mistaken, this broadly speaking, is what Prasanna means when he says length is mandatory, line is optional).

On a turning wicket, you not only tried to spin the ball from outside the off-stump, but often went round the wicket to make the batsman play, once he started using the pads with no fear, thanks to the abundant deviation, of lbw. The trick was to still bowl around the same spot from round the wicket, the straighter angle forcing the batsman to play and increasing chances of leg before at least slightly. And a well-directed straight or away-going delivery from round the wicket could get you one of three kinds of dismissals: lbw, bowled, or a slip catch.

Playing in that era, you also learnt some superb lessons on how to bowl to left-hand batsmen from the aforesaid nawabs of cricket. Contrary to what many of today’s experts advocate, our seniors encouraged off-spinners to bowl over-the wicket, and maintain a strict leg-and-middle line, thus cramping the left-hander. You often had a forward short-leg to grab the bat-pad snicks, while you could still force an outer edge to slip, especially if the pitch offered some purchase.

In part two of this series, I hope to describe in some detail the great spinners of my era that I watched from afar as well as those I was fortunate enough to follow from very close quarters.