Talking about Gupte

"Fergie" Gupte is no more. Those of us who grew up watching cricket in the 50s remember the seeming effortlessness of his action and the mesmeric influence he had on batsmen despite his tiny, frail physique. Subhash Gupte had a neat little action, and, unless my memory tricks me, he had the palms of his hands pointing towards him even as his arms went up during his predelivery stride.

For a leg-spinner, Gupta had a remarkably high arm action, and his flight, while tantalising and deceptive, was rarely extravagant. Like all great spinners, he had the uncanny knack of inducing an optical illusion in batsmen of the ball heading for a certain spot on the pitch and invariably dropping just short of that. His control was perhaps unmatched by leg-spinners of most eras, though his admirer and successor for a mere two Tests, V V Kumar, came close to it, as did Shane Warne.

My first memory of Gupte is from the Madras Test against New Zealand in January 1956, when his nine wickets in the match were completely overshadowed by the world-record opening partnership between Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy. Yet he made an instant impact on young spectators with his buttoned-down sleeves fluttering in the breeze and the clinical precision of his bowling.

For weeks on end, countless boys around India tried to bowl legbreaks and googlies in the Gupte manner, all with slightly different results, no doubt a result of the complete absence of full-sleeved shirts in their wardrobes. The walk from school to bus-stop and bus-stop to home now became a succession of maiden overs and devastating googlies so that England or the West Indies were reduced to two-digit totals for the loss of all their whimpering batsmen. (The love affair with Gupte continued through the next Test at Madras against Ian Johnson's Australians, but given a boy's natural inclinations, it was not long before Ghulam Ahmed took over, bringing with him a propensity to walk taller and swing the arms in an imposing swagger.)

Conversations with two great cricketers come to mind as I try to remember the little details of the Gupte magic. The first was with Neil Harvey on a visit to Chennai during the 1998-99 Chennai Test between India and Australia. Harvey remembered how he went after the little leg-spinner after his captain Richie Benaud had left a newspaper clipping under his breakfast plate at Bombay on the morning of the Test match there in 1960. According to the left-hander, the story had described what Gupte would do to him, and it had not been flattering. The message from the captain was clear: it was Harvey's job to hit Gupte out of the attack.

Harvey recalled accomplishing his mission successfully. To his astonishment and the utter delight of his team, the selectors dropped the little leg-spinner for the next Test, even though Australia had been in all sorts of trouble against him before the Harvey assault.

I also had the privilege of listening to Sir Gary Sobers' views on Gupte at the Madras Cricket Club a couple of years later. Sobers' evaluation of Gupte as a greater bowler than Shane Warne is by now common knowledge. After explaining to the small audience why he thought so, he turned to me - to my complete surprise - and asked who, in my opinion, was the next best Indian leg-spinner of the orthodox variety. Was it Baloo Gupte, he wondered. I pointed to the sprightly young fellow of 65 summers sitting just a few yards away.

Why did I consider V V Kumar superior to other leg-spinners, the great West Indian persisted. "Because, not only did he bamboozle batsmen with his flight and variety, he was also the most accurate wrist-spinner around," I told him. "Yes, I can see that. The old chap still lands it on a perfect length in the nets at his coaching camp," agreed Sir Gary, who had been flown in by the MAC Spin Academy for a brief stint. Sobers' assessment of Gupte as the finest exponent of his craft will, given his stature, perhaps live on as the most famous eulogy of a great spinner.