The Real Renaissance Man

courtesy news.bbc.co.uk

Shekhar Gupta’s Walk The Talk with Farokh Engineer was pure nostalgia for people like me. Our generation --both cricketers and followers -- was probably cheated by history since  there was no TV, live or otherwise, and many notable achievers did not get their due. One of my heroes barely got a passing mention from Farokh. This is an attempt to rectify the omission in whatever small way I can. But before that, one needs to give today’s cricket lovers a feel of Indian cricket those days.

1971 was a monumental year for India.  On the cricket field, the turning point really was the tour to West Indies. One needs to remember that India’s being thrashed on foreign tours was a given those days, no one expected anything different. 0 for 4 at Lords may have been extreme but not surprising. And who were to be our opponents? The mighty West Indies. If you managed to get through the initial line up of Fredericks, Camacho, Kanhai and Lloyd, you saw their Captain, the real King of Good Times, Gay Sobers walk in. The same Sobers who had hit a hurricane century on the last day of a Brabourne Test  a few years earlier, all because he wanted to reach the racecourse by 3 p.m.! There was contempt for Indian cricket written all over that century.

Cricket selection was a topic of heated debates across India. Regional and Linguistic chauvanism (but thankfully never Religious) were always in the mix and when Vijay Merchant as Chairman of the Selection Committee dumped the Nawab of Pataudi in favour of Ajit Wadekar, there were many who remembered that in 1946, Merchant’s legitimate claims to Captaincy were overlooked by a Vizzy dominated Selection Committee in favour of fellow royal Iftekhar Ali Pataudi. But Merchant gave Wadekar a team which was a good mix of youth and experience. Among the youngsters was a 21 year old Sunil Gavaskar.

This piece is NOT about Sunil Gavaskar, but a short digression is tempting. Bombay schools cricket was a big deal in the 60s and Ramesh Nagdev, Quereshi, Solkar, Gavaskar, Milind Rege and their prospects had been discussed endlessly by aficionados, not just in Mumbai but all over India (I was in Ahmedabad then). Although some of the others also played at higher levels including Tests, only SMG had the focus and stamina to come through initiation into College, Universities and first class cricket with his reputation enhanced. There was excitement around prominent college players too and Ashok Mankad from Mumbai  and Ashok Gandotra and Vinay (or was it Raman?) Lamba from Delhi were subjects of heated discussions among cricket lovers.

The first test of ’71 West Indies tour began in Kingston, Jamaica on Feb 18 but SMG had to sit it out with an injury. Loss of a day due to rain reduced it to a four day affair. I remember a bunch of us in Pilani (where it can be 2 Degrees C in winters) heaving a sigh of relief on hearing about it on BBC World News at 4 or 5 a.m., now a draw was possible, that was the extent of our ambition. Yes, there was no live commentary from West Indies those days and we had to catch the 20 second tail end of the hourly news bulletin from BBC on our crackling radios just to get the score!

Next day, our hourly nightly vigil told us that India was 75 for 5. We had all seen this movie before and turned off our radio sets and went off to sleep. India went on to make 387 and Dilip Sardesai made a stunning 212. Only Laxman’s  281 many years later can be really called a comparable innings, in fact these were more than just ‘innings’, these were statements which heralded turnarounds for India’s cricketing fortunes.  Let me elaborate. There have been many wonderful innings and many great bowling spells by Indian cricketers over the years, quite a few of which led to India winning the match or possibly saving it. And yet, other than these two, I cannot think of a single effort in Tests which transformed Indian cricketers' attitude, on-and-off the field, for many years to come. The opposition were commanded to Respect. Remember, in 1971 there were no helmets, little protective gear and for someone to not get overwhelmed by the scorecard and launch a counter-attack against a fearsome Carribean attack was nothing short of a miracle.

We read about Dilip Sardesai’s sterling knock (and we had only news reports to vouch for it, much like Kapil’s 175 years later) with complete disbelief; Indian cricketers were not supposed to fight back like this, they were there merely to serve as punching bags for the big boys (A, E, WI). Sobers too could not recover from the shock of the display of spine by ‘sheep’ and when Wadekar asked the WI to follow-on after they were all out for 212 (follow-on margin was reduced due to the loss of a day), there was a stunned silence in the WI dressing room. WI drew that test but their confidence must  have been dealt a mortal blow.

It is my belief that SMG’s having to sit out the first Test was a huge blessing for him and for Indian Cricket. That shrewd cricketing brain must have absorbed a thousand lessons in those four days which must have helped in the tour later. For in the second Test itself, India finished what Dilip Sardesai (in partnership with Solkar and with the spin quartet showing its mettle) had started in the first. A century by Sardesai and two sixties by SMG in his debut test marked a new dawn for Indian cricket with the first ever Test victory over the mighty West Indies.  I remember there being some relief that Gavaskar missed his hundred; debut centuries were supposed to be jinxed, how many had/ have heard of Deepak Shodhan—I believe still very much around in Ahmedabad?

The rest of the series was a 'night'mare for us, for by then we were hooked onto BBC’s ghastly 30 sec updates at unearthly hours (I hope some of my professors are reading this, they finally know the reason for the drop in my CGPA for that semester!). Suffice it to say that India hung on to its lead right to the end. The last Test was a six day affair –that was the way it was played then, if after four tests the score line was 0-0 or 1-0---and I remember the fourth day ending with India, trailing by 160 odd in the first innings, at 89 or 90 for 1 in its second, SMG batting 59. He had already scored a century in the first innings and while we marveled at his boy-who-stood-on-the-burning-deck act, we all knew where it was heading. Not SMG, for, as we were to learn over the next 15 years, he always relished a scrap and this was a big one. End of day five saw him on 180 not out (and most of our hostel awake in awe at 5 a.m.!) and by lunch on the 6^th day, riding on his 220, India had more or less saved the match and won the series.

Dilip Sardesai’s 642 runs in the series stood as an India record for all of 5 days before SMG overtook it with his last innings of the series. Statistically perhaps it was a most appropriate passing of the baton to a youngster who was to become a giant in years to come.

India had a scrappy 1-0 series win over England in that English summer, thanks largely to Chandrasekhar and the other spinners. Farokh Engineer, Ajit Wadekar, Vishwanath and Abid Ali played useful hands and  Sardesai and Gavaskar made vital but patchy contributions of 40s and 50s too but the best of Sardesai was behind him, the best of SMG was yet to come. Those who only statistics know will find Dilip Sardesai's test record of 2001 runs spread over 30 tests spanning 12 years @ 39 modest but The Renaissance Man had done his job, bringing alive a sleeping cricketing nation and, in a manner of speaking, handing over its cricketing future to a most capable pair of hands.

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For some harmless fun, read the satirical Blog: http://www.satish-oneeyeclosed.com/

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A few posts were chosen from all the Indian Humor Blogs, for enactment  and web-casting  at the Social Media Summit backed by Google, FB and Twitter held at Taj Coromandel Hotel in Chennai in 2011.

 LARGEST NUMBER OF POSTS CHOSEN WERE FROM 
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