How did it all begin, we ask ourselves in these unsettling times. Not the pandemic — we know the answer to that one — but our personal passions. It is not just television that is replaying old matches and connecting us with past experiences; our minds are doing that too.
In the winter of 1967, I fell in love with cricket. Completely, irrevocably, conclusively. First, in the pages of Sport and Pastime, and then on radio where I followed my first series as India played in Australia. The magazine was serialising Ralph Barker’s two books, Ten Great Innings and Ten Great Bowlers. My early heroes, thus, were Spofforth and Grace, Ranji and McLaren, Spooner and Lohmann.
“This thing,” Spofforth was quoted as saying, “can be done.” I marvelled at the certainty of a bowler who could personally guarantee England would not score 85 runs to win. Today, it isn’t the words I remember so much as the emotions: my madeleine, unlocking memory in the Proustian manner.
I remember my mother, ear fixed to the radio, keeping scores as Farokh Engineer and Chandu Borde put on a partnership. Mother kept scores and updated friends. She taught me the joy of listening to cricket. The sport was an audio treat before it became a visual one. When dad came home from work, they would discuss the day’s play. Dad and Mom fired a boy’s imagination, helped by an uncle who had played the game.
Heroes began to emerge to replace those distant ones in books: Erapalli Prasanna, who claimed 25 wickets in that series and brought India back into the match many times. M.L. Jaisimha, who arrived in Brisbane one afternoon and scored a Test century the next day. Engineer, Ajit Wadekar, Bishan Bedi, and above all the captain, the Nawab of Pataudi, who missed the first Test, and finished with scores of 75 and 85, 74 and 48, 51 and 6 — I haven’t had to look these up! That 74 was in Brisbane where he shared the top score with Jaisimha; the 48 was a let-down. A few more, and India might have won the Test they lost by just 39 runs. Jack Fingleton wrote that India could have won two Tests.
Pataudi said later that the Australians were not as good as the 4-0 scoreline suggested, and that if the series had begun with the Brisbane Test, the result might have been different. He was probably right, since India followed that with a 3-1 victory in New Zealand, their first series victory abroad (the West Indies under Garry Sobers who toured next could only draw 1-1).
That tour was important, and not just for firing the imagination of a little boy far away. It was the first step India took to coming together as a team and demanding a place at the high table, something that would be conceded with series wins in the West Indies and England three years later.
World class spin combination
A world class spin combination came together. The spearhead, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, had to return home after breaking down in the first Test. That brought the focus on off spinner Prasanna, who finished with 49 wickets in the twin series. India’s strengths and weaknesses were both on public display — the reliance on spin, and the woeful catching. Bob Cowper and Ian Chappell made big centuries aided by dropped catches.
On one horrendous occasion, two fielders running for a catch — Rusi Surti and V. Subramanyam — clashed, and the latter broke his nose. That was another memory of that period. For, when Subramanyam returned to Bengaluru, he was admitted to the same hospital where an aunt was having surgery too.
“Do you want to meet a cricketer?” my father asked. He had checked with Subramanyam, who had kindly agreed. I can recall the feel of dad’s hand as I slipped mine into it. Subramanyam, nose bandaged, speaking strangely, greeted me warmly. His was the first Test star’s hands I shook, a story I lived off for a while. Decades later at a function in Bengaluru, I narrated this story to Subbu (familiarity breeds contraction), and his spontaneous response was, “Of course I remember that handshake.” Lovely man.
Over the years, members of the squad became good friends. Tiger Pataudi himself, a conversation-stopper whenever he entered a room. Bedi, whose biography I wrote. The late Jaisimha, in whose company I watched junior matches. Prasanna, who told me when I first began reporting, “I shall be keeping an eye on you.” Wadekar, whose room on tours when he was manager, was “liberty hall”, open to friend and foe alike. Chandrasekhar, whose self-deprecating humour remains unmatched.
1967 was also the year I determined to play for India. I calculated that some of the players on that Australian tour would be colleagues when I made my debut (in my mind I was a child prodigy). Sadly, I went from being a promising youngster to a has-been without a significant career in between. These things happen.
(A version of this appeared in UK’s Wisden Cricket Monthly)
