'Anywhere for cricket'

Ramachandra Guha is a fan of Suresh Menon's biography of the Bishan Singh Bedi - Bishan: Portrait of a Cricketer - an effort he describes as "rich, detailed, affectionate, yet not uncritical". Writing in the Telegraph, Guha lauds his hero-turned-friend Bedi, one of the most original voices in Indian cricket, and a man who was ready to go anywhere for the good of cricket.

Menon speaks movingly of Bedi’s generosity to young cricketers. The former India captain regularly takes youngsters on educative tours of England, raising funds and arranging matches for them himself. Each time Menon himself visited his subject, he met cricketers from the mofussil staying at Bedi’s home. This nobility of spirit manifested itself early. An old teacher of Bedi’s told Menon that as a schoolboy he was often seen wheeling around a disabled classmate. “Former players have reduced ‘giving back to the game’ to a cliché,” writes Menon, “Bedi has rescued the cliché and restored it to its original import.”