Meeting Bishan Bedi

On his recent trip to India, Gideon Haigh was spellbound listening to the steady stream of stories during a dinner with Bishan Bedi. Haigh writes of Bedi's 'enormous natural warmth' and his razor-sharp memory in the Cuts and Glances blog.

Indeed, it's almost as though Bishan never ceased playing. It might have been forty years ago, for example, but he recalled bowling to Barry Richards for the first time as though it were yesterday. Richards was then at his Himalayan peak; Bishan's Northants teammates, he recalled, built the encounter up to such a degree that he experienced a rare degree of apprehension, even nervousness. His plan became to wrong foot the batsman with close fielders: a slip, silly point, short mid wicket, leg slip. It got an immediate reaction. 'This will be interesting,' Richards said to the Northants keeper George Sharp. The South African came down the wicket to Bishan's first four deliveries and smashed them to the boundary. On the fifth, a little slower, a little shorter, he also advanced, but was beaten and stumped.

'Batsmen have egos, Gideon,' said Bishan. 'Egos!' Even Sachin? Even Sachin. On one Australian tour of India, he tried explaining this to Shane Warne: 'I told Shane that he had to make Tendulkar think. That there is nothing you can do about a straight six. You cannot set a field for it. You can only applaud.' But Warne, he sensed, was already somewhat in dread of Tendulkar, and loath to throw down any gauntlet that might be picked up.