The Picador Book of Cricket

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by Ramachandra Guha


  His 203 not out, coming within a month of his 121 and 109, caused Indians to dub him Pakistan’s wonder boy. His teammates nicknamed him Duleep (after the leading Indian film star). As the young batsman walked off, Skipper Kardar greeted him in English: ‘Well done, Duleep! Try to repeat it in the Test.’ Unlucky teammates rubbed shoulders with Hanif to change their fortune. The Pakistanis cancelled all evening engagements and held a team dinner . . .

  The Brabourne Stadium pitch was in different mood for the third Test. A rare tantrum disturbed its placidity, as if it resented being soaked by a heavy dew then baked by the fiery sun. By taking six wickets before lunch, Amarnath and Mankad put the Pakistanis in desperate straits. When the Indians led by 197, Amarnath declared their innings closed late on the second day, to make the tourists begin their second innings in the last half-hour, after five hours fielding in the heat. The first wicket fell with one pitiable run on the board. If ever a side was doomed it was Pakistan, yet Hanif Mohammad and Waqar Hassan would not recognize the inevitable. In that crucial half-hour of the evening these two ex-pupils of Gover’s school were so determined to lose no more wickets that they scored only six runs between them, though Waqar, solidly built, is usually as full of strokes as of the spirit for big occasions.

  Through leaden-footed hours on the third day the pair strove on, with a constancy hardly to be expected of two batsmen only seventeen and twenty years of age. Amarnath tried six Indian bowlers against them – himself, Dani’s medium pace, Ghulam Ahmed and Hazare’s off spin, Gupte’s leg breaks and the left-hand pertinacity of Mankad. Mostly it was the left-hander, who a few months earlier had been hailed in England as Mankad the Magnificent when he brought off a treble of 72, 184 and 5 wickets in the Lord’s Test. Lunch interval came and went . . . tea . . . still they stayed. The sun was sinking redly as their second-wicket partnership rose, lifting with it Pakistan’s hopes of averting defeat. When they put on 150, reducing arrears to 47, the Muslim pair looked like batting throughout the day without loss of a wicket.

  Mankad broke the partnership at 165, when Waqar (65) played a ball around the corner and Hazare snapped up a catch. With this wicket Mankad adorned his magnificence as an all-rounder by completing the double of 100 wickets and 1,000 runs in his twenty-third Test match, four games fewer than the previous record by M. A. Noble for Australia nearly half a century earlier.

  Renewed hope sharpened India’s bowling and fielding in the last half-hour of the day, when Hanif had the nearness of a hundred to intensify the nervous strain of keeping his wicket intact for Pakistan. On 96 he cautiously played forward to Mankad, but the left-hander had deceived him with the pace; at silly mid-off Ramchand grasped the catch which cleared for India a path to victory always barred while this lad remained at the wicket. In his innings of about six hours, Hanif got within ten minutes of batting throughout a full day’s play for the second time in a week – an entry in the annals of cricket which I never expect to see inscribed in the schoolboyish hand of a seventeen-year-old . . .

  Outside cricket, Hanif Mohammad has held the inter-school badminton championship and his hobbies are music and swimming. He sat for his matriculation examination before the Pakistan team sailed to England in 1954. He was 19 years 19 weeks when the tour opened. A rainy season ruined it, but Hanif passed 1,000 runs in 30 innings. In the cold and the wet he had to wait two months for his first century in England; it ended at 140 when he was caught attempting his twenty-third four. The innings that opened connoisseurs’ eyes widest was on sticky Old Trafford turf, so different from Karachi’s mat. Making the ball jump bewilderingly, Bedser, Wardle and Glamorgan off-spinner Jim McConnon, in his first Test, settled Pakistan for 90. Kicking balls are most troublesome for a batsman only 5 ft 3 in, yet Hanif hung on for more than one-third of the total. He dropped many balls at the feet of crowding infielders and he took a number of blows on the body by dropping wrists and bat below those that could not be played safely . . .

