Lala Amarnath: `Quick to love and quick to fight'

Lala Amarnath who passed away early this morning at his residence in New Delhi was one of the more colourful characters who took up lodgings among the pages of Indian cricket history. An uncompromising bent of mind saw him enter into several flings with authority, the most stunning being a fallout with the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram on the 1936 tour of England, leading to his expulsion from the tour. As cavalier middle order batsman, dangerous new ball bowler or unconforming captain, a certain frothy effervescence was the hallmark of everything he did. His versatility was never in sharper focus than during the Bombay Test against the West Indies in 1948/49. An occasion when he captained, batted, bowled, fielded and for good measure took five catches as wicket keeper, filling in for the injured Probir Sen.

Amarnath's Test baptism was typically ostentatious as he top scored in each innings at the Bombay Gymkhana Ground in December 1933. The second innings effort of 118 bestowed upon him the honour of becoming India's first ever Test centurion. When his hundred arrived in under two hours, the crowd went berserk, sparking a noisy pitch invasion, and as he trudged back to the pavilion at the end of the day, women were reported to have showered him with jewellery. His captain and batting partner CK Nayudu was so moved that after completing the run, he left the crease in haste to congratulate the callow 22-year-old, when the ball was not quite dead. Jardine gave an implicit shake of the head to the wicket keeper and a possible contretemps was forestalled.

Amarnath's highest score in 38 subsequent Test innings was a modest 62 and a Test batting average of a shade over 24 hardly did justice to a generously endowed talent. Indeed he achieved greater success as a niggling medium pacer who could cut the ball either way off the wicket. He took five wickets in an innings in successive Tests on the 1946 tour of England, bowling more than fifty overs on each occasion. In the first of those games, at Lord's, the Lala hustled out in quick succession Hutton, Washbrook, Hammond and Compton, as formidable a top four as ever graced a cricket field. He could be quite relentless in attack and Sujit Mukherjee recalls him bowling to Hanif Mohammed "over and over from the Churchgate end at Brabourne Stadium with the field of two silly mid-offs, gully, slip, wicketkeeper standing up, legslip, three short legs and a silly mid-on"!

His best shot was the off drive and Mukherjee says, "not to have seen Amarnath drive was like not having heard the Prince of Denmark soliloquize." Amarnath's high noon as a batsman came on the 1947/48 tour of Australia when he topped the tour averages with 1162 runs at 58.1 including 144 and 94 not out v South Australia, 171 v Tasmania, 172 v Queensland and an incandescent unbeaten 228, after walking in at 0/3, against a Victorian attack comprising Johnston, Johnson, Loxton and Ring, all of whom bowled against India in the Test matches that summer. But he could scrape together only 140 runs in the Tests, one of those inexplicable occurences that still baffles the imagination. He had no such problems with the ball, grabbing 13 wickets at 28 apiece against a forbidding Aussie batting line-up, including the scalp of Don Bradman out hit wicket for the sole time in his career.

Following the Caribbean tour, Amarnath's rebelliousness erupted again in a clash with Board President Anthony de Mello over a pay dispute amongst other issues, leading to his relievement from the captaincy. He was to return as captain and win two Test matches against Pakistan in 1952/53, ending his international career at the advanced age of 41 years & 95 days, which makes him still the oldest player ever to have represented India in a Test match. Indeed the Lala's Test career spanned 20 seasons, unsurpassed in the durability stakes by fellow Indians.

As a captain, Lala was impulsive and risktaking and his methods sometimes recoiled on him. He asked Dattu Phadkar to pepper the West Indies batsmen with bumpers in the Madras Test of 1948/49, provoking Prior Jones and co. to give it back in full measure when the turn came for India to bat. Against Pakistan at Madras four years later, the visitors were nine down on the first day but Amarnath instructed his bowlers not to take the last wicket as India would then have to negotiate a few uncomfortable minutes towards the close. A palpable leg before was therefore not claimed by any of the players. Next day the pair of Zulfiqar Ahmed and Amir Elahi extended their association to 104 runs until the captain took it upon himself to break the stand.

Towards the end of the decade, Amarnath also presided as Chairman of Selectors in which capacity he was compelled by extenuating circumstances to appoint four captains in the course of a single series against the West Indies in 1958/59. Two of his sons Mohinder and Surinder played Test cricket while the third Rajinder was a first class cricketer. In the sunset of his life, he remained forthright as ever and if one were to ferret out an epitaph for him, there could be none more apt than a remark by his contemporary, Mushtaq Ali in the course of his memoirs, 'Cricket Delightful'. Said Mushtaq, "Lala Amarnath was an impetuous man, quick to love and quick to fight".