'It was career of a small man. Till you don't get that stamp (Test cap), you are a small man.'
Some years back when Padmakar Shivalkar was conferred with the prestigious C K Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award by the BCCI, he was asked a question that he might have been tired answering zillion times.
Does he regret missing out on that India cap? A true blue music buff, he would laugh as he spoke to PTI.
"My life's philosophy is a line from Dev saab's (Dev Anand) iconic: "Jo mila usko muqaddar samajh liya, main zindagi Ka saath nibhata chala gaya (I accepted whatever came my way as destiny and kept moving along in life)."
One can accept his fate and still be madly in love with his craft which Shivalkar did while bowling more than 34,000-plus legal deliveries in first class cricket with 589 wickets at an eye-popping average of less than 20.
"One of my greatest regrets as Indian skipper was not being able to convince selectors to include Paddy in Indian team. He deserved it far more than some who got it," the legendary Sunil Gavaskar said remembering his former Mumbai team-mate.
Whenever anyone chronicles the history of India's best 'non Test playing XI', the first name that comes to mind is Padmakar 'Paddy' Shivalkar.
It was not easy to play in the era of Bishan Singh Bedi. He was peerless with his guile. Shivalkar was distinctly unlucky that his best days in the 1970s coincided with that of Bedi's prime.
Was he better than Bedi?
"One shouldn't compare anyone with Bishan as he was in a league of his own. But Paddy was accurate all his life. He played his last game when he was nearing 50 (48). No one can forget the 1972-73 final against Madras (now Tamil Nadu)," veteran journalist Makrand Waingankar told PTI.
The match he was referring to was played at Chepauk and the curators had stopped watering the track so that it aided local spinners S Venkatarsghavan and V V Kumar.
But they forgot that accurate bowlers are more dangerous on rank turners.
Shivalkar's figures were 8/16 and 5/18 in the two innings as Tamil Nadu batters couldn't simply fathom how to counter the turn and unpredictable bounce.
For someone who only played cricket with season ball (leather ball) after he completed his SSC exams, it took endless hours of practice to perfect that art of pitching it on the 'same spot' ball after ball, over by over, year after year.
"In the early 1960s, Mumbai was known for its Mills which recruited cricketers for their office teams that played in the league. One such Mill was Bradburry Mills where he had gone for a sports quota job. Till then he had played only tennis ball cricket and at the trials he first time got hold of a red hard leather ball," Aditya Bhushan, author of a very well researched book on history of famous Indian spinners Fortune Turners narrated his meeting with Shivalkar.
"Paddy sir told me that he couldn't even pitch the ball for first few deliveries. However the man watching him was Vinoo Mankad, who must have seen something and gave him a job and had one advice for him which is to build his own style."
Possibly had one-day cricket been as fashionable as it was post 1983 World Cup, Shivalkar, with his accuracy, would have been a smash hit.
But his bad luck was that by the time Bedi retired, he was also 37, and when another fine left-arm spinner Dilip Doshi entered the Test arena at a ripe age of 33, Shivalkar was touching 40.
He started at the time of Bedi and played first class cricket even when Ravi Shastri and Maninder Singh became star left-arm spinners.
Yet he continued to toil hard season after season at his beloved Shivaji Park Gymkhana ground.
The legend has it that he would be the first to start bowling at the Mumbai Ranji nets and the last to leave.
There is one sentence where perhaps the hurt that resides at the corner of Shivalkar's heart came out.
"It was career of a small man. Till you don't get that stamp (Test cap), you are a small man," he summed up his journey in Fortune Turners.
Shivalkar will always remain a giant of Indian cricket.
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