  Like all batsmen and wicketkeepers, Hanif dearly loves to have a bowl. Knowing this, Kardar gave him the ball and a thrill by letting him open the bowling in the last quarter-hour of a Test at Calcutta. After two overs Kardar took him off to let someone else have a turn, whereupon Hanif told him beseechingly, ‘Skipper, after swinging the ball I can turn it from the off!’ Somerset folk saw a demonstration of even wider versatility when Hanif switched from right-to left-arm bowling twice in one over at Taunton and with a slow ball from his left hand snared his first victim in first-class cricket.

  In the final Test, Hanif’s small hand threw the ball that scattered the stumps to run out England’s last man, completing a win which sent Pakistanis in astrakhan caps delirious with joy. In their homeland thousands heard the finish on radio sets installed in the bazaars, and Prime Minister Mohammad Ali declared a school holiday. Nobody was more excited than the boys in the seats not long vacated by Hanif Mohammad and his teenage teammates.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  The tiny island of Barbados (165 square miles all told) has produced more great cricketers than nations a hundred times as big. Among the very best were the batsmen Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott and Frank Worrell, born within eighteen months of each other. The story is told of a visiting Archbishop of Canterbury who preached in Bridgetown’s St Michael’s Cathedral. He began by saying he had come to talk about the three Ws. A huge cheer went up, to become a collective groan when the prelate continued: ‘Yes, the three Ws – Work, Witness and Worship.’

  Later Bajan geniuses included Conrad Hunte, Wesley Hall and, above all, Garfield Sobers. One of his opponents, Hanif Mohammad, remarked that Sobers ‘was sent by God to earth to play cricket’. Certainly no cricketer, before or since, has been so variously gifted. Sobers was a world-class batsman who could bowl effectively in three different styles, and field superbly at short leg or in the covers. He exuded grace and genius: to watch him walk or put on his pads was to know one was in the presence of a master. One of my own abiding regrets is that I am too young to have seen Sobers in the flesh. But I have watched plenty of him on film. The Australian High Commission in New Delhi had tapes of two of his finest innings – the 132 in the Brisbane tied Test of 1960–1 and the 254 hit for the Rest of the World at Melbourne in 1971–2, which Sir Donald Bradman believed was the best knock ever played in Australia. Twice a year, for five years, I would borrow the reels from the High Commission and screen them at the University of Delhi.

  The great C. L. R. James was luckier than I. He grew up on Constantine and Headley, but then moved to the United States in 1938 (where he spent fifteen years) before being deported, because of his political views. James thus missed the best of the three Ws, but returned to civilization (and cricket) in time to catch the best of Sobers.

  C. L. R. JAMES

  A Representative Man (1969)

  The pundits colossally misunderstand Garfield Sobers – perhaps the word should be misinterpret, not misunderstand. Garfield Sobers, I shall show, is a West Indian cricketer, not merely a cricketer from the West Indies. He is the most typical West Indies cricketer that it is possible to imagine. All geniuses are merely people who carry to an extreme definitive the characteristics of the unit of civilization to which they belong and the special act or function which they express or practise. Therefore to misunderstand Sobers is to misunderstand the West Indies, if not in intention, by inherent predisposition, which is much worse. Having run up the red flag, I should at least state with whom I intend to do battle. I choose the least offensive and in fact he who is obviously the most well-meaning, Mr Denys Rowbotham of the Guardian of Friday 15 December 1967. Mr Rowbotham says of Sobers: ‘Nature, indeed, has blessed Sobers liberally, for in addition to the talents and reflexes, conditioned and instinctive, of a great cricketer, he has the eyes of a hawk, the instincts and suppleness of a panther, exceptional stamina, and apparently the constitution of an ox.’

  I could not possibly write that way about Garfield Sobers. I react strongly against it. I do not see him that way. I do
not see Hammond that way. I see Sobers always, except for one single occasion, as exactly the opposite, the fine fruit of a great tradition. That being stated, let us now move on to what must always be the first consideration in writing about a cricketer, what he has done and what he does: that is, a hard look at Sobers on the field of play.

  For Sobers the title of all-rounder has always seemed to me a circumspection. The Sobers of 1966 was not something new: that Sobers of 1966 had been there a long time. The truth is that Sobers for years now has had no superior in the world as an opening fast bowler.

