Sankaran Krishna
A team that could beat the best of Bombay
An all-time Karnataka XI, featuring one current batsman and several legends of Indian cricket
Sankaran Krishna
11-Mar-2017
With eight Ranji Trophy titles and six Irani Trophy wins, Karnataka are second only to Bombay in terms of their prominence in Indian cricket. (A faraway second, one might add, as Bombay/Mumbai have as many as 41 Ranji titles - just one less than all other winners combined.)
As I found on undertaking the exercise of compiling an all-time Karnataka XI, such a side will hold its own against Bombay's best (it's arguably better balanced and has a superior bowling attack) and might give even international teams a run for their money.
My openers would be KL Rahul and (a bit of surprise here to some, no doubt) Budhi Kunderan. While Rahul's fledgling Test record is already quite impressive, his first-class average of 56.59 from 51 matches and aggregate of over 4300 runs put him among Karnataka's best by some distance.
Full postWhen you're neutral (calm) v when you're partisan (crazy)
How we watch and respond to cricket differently depending on who's playing
Sankaran Krishna
30-Jan-2017
Do we as cricket fans appreciate the game and the skills involved in a deeper way when we are neutrals rather than partisans? Are we more balanced and sensible when watching games that do not involve our own teams? Are we less likely to vent spleen and question the sanity (or worse) of batsmen or bowlers when they appear to fail? A couple of occasions in recent times got me thinking about such questions - and answering all of them in the affirmative.
When I switched on the live telecast of the final day of the second Test between Pakistan and Australia, it was well past lunch at the MCG. Day four had ended with Australia about 20 runs ahead and still playing out their first innings, so the match seemed headed for a draw.
As luck would have it, I tuned in just as Younis Khan was caught at short leg off Nathan Lyon and Pakistan were three down for 63. I was a bit surprised that they were over a hundred runs in arrears (the Aussies must have gone hell for leather in the pre-lunch session, I thought to myself). There were still about 47 overs left in the match, which had suddenly come alive. The captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, walked to the middle to join Azhar Ali, who had made an unbeaten 205 in the first innings and looked in very good nick.
Full postThe best of the Bombay boys
Which players would make it to an all-time XI of the powerhouse Indian domestic side?
Sankaran Krishna
04-Jan-2017
ESPNcricinfo recently featured a piece on an all-time Barbados XI. It was a collection of the most incredible talent, capable of holding its own against any all-time World XI. Barbados is a tiny island, measuring about 21 miles by 14 miles and with a total population of less than 300,000, which makes this abundance of cricketing talent truly astonishing.
That got me thinking: what might an all-time Bombay XI look like? Mumbai is home to about 20 million people today and one of the world's largest metropolises. Quite a world removed from tiny Barbados. How might their best XIs stack up against each other? What follows is the result of my ruminations. I hope you enjoy it, though I suspect (as is always the case with such compilations) there will be much to disagree with as well.
The two opening slots were the easiest to write in: Vijay Merchant and Sunil Gavaskar. Merchant ended with a Test average of 47.72 and a first-class average of 71.64, and was regarded as one of the finest players of fast bowling in his time. Gavaskar's record as opener is peerless, and he accumulated the vast majority of his runs without a helmet against some of the fiercest fast bowling the world has ever seen. At 5'7" (Merchant) and 5'6" (Gavaskar) they may well be the shortest opening pair ever, but they made up in guts and hunger what they lacked in height.
Full postIn praise of two batsmen who chose to be dour
Chetan Chauhan and Yashpal Sharma had shots in their repertoire but put them away to play it safe for the sake of the team
Sankaran Krishna
25-Nov-2016
When you're a young cricketer of very limited ability but unlimited passion, finding role models can be difficult. It seemed a bit ludicrous to pretend I was channelling Sunny Gavaskar or Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi in my batting when I could barely get bat on ball let alone send it scudding to the fence with a flick of my wrists. Rather befittingly then, I developed an attachment to a couple of batsmen who seemed to epitomise the triumph of determination over talent, or of grit and gumption over grace, if you will: Chetan Chauhan and Yashpal Sharma.
These were guys who never gave their wicket away with a fancy hook or an airy waft. Each run was eked out in painstaking fashion, and regrettably, even at the end of a sizeable knock from them, you would be hard put to remember a single stroke. They were the precise opposite of blithe spirits like David Gower or VVS Laxman, the guys who made it all look so easy and effortless. And yet, as I will soon show, this initial impression of mine that Chauhan and Yashpal were only capable of playing stodgy cricket was just plain wrong.
