WHEN I had left for the United States in 1947, my father who had not been too keen on the idea, had tried to dissuade me by telling me that I was not just bidding farewell to the family, but to cricket as well. But cricket was in my blood-stream. It would lie dormant for years, but it never left the system, rather like malaria. I had not made it as a player though, I am convinced that a budding career had been interrupted by an extended stay in a country that considered cricket to be some quaint game played by the British. The actor Dannay Kaye had said: “I have seen a game of cricket and don’t believe it.”
The Americans could never get over the fact that the game was actually stopped so that the players could have a cup of tea. But I had played cricket in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park and then in Hastings, in Sussex, and finally ended up as a cricket commentator. My father had not been displeased though he would say that I should get a proper job.
The West Indies were due to arrive in Pakistan, but before that, they would tour India. I thought it might be a good idea to catch a glimpse of them in Bombay and so Tony Macarenhas and Ishaq (Issac) trudged off, carrying with us a letter of introduction from Kardar to Berkeley Gaskin, who was the manager of the West Indies team.
This would be my second trip to Bombay since Partition. I had spent some of my happiest days in Bombay, but I had moved on, and Bombay was now a memory emptied of its emotional content. We went to the Cricket Club of India (CCI) to see the West Indies at nets, and hand over Kardar’s letter to Gaskin. I would get to know him better when he came to Pakistan and he introduced us to some of the players, including Gary Sobers and Rohan Kanhai.
We saw Gilchrist bowl and I was a little surprised that he bowled bouncers to the batsmen, and he seemed something of a ‘character’. I remembered a picture I had seen of Hanif barely managing to weave away from a Gilchrist bouncer when Hanif had made his monumental 337. It had looked like a close call for Hanif for if he had been hit, he would have found himself among the angels, playing a harp.
The one player I wanted to see was Collie Smith because Keith Miller had rated him in the same class as Gary Sobers. We watched the Test match and loafed around in the evening. Tony had located some obscure relative who arrived at our hotel with Wes Hall. Both worked for Cable & Wireless. There was nothing to suggest about Wes Hall that he was a bowler who gave nightmares to batsmen.
One afternoon, there was a great commotion in the CCI clubhouse and people left their seats and rushed to catch a sight of the visitor who had arrived. At a minimum, I calculated that it must be Nehru. It was someone even more important. It was Lata Mangeshkar. She was India’s heart-strings, her voice was pure magic and it had cast its spell, not only on the people of India, but beyond its shores. There was only one other voice that was comparable and that was of our own Nur Jehan.
I had first met Nur Jehan when she was ‘Baby’ Nur Jehan, and she was staying with Wall Sahib, who lived across the road from our house, Sagar Tarang in Shivaji Park in Bombay. And I had first met (or rather seen) Lata Mangeshkar when she was an unknown in a Poona film studio. My brother Zabak had taken me to the studio. How little streams become mighty rivers!
The West Indies series saw Fazal Mahmood leading Pakistan for the first time. Kardar had retired, but only as a player for he was now the chairman of the selection committee. Kardar was an impeccable host, and he gave reception for the West Indies team at his residence in Garden East, and I met Gerry Alexander, the captain of the West Indies team, and found myself in an argument with him.
He had gone to Cambridge and, as I remember, I told him that he was stand-offish or something equally silly, but Kardar soon intervened. Berkeley Gaskin was in fine form and I spent most of the evening talking with him. Gilchrist had been sent home and I wanted to know what had happened. “He was a bit too temperamental,” he said tactfully.
Apparently, in one of the side matches, a batsman who had been at Cambridge with Gerry Alexander had come in to bat and Gerry had asked Gilchrist to take it easy with him. Gilchrist had nodded and then proceeded to bowl a vicious bouncer to him that all but singed his eye-brows.
He apologized to the captain that the ball had slipped from his sweaty hands. The next delivery was an even more vicious bouncer. Alexander had had enough and Gilchrist was told to pack up his bags, handed his air ticket and sent home. He would never play for the West Indies again. He must have had a pathological hatred of batsmen, and Rohan Kanhai told me that Gilchrist used to bowl bouncers to him in the nets.