  Here are some facts to substantiate this apparently extravagant claim: which even today many of the scribes (and there are among them undoubted Pharisees) do not yet know.

  It is the business of a fast bowler, opening the innings, to dismiss for small scores two or three of the first-line batsmen on the opposing side. If he does this and does it dramatically, then good captaincy will keep him in trim to make short work of the last two or three on the side, so ending with five or six wickets.

  In 1964, his last session for South Australia, Sobers, against Western Australia, bowled batsman No. 1 for 12, and had batsman No. 2 caught by wicketkeeper Jarman for 2. Against Queensland Jarman caught No. 2 off Sobers for 5, and Sobers bowled No. 3 for 1. Against the history-making New South Wales side, Sobers had Thomas, No. 1 caught by Lill for 0. He had No. 2, Simpson, caught by Jarman for 0. He then had Booth, No. 4, caught by Jarman for 0. He thus had the first three Australian Test players for 0 each. In the second innings he bowled Thomas for 3.

  South Australia’s last match was against the strong Victoria side. Sobers had Lawry, No. 1, caught by Jarman for 4; Potter, No. 3, caught by Lill for 0; Stackpole, No. 5, caught by Lill for 5. In the second innings Redpath, No. 2, was caught by Jarman for 0; Cowper, No. 4, was caught by Hearne for 0; Lawry, No. 1, was caught by Jarman off Sobers for 22. (Let us note in passing that in this match against Victoria, Sobers scored 124 and had also scored 124 in the game against New South Wales, the same in which he dismissed the three Test batsmen each for 0.)

  It is impossible to find within recent years another fast bowler who in big cricket so regularly dismissed for little or 0 the opening batsmen on the other side.

  His action as a pace bowler is the most orthodox that I know. It is not the classical perfection, above all the ease, of E. A. McDonald. Sobers gathers himself together and is obviously sparing no effort (a rare thing with his cricket) to put his whole body into the delivery. The result is that the ball leaves the ground at a pace quite inconsistent with what is a fast-medium run-up and delivery. It would be worthwhile to get the pace of his delivery mechanically timed at different stages, as well as the testimony of observant batsmen and observant wicketkeepers.

  There is nothing of the panther in the batting of Sobers. He is the most orthodox of great batsmen. The only stroke he makes in a manner peculiar to himself is the hook. Where George Headley used to face the ball square and hit across it, Denis Compton placed himself well outside it on the off side, and Walcott compromised by stepping backwards but not fully across the hitting, usually well in front of and not behind square leg, Sobers seems to stand where he is and depend upon wrist and eyesight to swish the short fast ball square to the leg boundary. Apart from that, his method, his technique is carried to an extreme where it is indistinguishable from nature.

  You see it in both his defensive and offensive strokes. He can, and usually does, play back to anything about which he has the slightest doubt. More rarely he uses a forward defensive stroke. But he never just plays forward to put the bat on the ball and kill it. He watches the ball off the pitch and, even in the most careful forward defensive, plays the ball away; very different from that modern master of the forward defensive, Conrad Hunte. Hunte from the advanced front foot (never advanced too far) plays what Ranjitsinhji used to insist on calling a back stroke. His type of mastery of the forward defensive gives us the secret of the capacity of Sobers to punish good-length bowling on anything like a reasonable wicket. He does not need the half-volley of a fast or fast-medium bowler to be able to drive. From a very high backlift he watches the ball that is barely over the good length, takes it on the rise and sends it shooting between mid-on and mid-off. That is a later acquisition to a stroke that he has always had: to move back and time the good length through the covers.

  The West Indian crowd has a favourite phrase for that stroke: ‘Not a man move.’ That stroke plus the ability to drive what is not a half-volley is the basis of the combination that makes Sobers the orthodox attacking player that he is. His aggressive play is very disciplined, which is shown by his capacity to lift the ball straight for six whenever he feels like it. But as a rule he reserves these paroxysms for occasions when the more urgent necessities of an innings have been safely fulfilled. It is possible that Sobers at times plays forward feeling for a slow ball, more often to a slow off-spin bowler, pitching on or just outside his off stump, going away. But I have to confess that I saw this and remembered previous examples when I was searching for a way in which as a captain I would plan to get him out.

