I FIRST met Bishen Singh Bedi in the summer of 1974, towards the end of the tour of the Pakistan team to England. I was the manager of the team. Bedi was playing county cricket for Northamptonshire, as was Mushtaq Mohammad who was a member of the Pakistan team.

Bedi had come to meet Mushtaq and Mushtaq in turn introduced me to him. There was no instant chemistry for I have little recall of it. One met a lot of people on that tour including the Duke of Norfolk whose own cricket ground at Arundel was one of the loveliest in a country that had so many lovely cricket grounds and Roger Banister who had broken the 4-Minute mile barrier, and Peter O’Toole, the distinguished actor, and the Maharaja of Baroda.

Bedi reminded me of this when we met again a few years later. He had told Mushtaq Mohammad that I was a snob. My mind may have been on other things and I might have been a little perfunctory.

Bedi came to Pakistan as captain of the Indian team in 1978-79 and this time his mind may have been on other things and I don’t recall even shaking hands with him. He was the captain of a losing team and may have felt harassed, if not, besieged. Captains who lost to Pakistan, lost not only the match but their job. But it gave me a chance to see him bowl.

The boxer Mohammad Ali used to describe himself as “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” The beauty of Bedi’s bowling action lay in its simplicity, the soft landing of a sparrow with no great fluttering of the wings and very little chirping. He walked a few steps and turned his arm over and it looked lazy. Somewhere, in flight, the ball underwent a transformation, it fizzed, it spun, it hung in the air, it dipped and it did turns and it seemed to talk.

Bedi returned to Pakistan, this time as an expert on PTV’s commentary team when India toured again in 1982-83 and this was when he and I became friends. I was familiar with his reputation of not just as a left-arm spinner who would mesmerise batsmen. But as an outspoken man and given to tilting at windmills. It was not that he was disrespectful of authority but he was not in awe of it nor intimidated by it. We did our first stint together and almost instantly, an intimacy developed. He was fluent, as if broadcasting was a second nature to him, he was observant and would pick out details that might have escaped me and he was light-hearted without being frivolous. Most of all, he was critical without being malicious.

Commentary is about teamwork and it is reassuring for the viewers that they get the same picture but a different voice.

Bedi felt comfortable in Pakistan and he was able to relate with the people and he made friends easily. Was the fact that he was a Sikh get him a greater acceptability? A Sikh cannot hide his identity and he was recognized. But he was also Bishen Singh Bedi, a super-star and he could have behaved as one with an aloofness and arrogance. Bedi conversed with me in three languages. In English when he wanted to be taken seriously, in Urdu when he wanted to be formal and in Punjabi when he wanted to be descriptive and this required some expletives and words left unsaid in polite company.

In Hyderabad once, we had been invited to lunch by one of the Talpurs and we had lunched well, but not too wisely. Bedi got back to the ground in a good mood. He was mobbed by autograph hunters until one boy in the crowd yelled whether he still remembered Imran’s sixes. On a previous tour Imran had hit Bedi for three successive sixes. This must have been a sore point. Bedi responded in Punjabi which meant that the response was colourful: “You people deserve martial law,” he snapped back.

I discovered that he was a religious man and he expressed a desire to visit some of the Sikh shrines and holy places and which was arranged without any difficulty. Zia ul-Haq had shown an interest in meeting him and he went off to Islamabad. I have no idea what the two talked about but Zia ul-Haq was a man of great personal charm. He must have turned it on for Bedi, for he was flattered.

By the time Bedi returned, he and I had struck up a friendship that was based on mutual affection. I next caught up with him in Jalandhar when the Pakistan team was touring India in 1983. The commentary-box allotted to us was so small that there was room only for the commentator and the scorer. There wasn’t even room for the pedestal fan and our producer had to remain standing. Bedi came to see me and I told him that I couldn’t invite him in. Bedi left in a huff and arrived back with Mr Bindra who was the big chief and he read the riot act to him. Mr Bindra was so flustered that he ordered All India Radio to vacate its box and asked us to move in. All India Radio rightly refused and our producer was concerned that we might have triggered off a diplomatic row. It was sorted out. With some re-adjustments, we were able to squeeze a stool in and the producer sat on it. I have been in worse situations.

I toured India again in 1987. Bedi was involved with the Indian team in some capacity. In Bangalore, he invited me to dinner at the home of his kinfolk, a Bedi family that had some film connection. Imagine a family of Bedis. What a wonderful evening it turned out to be.

I mentioned to them that there was a Bedi who had been my flat-mate at the University of Southern California. Of course, they knew ‘Gogi’ and what is more he was now living in Mysore. ‘Gogi’ they informed me had fallen on bad times. He had inherited some coal-mines and like the grasshopper had sung through the summer of good times. He was not only broke but was in poor health and bed-ridden. I asked whether I could speak to him on the telephone and was told that he did not leave his room even to take a telephone call. The hostess said there was no harm in trying. We telephoned Mysore and ‘Gogi’ did come to the telephone and on hearing my voice burst into the most affectionate abuse.

“What the hell are you doing in Bangalore? Why aren’t you in Mysore? Get over here immediately.” He sounded excited. I told him I was busy with the Test match. “To hell with the Test match,” all this interspersed with a pleading that seemed like a cry for help. This conversation was within the hearing of all. “Why don’t you go?” the hostess said to me. Leave it to Bishen Singh Bedi. “Your visit will mean a lot to him,” he said. “I’ll drive you to Mysore on the rest day.”

And so we drove to Mysore through a countryside that was stunning, so much greenery, so many other colours of trees and shrubs and wild flowers, Mother Nature draped in her finery. We arrived in Mysore and had lunch with Gogi and his family. On the way back, Bedi took a wrong turn and we were soon on a desolate road. We seemed to be the only ones on the road and there seemed to be no other sign of life, human and otherwise. The petrol gauge was veering towards empty. We had reached a point of no return and the only way was forward.

Finally, we reached the outskirts of a small town and we ran out of petrol, Bedi rounded up some small boys and we were pushed to the town’s only petrol station. Bedi told me: “I told you not to panic.” And before I could say anything he said “I was absorbing all the abuse you were muttering under your breath.” Bishen Singh Bedi is one of a kind, a class act.