August 1, 2004

The first ‘proper’ cricket match I saw was at the Feroze Shah Kotla ground. The MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), with Douglas Jardine as captain, was touring India in 1933 and was playing against the Delhi & District Cricket Association.

My eldest brother Nasir was playing for it and my father took me and two of our elder brothers, Humayun and Rafiushan, to see the match. We were seated in the Students Enclosure. Nasir made 17 and was stumped by Lovett, off Marriot but he hit a six and it was that six that made him my hero. But playing for the MCC was an Indian Maharaja, resplendent in his turban, Bhupinder Singh, the flamboyant ruler of Patiala and about him a local Schehrazade could have recited a thousand and one tales of Patiala nights.

The crowd at Feroze Shah Kotla took to him, but not in a kindly way. He presented a somewhat comic figure and every time he fielded a ball, he was hooted. Some of it was good-natured and some of it was not. There was a certain contempt for the maharajas and nawabs who were seen as toadies of our British rulers and their lifestyles were an affront to the millions of people who were mired in a desperate and measureless poverty.

Though too young to understand the anger of nationalism, I remember the red-faced Tommies who came to our enclosure and warned us not to make fun of Patiala, or else. Or else what? The Tommies were hooted down. Thus, in a convoluted way, I saw cricket as a way of making a political statement, of beating the British at their own game and striking a blow for India’s freedom. This sentiment stayed with me and I must admit that even now it gives me greater pleasure when Pakistan wins against England than when it wins against India.

During the tea interval my father had us collected and we went to the Pavilion. Sitting on a wicker chair was a young man with a smugness of a cat that had swallowed the canary. People were going up to him and shaking his hand and he was lapping up all the adoration. I too thrust out my hand and had my first handshake with a cricket star. I had no idea who he was until my father told me that he was Lala Amarnath, the first man to make a Test hundred against this very same Jardine’s team. I could not have imagined that he would become a close friend and that he and I would broadcast together. I never told him he had been a first Test Cricketer I had met, not to mention the most princely batsman India had ever produced. Lalaji did not need others to blow his trumpet. He was capable of doing so himself.

Lala Amarnath played a central role in setting the tone of earlier Test matches played between India and Pakistan. Pakistan was given a Test status in 1952. It embarked on its inaugural tour in 1952-53 and it was to India. Lala Amarnath was India’s captain. When India toured Pakistan in 1955, he was the team’s manager. Abdul Hafeez Kardar was Pakistan’s captain in both series. They had toured together with the Indian team to England in 1946. Both were headstrong and combative and it soon became clear that there was no love lost between them. They were fiercely patriotic and their mutual antagonism rubbed off on the players. Those were the days when it was assumed that the host country was up to dirty tricks. There was a lot of tension though it must be said that cricket matches were not seen as proxy wars. This came later.

Lalaji tended to be dogmatic as a commentator. He was outspoken and never short of words, but he got on well with us and seemed happy to be in Pakistan. He had played a lot cricket in Lahore in pre-Partition India and seemed most comfortable speaking Punjabi. I never once saw him lower his guard and become on the boys. Clearly he had a soft spot for his sons Muhinder and Surinder, both of whom were members of the 1955 team. Surinder seemed to have faded away but Muhinder or Jimmy as we called him had a distinguished career in cricket and at one time rated as one of the best all-rounders in the business. He bowled medium-pace seam up and I remember once I tried to have Lalaji on. I referred to Muhinder an off-spinner. I got an earful from the doting father.

Both he and I were staying at Ray’s Hotel in Faisalabad which was by any definition a flop-house. On the rest day of the Test we found that we only had each other for company. And this gave me the chance to get to know him better. Below our rooms was a bus terminal and a man, crushing sugarcane juice. We would give our orders and we spent the day talking and sipping sugarcane juice. He struck me as a lonely man. He was not an easy man to get to know and could be abrasive but that could be because he was getting on in years. But he and I got on well though we often disagreed.

On Pakistan’s tour of India in 1960-61, All India Radio invited me to be the guest commentator and allowed me to rub shoulders with the likes of C.K. Nayadu and the Maharaja Kumar of Vizianagram or Vizzy. C.K. Nayadu was my idol. He was our expert commentator, and had been a superstar — he was to Indian cricket what Sachin Tendulkar is now. Vizzy was something else. Love him or loathe him, he could not be ignored. He had fixed views and he had battalions of admirers and an equal number of detractors. I got on well with him though we crossed swords in the Dehli Test match which Pakistan was on the verge of losing and a triumphant Vizzy kept repeating that the match ‘is in our pocket’. I was on the air at the moment when Pakistan was able to save the match, and I said that ‘obviously, there is a hole in Vizzy’s pocket’. He was not at all offended and the next morning his majordomo arrived at my hotel with a parcel that contained two Benarasi saris and a Vizianagram tie that made me a member of the exclusive club. Lord Willington had worn that tie when he had been Viceroy of India. A charming note accompanied the gifts.

It is an irony of sorts that I should bring in Vizzy in a column on Lala Amarnath. Neither ever mentioned the other in conversation with me. There was some history between the two. Vizzy was the captain of India’s team on its tour of England in 1936. Amarnath was a member of the team. Amarnath was sent home from that tour because he had an awful row with Vizzy. It earned Amarnath the title of the ‘stormy petrel’ of Indian cricket, something he was never able to shake off. But he was one of the world’s great cricketers and no one played the cover drive so imperiously as he did.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)