  Yet I have seen the panther in Sobers. Not when he opened in a Test and hit Miller and Lindwall for 43 runs in 15 minutes. The balls were just not quite there and this neophyte justly put them away. No. The panther one day saw the cage door open. In 1959–60, MCC visited Trinidad in the course of the tour of the West Indies. In between the match against the territory and the Test match the players of the Test side had a practice game, Hall on one side and Sobers on the other. Ramadhin was on the side of Sobers and Hall bowling to him was extremely careful to bowl not too slow but not too fast and always at a good length: he was not going to run the risk of doing damage to one of the main West Indies bowlers. But when he bowled at Sobers, Hall made up for the restraint enforced when bowling to Ramadhin. He ran to the wicket and delivered as fast as he could, obviously determined not to forgo the pleasure of sending Sobers’s wicket flying.

  Sobers returned in kind. I have never seen a fast bowler hit back so hard. It was not a forward push, it was not a drive. It was a hit. Sobers lifted his bat right back and did not lift the ball. He hit one or two of these balls to the on boundary, almost straight drives. Hall did not fancy it and bowled faster. Sobers hit him harder.

  But in competitive cricket Sobers did not play that way. I saw on the screen shots of the famous century in the first Test against Australia in Brisbane in 1961 and also in the latter part of a day’s play at Sydney in the third Test. All have agreed, and I agree with them, that at no time was there anything but orthodoxy carried to the penultimate degree when orthodoxy itself disappears in the absolute. There is no need here to give figures. One episode alone will show what the batting of Sobers can mean not only to spectators but to seasoned Test players. The episode will, I am certain, live in the minds of all who saw it. In a recent series, West Indies were striving to force a win against Australia in Barbados. On the last day with less than an hour to go, West Indies had to make some 50 runs.

  Sobers promoted himself in the batting order, and as he made his way to the wicket, as usual like a ship in full sail, the feeling in the crowd grew and expressed itself that if this was to be done, here was the man to do it. But somebody else was thinking the same. Simpson, the Australian captain, put Hawke on to bowl; he himself stood at slip and he distributed the other eight men about the boundary. Obviously Simpson felt that if he left one gap in the field unprotected, Sobers would be able to find the boundary through it. I have never seen or heard before of any such arrangement or rather disarrangement of a cricket field.

  Sobers had a look at the eight men strewn about the boundary, then had a look at Simpson standing at slip. He accepted Simpson’s homage with a great grin which Simpson suitably acknowledged, altogether quite a moment. And an utterly spontaneous obeisance before the fearsome skill of the super batsman.

  Two more points remain of Sobers on the field, his close fielding and his captaincy. Sobers has one
most unusual characteristic of a distinctive close fielder. The batsman is probably aware of him at short leg, most probably very much aware of him. But the spectator is not. Constantine in the slips and at short leg prowled and pounced like a panther. Sobers did not. Of all the great short legs, he is the most unobtrusive that I can bring to mind. To Gibbs, in particular, he seems to stand where there is no need for him to move; in making the catch he will at most fall or rather stretch his length to the right, to the left or straight in front of him. But he is so close and so sure of himself that I for one am not aware of him except to know that he will be there when wanted.

  His captaincy has the same measured, one might say classical, character. Don Bradman has written how embarrassing it is for a junior cricketer, even a Bradman by 1938, to captain a side containing his seniors. Sobers has had to contend with similar pressures native to West Indies society.

  I awaited his handling of the captaincy with some trepidation. Not in any doubt about his strategic or tactical ability, not at all. I could not forget a conversation (one of many) with Frank Worrell, immediately after the return from Australia. We had talked about the future captaincy of the West Indies. Worrell was as usual cautious and non-committal: yes, so-and-so was a good man and capable; and so on. Then, when that stage of the conversation was practically at an end, he suddenly threw in:

 

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