When Chauhan began his Test career, he was soon described as a strokeless wonder. On debut against New Zealand in 1969, despite rather startlingly hitting a six in his brief first innings, in the second innings Chauhan pottered for 34 runs in 200 minutes with no boundaries. He was similarly glacial in the next couple of Tests he played that season and was duly dropped.
Full postR Prabhakar, the obscure cricketer imprinted on my mind
Forty years ago, the Buchi Babu tournament was a crowd-puller in Chennai
Sankaran Krishna
22-Oct-2016
Test matches played in largely empty stadia have become a depressingly familiar sight for cricket fans of late. Yet one of the remarkable memories for anyone who grew up in Chennai in the 1970s were the huge crowds, often running into the thousands, which used to watch the annual Buchi Babu Memorial cricket tournament every August-September. And these were matches that weren't even rated first-class.
You got to watch past greats like Polly Umrigar, Ramakant Desai and Bapu Nadkarni, current Test cricketers like Ashok Mankad and S Venkataraghavan, rising stars like Brijesh Patel and Karsan Ghavri, and nearly men like Kenia Jayantilal, Parthasarthi Sharma and Dhiraj Parsana playing on small grounds with practically no facilities and nothing more than a line of white chalk separating spectator from player.
Private corporations like the Associated Cement Company (ACC) and Mafatlal sponsored strong teams filled with Test and Ranji stars as did the public-sector State Bank of India (SBI). Then there were the local clubs, like the Jolly Rovers, replete with some of the best cricketers in the south. The matches were keenly contested two-day affairs and mostly played on matting wickets.
Full postHeroes and mobs: my first live match
A nine-year-old's initiation into big-time cricket, featuring Prasanna, Lawry, Gleeson and a boisterous Bangalore crowd
Sankaran Krishna
25-Sep-2016
The winter of 1969 was a time of great excitement in Indian cricket, especially when viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old schoolboy in Bangalore. India were locked in a competitive and often contentious Test series against Bill Lawry's visiting Australians and were trailing 1-2 at the end of four Tests, with a chance to draw level in the final Test, in Madras.
Two Bangalore boys - Erapalli Prasanna and G Viswanath - had starred in the series. Prasanna was collecting wickets by the bucketful and was instrumental in India winning the Delhi Test. Meanwhile Viswanath's dazzling century on debut in Kanpur (25 boundaries in an innings of 137) marked the moment I became a lifelong cricket fan. Adding to the buzz was the upcoming wedding of India's captain, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, to the glamorous movie star Sharmila Tagore.
In those days, cricket tours were fairly lengthy affairs and Tests were sandwiched between three-day matches against various zonal teams. South Zone were to battle the Aussies just before Christmas in Bangalore, and my excitement mounted as I realised I was about to see the likes of Pataudi, ML Jaisimha (the captain), Prasanna, Viswanath, Syed Abid Ali and S Venkatraghavan, not to mention Lawry, Ian Chappell, Keith Stackpole, Ian Redpath and Doug Walters in real life.
Full postThe jack of all sports
How is it that the kids who are the best at one sport are invariably also good at others?
Sankaran Krishna
19-Aug-2016
A schoolboy's life in middle-class India in the late 1960s and early 1970s moved seamlessly from one sport to another with no evident guiding hand instructing us on when the switch was to be made. You played cricket for a few months, and then suddenly the field hockey sticks would come out, then it was time to kick a football around, and soon your attention turned to table tennis or badminton - more commonly the shuttlecock variety; less frequently the one played with a little woolly ball.
Such sports were interspersed with games of a more provincial provenance such as kabaddi, gilli-danda, seven-stones, and other assorted country cousins. Looking back, I have no idea how we knew to move from one to the other: the sequence went without saying, as it came without saying.
You might think the sheer abundance of sports would have made for an egalitarian playground in which those with limited talent in, say, cricket, could make up for it by excelling at soccer or field hockey or kabaddi. But you would be, for the most part, quite wrong. It was evident that the divine distribution of sporting talent or acumen was both unfair and capricious: the same guys who scored centuries in cricket were invariably the ones who banged in the goals in hockey or football, or walked away with the trophy at the end of the table tennis tournaments. These neighborhood dadas commanded the respect of everyone else and were much revered for their sporting acumen.
