A fierce combative indomitable spirit
K N Prabhu, the doyen of Indian cricket writers, salutes the finest strokeplayer in Indian cricket, Gundappa Viswanath.
Gundappa Ranganath Viswanath will score another fifty soon. India's most artistic batsman was born on February 12, 1949, four days
after the West Indies's blatantly negative tactics deprived India
of victory in the fifth Test at the Brabourne stadium in Bombay.
In a sense, Viswanath was to seek revenge and gain it, nearly
a quarter of a century later with a century which put India on
the road to scoring an historic victory over the West Indies.
But this is to anticipate events.
Viswanath first came into the picture, in the season of 1968-69,
when he made 40 odd runs in a Ranji match at Hyderabad. Having
seen all the talent in the West Zone, I went to Bangalore to combine business
with pleasure to see what South Zone had to offer. And it came in
the vignette of a knock from someone who looked as if he had played
truant from school. He was then around 18 or so, child-like with
large soulful eyes, and he was only 5 ft 2 inches in height. I was
told that this had been held against him by the Mysore selectors,
who like Frederick of Prussia, preferred tall men.
The domestic season of 1968-69 had been a dismal one. India had
been left to nurse their wounds after four successive defeats
by England in the summer and by Australia that winter. The victory
over New Zealand was small comfort for a country which had yet
to emerge as a major force on the international scene.
Hence that trip to Bangalore was a rewarding one, for at the end
of the season I wrote Viswanath down as a future India prospect.
He was to justify my faith in him the following season. In the
face of the cynics and the sceptics, he played a classic innings
of 68 for the Board President's team against Lawry's Australians.
Then, on his first Test appearance at Kanpur, he scored a duck,
but spurred on by the encouragement of his captain Tiger
Pataudi, Viswanath went on to score 137, playing the pace of Connolly
and McKenzie with rare elan.
That was the beginning of the Viswanath story -- a story
as happy and pleasing as any in the history of Indian cricket.
He was the kindest and friendliest player ever to grace a cricket
field. It was typical of him that during the Jubilee Test at Bombay
in 1979 he should have recalled Bob Taylor who, he felt, was given
out to a doubtful catch. That decision, whose merit could be
the subject of endless debate, cost India the match. But it showed
the kind of man Viswanath was, as a cricketer. He was true to
himself and his own understanding of the game. To him it would
not have been cricket otherwise.
But under these gentle qualities there beat a fierce combative
indomitable spirit. This was exemplified on more than one occasion
in the home series of 1974-75 against Clive Lloyd's team. In the
Tests at Bangalore and Delhi Viswanath's innings had been cut
short by the unplayable ball or the near impossible catch. But
at Calcutta and Madras he came into his own.
At Eden Gardens,
against Andy Roberts bowling at full blast, Viswanath held the
India batting together to score 129 with 22 fours But the inning
which took pride of place before all others ever played at Chepauk,
was his unbeaten 97. It contained every stroke in the book, on
a lively pitch, even as wickets fell about him. And it gave India
a lead good enough for the spinners to strike out for victory
and draw level in the series.
It looked as if a century by Viswanath was as good as a guarantee
for India's victory. In the hectic run chase at Port of Spain
in 1975-76 Viswanath shared in the honour and glory of the closing
hours with 122. He was again at his best when he had to go it
alone on a spiteful wicket at Melbourne in 1980 when he made 114
out of a total of 237. Only three others scored more than 20,
the highest being Kirmani's 25.
Viswanath cared little for hoodoos or bowler's reputations. He scored
a double century in his first Ranji Trophy match and a century
on his Test debut. But he did not stop at that, like others before
him, for he hit 14 hundreds, taking every country in his stride
before he finished with the game.
It was not the runs which mattered by the manner in which he made
them that distinguished the 'Little Nugget' of
Indian cricket. He defied the purists, for he would often make
room to switch the offside ball between third man and extra cover,
or move across to flick anything that was well pitched up between
mid-wicket and square leg.
In his Cricketwallah,Scyld Berry writes that the England
captain Keith Fletcher reckoned that Viswanath's century in the
Delhi Test was the finest display of strokeplay in that series.
And during the rest day between his historic 222 at Madras, where
the jokers among our selectors wanted him dropped, he overheard
Underwood tell Viswanath, "Master when you have had enough tomorrow
please remember a poor suffering bowler." In that match Fletcher
would have need two men at extra cover, two at third man and three
at midwicket to stop Viswanath's strokes. And this was the batsman
the selectors came near dropping, which in itself is an apt comment
on the ways of our selectors.
Viswanath was also a firm and dependable fielder in the slips
like his brother-in-law Sunil Gavaskar. Through the seventies
these two 'Mighty Atoms' of our cricket put India on
the top of many happy hours in places as far afield as Madras
and Melbourne.
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