They too played for India

From S. Giridhar, India
It is a lazy Sunday afternoon and it seems the entire neighbourhood is having its siesta. I cannot sleep in the afternoons and in boredom reach for my laptop to read some cricket news. I am taken aback by an item tucked away in an inside page of the website - T E Srinivasan the very elegant Tamil Nadu batsman who played a solitary test match for India in 1981 is battling cancer with great courage.

My mind instantly starts thinking of all those cricketers who played only the odd test or two for India. How unlucky were they? Surely TE deserved more than just one chance? Ask any one who saw him hit dazzling centuries for Tamil Nadu in Ranji Trophy, for South Zone in the Duleep Trophy and against visiting countries and for Rest of India in Irani Trophy matches and they will nod most vehemently. An earlier generation will similarly vouch for how unlucky Ramesh Saxena the stylist with a very high back lift was to have played just a solitary test for India. Search some more and you will discover more such solitary test hard luck stories.

But then you pause and ask yourself, wont they feel happy that at least they played a test while many of their colleagues were not even that lucky? Would not those dozen other players have given their right arm to have played just once for India? Who do you think is more unlucky? Whom do you think did fate treat more cavalierly? Whose was the greater chagrin? Who is the more unrequited player? Is it the ‘one test’ player for whom the door to Shangri-La was opened tantalizingly briefly only to be shut in his face? Or is it the player who waited 10, 15 even 20 years in vain for the door to open so that he could just have a glimpse of Shangri-La?

And I start listing in my mind cricketers who ended their careers never having played for India but were perhaps just a selector’s vote away from eternal glory. Rajinder Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar, Amarjit Kaypee, Bhaskar Pillai, Hari Gidwani, Michael Dalvi, V Sivaramakrishnan, Satwender Singh, Kanwaljit Singh, Pandurang Salgaoncar ... the list seems endless. Their records and their performances were no less than that of their contemporaries who played for India. It just seemed they were not destined to wear India colours. It takes us just a couple of players’ stories to understand that it is often just a hair’s breadth between fame and obscurity.

Let me begin with a batsman from the North, Hari Gidwani who did so much in Varsity cricket that he was touted as a sure shot test batsman. It is the winter of 1974 and West Indies have come to India to play 5 tests. India has just received the drubbing of their lifetime in England (remember we were shot out for 42 at Lords?) and the team is in complete disarray. Things worsen as Lloyd’s men pulverize India in the first two tests. 0-2 down and three tests to go; Indian selectors patience with the regular players is running out. Batting places are up for grabs and the selectors are ready to take risks. And so it is in this scenario that Gidwani plays for Combined Universities against the touring West Indians. It is clear that if Gidwani scores runs in this game he would walk into the test team for the third test. But Gidwani fails in this match. Instead, a dour, bespectacled batsman from M S University Baroda less gifted than Gidwani but who hated to give his wicket away scores runs and grabs that batting spot in the Indian team. He proceeds to play for India with some if not remarkable distinction over the next 10 years. That stodgy batsman was Anshuman Gaekwad. Gidwani, well he never got a look–in again. He kept playing for Delhi and scoring runs; he went to Bihar and again piled up tons of runs for them; he scored almost every time he went to bat. But he never played for India. Does he agonize over what might have been? Can one game, one ball, one error decide your fate so irrevocably. For Hari Gidwani it did.

My next story is about Padmakar Shivalkar and Rajinder Goel. Between 1960 and 1980 India had 4 left arm spinners, any of whom would have walked into any test side in the world except India. Except India, because this was the period when Bishen Bedi played for India. All four were test match material but there was only place in the Indian team for a left arm spinner. Padmakar Shivalkar plugged away relentlessly and remorselessly for Mumbai in Ranji Trophy and was the most crucial cog in their bowling wheel. And Rajinder Goel did identical duty for Delhi and Haryana. Over after over, season after season, from their teens, into their prime, and then into their late thirties, age catching up, shoulders getting sore, they toiled on. How strong must their will have been? How much must they have loved this game? How stoic and accepting must they have been? Knowing that the peerless Bedi could never be toppled from his perch they plugged away. Devastating and lethal on turning wickets, brave and skillful on heartless wickets they epitomized what cricket and team games are all about. What these two remarkable cricketers demonstrated over decades was a rare equilibrium and tranquility combined with limitless self confidence in their abilities.

It is quite the fashion these days to create “All time Great XI” or “The Best XI test players of my generation” but I think we would gladden the hearts of these wonderful but unlucky warriors if we could create the Best XI from among players who did not play for India. And if you set them up against an Indian XI they will make a real good fist of it. Of that I am sure.