Adieu, Lala

Bharatmata would be sad today. One of her sons, a sporting legend whose offspring were no mean sportspersons in their own right, someone who had done his country proud on numerous occasions, has passed into ages.

Not many television-happy cricket-lovers may have seen Lala Amarnath in action, and cricket statisticians in India would perhaps be the only people who would readily agree that Lala Amarnath is one of the greatest ever Indian cricketing personalities.

The most famous piece of statistics about all-rounder Lala is, of course, that he was the first ever Indian to score a Test century. It was against Douglas 'Bodyline' Jardine's MCC at the Hindu Gymkhana in Bombay during the 1934-'35 series, the first ever Test on Indian soil. He scored 38 in the first innings (total 219) and followed it up with 118 in the second, his 100 coming in 118 minutes.

Wrote E Docker in the History of Indian Cricket: "Women, it is said, were tearing off their ear rings and other jewellery and throwing it at him. The Gaekwad of Baroda was rumoured to have presented him with 1,000 rupees; the Maharaja of Kolhapur, with 500 rupees; a man in the street with his last six annas.... A jaunty young man with a wide grin and a very engaging personality had come to take his place beside C K Nayudu in the pantheon of Bombay's cricket heroes."

Lala played for the Punjab in Ranji Trophy.

Lala Amarnath's contributions to Indian cricket were many, but the biggest of them all, in my reckoning , were the three jewels he produced. Two of his three sons -- Mohinder and Surender -- went on to play for India at the highest level. The third one, Rajender, was a shade unlucky -- he represented Delhi at the highest level in the domestic circuit.

If there was a point in time when Mohinder Amarnath was considered a better batsman of pace bowling than even maestro Sunil Gavaskar, the credit in large measure should go to Lala. It was the grand old Lala who rectified the faults in technique of his talented son -- the most infamous of them being Mohinder's inability to maintain balance while responding to a fast-rising delivery with a hook shot.

Once the rough edges were smoothened, Mohinder blossomed into a fort at the crease that thunderbolts from the likes of Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Imran Khan, Malcolm Marshall found impregnable. This speaks volumes of Lala's understanding of nuances and the science of supreme batsmanship. This precious knowledge, hopefully, would have been passed on to and ingested by Mohinder. How one wishes the BCCI will utilise this treasure!

For some strange reason, I've always felt grateful to Lala for producing Surender, easily the most attractive Indian southpaw in the late Seventies. That was the time when Indian middle order was full of right-handed legendary and soon-to-be-legendary batsmen. Often times, experts talked of how India's batting suffered for want of a good left-handed batsman in the middle order -- upsetting the bowler's rhythm, upsetting field placements and all that. Surender flourished for only a brief while, unlike his brother Mohinder.

Lala served the BCCI in various capacities. But he endeared himself to the masses with his expert comments on All India Radio and then Doordarshan. In the era when there were no aces such as Harsha Bhogle at AIR's microphones at cricketing venues, it was Lala Amarnath who would inject a certain degree of excitement and erudition into the game with his lucid, to-the-point analyses of dismissals and the general drift of the game.

And before that, he also made a name for himself as the famous rebel of Indian cricket. He wouldn't the toe the Board line blindly. Not for him the diktats of the feudalistic overlords who presided over Indian cricket. In that sense, he, 'the stormy petrel of Indian cricket', was the pioneer of the movement for players' rights, welfare and well-being, a cause later on espoused by Sunil Gavaskar and Dilip Vengsarkar. Lala was sent back to India from England in 1935 on charges of "insubordination and insolent and improper behaviour towards the captain Vizzy and the manager Major Brittan Jones".

In A Portrait of Indian Captains, Dr Narottam Puri describes Lala as a "complete allrounder -- an intelligent bowler of immaculate length, variety and hostility; a batsman who trusted his eye and natural ability and whose footword was breathtaking; an agile fielder in any position; a wicket-keeper of no mean standard; and above all, a bold, intuitive, inspiring and attacking captain -- a born skipper". Another expert called him the "Byron of Indian cricket".

It is an irony that Lala Amarnath never revealed his mind fully on the raging match-fixing controversy. Perhaps age had made him wiser that the ravages of times may have made him almost an unknown figure for the Net-age cricket aficionados. Or maybe he simply didn't care anymore. It is a tribute to him that, thanks to the value systems he inculcated in his sons, the Amarnath family has not been touched by the matchfixing or any other scandal so far, even as it threatens to engulf other "living legends".

We will miss you Lala. Adios!

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