The appeal I didn't withdraw

It was sometime in the early months of 1980. An inconsequential and long-forgotten match in the annals of cricket but one that left an imprint on me. The Jesuit college I attended in Madras had about 600 students living in its hostels. We were divided into five or six teams that competed across all sports through the year. The range of talent was quite wide, with seriously good players rubbing shoulders with game triers of limited ability. For the most part it was all good fun, something to do on weekends in an era where the television had one channel, social media was an unknown concept, and Prohibition ensured we could not buy alcohol we could not afford.

Our inter-hostel cricket matches were played on a soccer field in the shadow of a lovely steeple and adjacent to a small churchyard. In a soft-focus photograph the tableau might even have been mistaken for a village green in England rather than dusty old Madras.

Towards the end of the cricketing calendar in my final year, the two teams vying for the title of champion were set to meet on a Saturday. It was a quick-and-dirty 30-overs a side affair. Our regular captain could not make the match (I forget whether it was the after-effects of his Friday-night shenanigans or some more legitimate reason), and I suddenly found myself leading the side. More than any ability, I think seniority and enthusiasm were my main assets. We mustered just over a hundred runs, and I remember biffing the ball about for 24 as a lower-order batsman.

Our opponents were soon in trouble, with six wickets down for about 30-odd runs. My slow-medium cutters (in my own mind I was channelling Kapil Dev) had accounted for a wicket or two, and our portly offspinner was on a tear. My very good friend (let's call him Zed) came to the crease amid a flurry of wickets. Then an incident occurred that I could not get out of my mind for a long time.

Zed was a dangerous batsman once he got his eye in. Powerfully built and with excellent eye-hand coordination, he could hit the ball a long way if he got past the edgy beginning. On a recent Saturday he had hit a rapid-fire 80-odd, including a rain of sixes and fours in one over off a respectable bowler. We knew that if we could get Zed out quickly, the game was over.

Our offie was on the attack and I surrounded Zed with a slew of close-in fielders - moving in for the kill as it were. Zed sparred at one just outside off and the wicketkeeper and the cordon around the bat went up in a huge appeal for a thin edge. I was at mid-off and a bit too far to hear an edge or really know what had happened. The umpire (a neutral) thought about it and doubtfully raised his finger. The conviction of the appeal seemed to influence him more than anything else. Zed, who would have walked away had he thought he was out, stood at the crease, staring in disbelief at the umpire. I had run up to the crowd of celebrating fielders around our bowler and it was a minute before I realised Zed was still at the crease - and that now he was looking in my direction.

I made eye contact with the wicketkeeper, my silent query obvious to both of us: do you think that caught the edge? He shrugged his shoulders, in effect saying, "I am not sure - I could go either way on this one." In this flurry of eloquent non-verbal communication, it became rapidly clear to me that I had a choice: if I withdrew the appeal and recalled Zed, none of my players would have objected, for no one seemed entirely convinced it was out. On the other hand, it was very close and the umpire had given him out, and per the rules the matter ended there. Of course, weighing in the back of my mind was the fact that if I did nothing, the match was for all intents over and we would have won. I chose to do nothing.

Zed walked past me without a word and I could not bring myself to look at him. The remaining three wickets fell in rapid succession and we had won. My team seemed jubilant but I could not keep my mind off Zed's dismissal and second-guessing my decision to let things be. I was torn and energetically argued both sides of the case inside my head. Zed congratulated me after the match and life went on. We never really spoke about the incident and it didn't seem to affect our friendship much at all. A few weeks later it was graduation time and I remember all of us celebrating our impending entry into the real world with much gusto and little wisdom.

Zed and I lost touch after the end of that school year. I went off to Delhi for my Masters and thereafter departed to the United States for grad school. Zed returned to the same college for another two years to finish his Masters, and presumably continued to play inter-hostel cricket with all its charms for a while longer. For the next 30-odd years I had no idea where he was and what had become of him.

Yet I could not let go of the incident. The debate in my mind that began with the umpire raising his finger never ended. Gradually, though, I became convinced that I had made a mistake: I should have withdrawn the appeal and had the umpire recall Zed to the crease. The allure of a silly and meaningless win had clouded my thinking. And in any event the victory had proved to be utterly hollow. I cannot say that I learned any valuable life lessons in all this.

I can say that I have always had a healthy respect for batsmen who walk, for fielders who immediately make clear a catch is doubtful, and for captains like Vishy who recalled Bob Taylor during the Jubilee Test against England, around the time my incident with Zed occurred. That line from Kipling, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…" pretty much says it all for me when it comes to this sort of thing.

Last summer I was in Chennai catching up on old times with a college friend when talk turned to Zed. My friend told me Zed was a successful businessman downstate and gave me his number. I called him up and a brief but delightful conversation ensued as we gave each other abbreviated versions of our lives since we'd last met. At one point I said, "Hey Zed, do you remember that match - that final - you know, the one in which you were given out and didn't think you were out?" Zed replied, "Which one? I don't remember any such thing. Are you sure it was me?" I tried a bit harder, explaining the event in more detail and trying to jog his memory. Nothing doing - Zed simply had no recall about the event at all.

I had thought about how our conversation would go before calling Zed and had resolved that I would apologise for not recalling him to the crease. I saw it as a long overdue mea culpa - one that would settle matters with at least one tiny bit of my past. I had not remotely considered the possibility that Zed would not remember the incident at all. As we might say in India, sometimes life is like that only.