Full postWere the '70s really a golden era for India?
Apart from the famous wins in West Indies and England, India spent the decade doing a fair bit of losing
Sankaran Krishna
08-Jul-2016
"The older I get, the better I was" goes a familiar saying, referring to the human tendency to embellish the past and exaggerate one's abilities in a now-distant youth. I am often reminded of this when I encounter references to India's alleged glory days in the 1970s, when, one may be led to believe, the side were world beaters.
According to this myth, the quartet of great spinners - Chandra, Bedi, Prasanna and Venkat - backed by sharp close-in fielders and doughty batsmen made India a formidable opponent, especially at home.
A nine-year-old who became a fan of the game the moment GR Viswanath hit that debut century against Bill Lawry's visiting Australians in the 1969-70 series, I was a keen witness to the decade that followed, and humbly suggest a fair amount of selective recall has rendered that era a tad more glorious than it really was.
Full postWhen sixes were rare
In decades past, when a batsman cleared the boundary in a Test match, it was quite the event
Sankaran Krishna
24-May-2016
It may be hard for contemporary fans to believe this, but there was a time when a Test match six was a rare event and one that was much feted and discussed. The next day's newspaper reports invariably carried a photograph of the batsman accomplishing the feat, and schoolboys across the land did their best imitations of the shot for weeks thereafter.
In the final Test between India and England at the Brabourne Stadium in 1973, Gundappa Viswanath hooked one from Chris Old and the ball almost landed - if newspaper reports were to be believed - in an adjacent swimming pool. Little Vishy, despite his powerful forearms and rasping square-cuts, was never expected to go aerial, let alone hit one out of the park. The sense of surprise and delight that engulfed Indian cricket fans then is still vivid in my memory. Though he proceeded to amass over 6000 runs in 155 Test innings, Vishy managed only six sixes.
A six, especially in a Test match, was no mean feat back then. Boundaries were invariably a full 75 yards away and bats were emaciated poor cousins of the spring-loaded bludgeons in use today. Anything that wasn't timed well enough produced either a skier or an easy catch in the infield. Coaches dinned the importance of playing the ball along the turf into you, and only during last call at nets were you allowed to slog.
Full postFeasting, grooving, dancing at Chepauk
In the '70s, home-cooked South Indian lunches and Hindi film music contributed to the experience of a Test match day in Madras
Sankaran Krishna
24-Apr-2016
Watching live Test cricket in India in the 1970s was often an ordeal. Huge and noisy crowds crammed into stadiums with minimal facilities and uncomfortable seating (just concrete platforms for those in the peanut gallery) made for a gruelling experience. Though cricket was a winter game in India back then, with the partial exception of venues such as Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, spectators elsewhere sweltered in the heat, with handkerchiefs, towels and newspapers serving as improvised sunshades.
My experiences as an avid cricket fan back then largely centered around Chepauk in Madras (now Chennai), a city that for all its many virtues certainly had nothing that remotely resembled what one might call winter. In these days of empty stadiums for Test matches, it's hard to believe that lines would form at 7am or earlier as close to 50,000 people made their way into the ground. They were all ticket holders, but as there was no assigned seating in the cheaper stands, you had to get there early to guarantee yourself a good spot - defined as one with a clear view, and which let you escape the worst of the sunshine as the day wore on. Given the Neanderthal facilities, breakfast, lunch and tea (or rather, coffee) had to be packed into the multi-tiered tiffin carriers and thermos flasks. The shiny metal of these containers often created problems, as players would suddenly find a disconcerting glare emanating from the stands - until the erring object was spotted and put back into a cloth bag.
Food was an important element in lasting out the ordeal. While the top tiers of the carrier were for snacky foods like idli, dosa and vada, the middle and lower tiers were for the full three-course southern meal of sambhar rice, rasam rice and curd rice - or for variation, tamarind rice, lemon rice or tomato rice. Separate plastic bags containing crisp poppadams, banana wafers, pickle and water bottles completed the ensemble. Test matches at Chepauk often coincided with the harvest festival of Pongal, so delicious sweet rice or sakkarai pongal, garnished with ghee-fried cashews and raisins, was an added attraction.
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