The West Indies were not then the force they would become in later years, but they were a pretty high class team. Included in the team was Sonny Ramadhin. He alone, with Alf Valentine, had mesmerized England and a calypso was specially composed for these spinning pals of mine. But once you find out how a magician is able to pull a rabbit out of a hat, the magic is gone. Ramadhin had mystified the batsmen who were unable to read him, but a little bit of homework and one knew his leg-spin from off-spin. Ramadhin’s career was ending before it had properly begun.
But the player we all wanted to see was Gary Sobers. He had hammered 365 against Pakistan and broken Len Hutton’s record and became the world record-holder of the most runs scored by a player in a Test innings. Kardar had described this innings to me: “There seemed no point in setting a field for him, “ he had told me. “He just smashed the ball all over the park.” I had asked him whether it was a one-off innings, or was Gary destined for greater things? “If he does not burn out, Sobers will become a recurring nightmare for bowlers.” And then as an afterthought, he said that Sobers also bowled.
The first West Indian cricketer I had seen (and shaken hands with) was Learie Constantine. This was many many years back, and I was a school-boy then and my father had taken me to the Islam Gymkhana ground in Bombay where he was playing in an exhibition match. The Islam Gymkhana ground was in Marine Lines and was close enough to the Arabian Sea for the fielders to catch its spray.
Constantine had had two turns. He was out early, but the opposing captain, S.M. Kadri, had insisted he have another turn, as the large crowd had come to see him. Shades of W.G. Grace, who on being given out by the umpire, refused to budge on the unassailable grounds that the crowd had come to see him bat and not the umpire. Constantine re-batted, clouted a few sixes though none into the Arabian Sea. I met him and got his autograph. Years later, I would meet him again and in different circumstances and got his autograph a second time, but this one was for my son, Javed.
The National Stadium in Karachi is not a cricket ground to which one could get attached, as I had got attached to the Bagh-i-Jinnah in Lahore. The only greenery around was the outfield and even this had brown patches. Some of the stands were covered with shamianas, but most of it was uncovered and the crowds had to brave the elements and brave too the occasional lathi-charge when it got too rowdy. Mindful that many in the crowd had transistor radios, we would refer to this rowdism as exuberance in our commentary.
Ayub Khan was coming to watch the first Test match and there was an added police presence. But ‘security’ had not then become a phobia and one was barely aware that he was at the ground. I don’t think he was an ardent cricket fan, as Iskandar Mirza had been.
BY now, we had a proper commentary-box which was above the sight-screen on the pavilion end, and we had the best seats in the house. We would, in fact, have been able to give a leg-before decision from it. The box, however, obscured the view of some spectators in the VIP enclosure and the local organizers, chief among whom was Essa Jaffer, complained that they (the local organizers) were losing revenue.
Essa Jaffer had devoted his life to cricket, and, being a member of the Jaffer family, was a family friend. He complained to me about the location of the box and the loss of revenue. I told him that since all those in the VIP enclosure had complimentary passes, there was no question of a revenue loss, “just fewer VIPs.” Everytime a Test match would be played at the National Stadium, Essa Jaffer and I would have the same argument.
Now, as I look back, this, too, was a part of the cricket scene. It seemed as much as a part of a drill as Jamshed Marker picking me up from my house to take to the National Stadium. “You are late,” I would invariably tell him. To which he would say: “I’m not late, you are early.”
The National Stadium was bathed in a January sunshine as the first Test match began, and we were on the air. “I hope you recognize the West Indies players?” Jamsheed asked me. “They are batting first, so it won’t be difficult,” I told him.
WHEN I had left for the United States in 1947, my father who had not been too keen on the idea, had tried to dissuade me by telling me that I was not just bidding farewell to the family, but to cricket as well. But cricket was in my blood-stream. It would lie dormant for years, but it never left the system, rather like malaria. I had not made it as a player though, I am convinced that a budding career had been interrupted by an extended stay in a country that considered cricket to be some quaint game played by the British. The actor Dannay Kaye had said: “I have seen a game of cricket and don’t believe it.”
