The cricket world is made up of much more than just players and officials. There are ‘characters’ who somehow attach themselves to teams. They start as camp-followers and end up as being a part of scene, enriching it and even getting famous.
There was “Lumboo” Ansari who was an accountant and though his main pursuit was playing bridge, and he was a very good player, somehow he became our scorer in the commentary-box. ‘Lumboo’ was meticulous about keeping score and if there was any discrepancy between the official score and his score, the official score was wrong. He took great pains to have it corrected and one had to intervene in the many heated arguments between him and the official scorer.
He was also something of a bully. He would pass on a chit to us of some sort of landmark like a record partnership or some other trivia and if we ignored it, he would place the chit in front of us and point to it impatiently. He would not be satisfied until his piece of information was relayed to the listeners. During the lunch and tea intervals, he would stay in the commentary-box and adjust his books, as it were, and when play was getting ready to start he would send some factotum to locate Jamsheed Marker or me and we get a terse message to get back in the commentary-box so that he could brief us about what had transpired in terms of runs scored or overs bowled and what lay ahead in the matter of statistics.
‘Lumboo’ was a man of strong likes and dislikes. He was an occasional visitor to Zelin’s Coffee House where a few journalists would gather for lunch and try and re-arrange the political scheme of things. Sometimes, after lunch we would go to someone’s house and play bridge. Invariably, I found myself as his partner and although he was a bad-tempered bridge player, he was good enough for the both of us and we would win.
One day he decided that he had had enough of his government job and he resigned and packed his bags and migrated to London. There he found a good job and prospered within the framework of moderation and bought himself a house and played the impeccable host to me whenever I was in London. As a show of his discontent, he told me that he had switched off cricket and now followed football. It seemed to me to be a metaphor for his disconnect with Pakistan.
When Pakistan toured England in 1967, he refused to see any of the matches but was happy to drive me to some of the county matches. He would deposit me and return and if required would return to pick me up. I did the next best thing. I started to take an interest in football. He followed Leeds and because of George Best, football’s Dennis the Menace, I took a shine to Manchester United. But he was such a good man and he had a wonderful family and his home in London was home to me. His wife only spoke Urdu and I got the impression that she did not speak any English. Yet she surprised the hell out of me when she told me that she had not only become computer-literate but had been able to land a good job and was in line for a promotion. Empower our Pakistan women and they will lift the world from its axis. As my visits to London got fewer and fewer and shorter and shorter, I started to lose touch with him. It was a friendship that I had valued but did not realize how much till it turned into a memory when ‘Lumboo’ passed away.
Brigadier Hesky Baig was in a class by himself. He does not qualify as a strictly cricket person though it was through cricket that I first met him. It was in 1955 when the visiting Indian team was playing a match against a Services XI at Rawalpindi. Karachi was still the capital of Pakistan and Islamabad a yet unborn dream. Rawalpindi was a garrison town and it reminded me of Ghorpuri, a military suburb of Pune and where my father had commanded the Indian Military Hospital. Rawalpindi had its Flashman’s Hotel and a Mall and its tongas and it rolled up its streets after sunset.
Radio Pakistan informed us that a military officer would be joining the commentary team and sure enough Hesky Baig turned up in uniform. Was I expected to salute him? I need not have worried for he introduced himself and immediately announced that he knew nothing of cricket and expected “you chaps” to help him through. He spoke in a clipped accent that was fashionable then among military officers, a touch of the koi hai and bandoobust and sub cheez and whacko. He was being modest when he said that he knew nothing of cricket but not enough to be doing the cricket commentary and described a bowler delivering a ball as “up and over.”
Such was his nature, he was open and forthcoming and he laughed easily, that he and I became instant friends, a friendship that grew and grew. I remember that match for one other reason. I was covering the tour for The Statesman, India’s most respected newspaper and we were already showing symptoms of paranoia and I was told that some agencies were interested in my antecedents. I was not particularly pushed and many years later, I confronted the head on one of the agencies, he had retired and he told me that it was just routine. Into every life, a little rain must fall.
Hesky, of course, was a world renowned polo player and was a personal friend of Prince Phillip and every summer he went to England to play for Lord Cowdray’s team and there he mingled with England’s blue-blood, the elite of the elite, the sort of people who apart from playing polo also rode with the hounds for a sport called fox-hunting, described by Oscar Wilde as “the English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”
Hesky never flaunted these high connections. At heart he was a simple man. He took an interest in all sports and even did some commentary on tennis. He had a commanding personality and stood out in a crowd but there was always a hearty greeting for his friends from across a crowded room. Even as he aged, his handshake was firm. That’s what I best remember about one of Pakistan’s most distinguished son — his hand shake. “Take it easy Hesky,” I would tell him. “I’m not as strong as you are.”
But to be one of the world’s best polo players you need a firm grasp on the stick. Hesky fought age and illness but in the end he had go unto that good night.
The cricket world is made up of much more than just players and officials. There are ‘characters’ who somehow attach themselves to teams. They start as camp-followers and end up as being a part of scene, enriching it and even getting famous.
