Turbanator with a Difference
By V Ramnarayan
In the 1950s and sixties, the Board of Control
for Cricket in India made quite a few attempts to produce fast bowlers in the
country and give our batsmen first hand experience of facing up to genuine pace
in domestic cricket. The Alan Moss coaching camp for fast bowlers was one such
effort. A more ambitious project was to import four West Indies fast bowlers
for the duration of a season, conduct coaching camps for aspiring pacemen in
four different parts of the country and have the coaches play for states and
zones in the domestic circuit. The four coaches were Roy Gilchrist, Charlie
Stayers, Chester Watson and Lester King.
Gilchrist was probably the fastest bowler in
the world then, of mercurial temperament, and capable of unleashing illegal
deliveries including some off a bent arm, even beamers, at batsmen who annoyed
him by playing and missing, or worse still, hooking and pulling. Assigned to
Madras on his coaching stint, he briefly threatened to transform the laid back,
languorous version of the game practised in the city into a thrilling blood
sport. His wards at Chepauk were daily subjected to a rigorous drill of
physical training and fielding practice, as well as a liberal dose of earthy
cricketing wisdom delivered in an accent barely fathomable to the boys whose
English was shaky to begin with. When one of them, however, tied himself into
knots when told to hold his ankle and kiss his knee, Gilchrist showed rare
empathy while explaining, ‘From today, this will be your knee, and that your
ankle.’ The fast bowlers at the camp naturally needed batsmen to bowl to. The
thrill of getting some free ‘gaaji’ soon dissipated as the coach frequently
decided to bowl at a fair pace off an abridged run-up to demonstrate some finer
points. Most of the guest batsmen knew better than to play attacking shots off
Gilchrist, but one of them, Benjamin by name, was a carefree soul who imagined
he could play in his normal uninhibited style.
A couple of crisp drives he played invited the inevitable bouncer from
Gilly, albeit off his shorter run-up, which promptly hooked with some
authority. This was a near fatal mistake on Benjamin’s part, as the next couple
of bouncers, delivered off the coach’s full run-up, narrowly missed
decapitating him.
Though I never watched the camp, I received a
daily update from my three fast bowler-uncles, the brothers Sundaram,
Venkatachalam and Viswanathan who happened to be Gilchrist’s favourite
trainees. The tough regimen meant a few dropouts midway through the course.
Medium pacer Inder Mohan was one of them. After playing truant for more than a
week, Inder was watching a match at the Govt. Arts College on Mount Road,
leaning over a low compound wall, when he saw Gilchrist doing the same a few
yards away from him. What is worse, Gilchrist caught sight of the young man,
and walked towards him, intendingto make solicitous inquiries about his health.
Imagining the worst, Inder started edging away, but Gilchrist followed him,
determined to ascertain when he would be able to resume training. Soon, Inder Mohan
broke into a trot and then started sprinting, with Gilchrist in hot pursuit, to
the amazement of a somnolent Sunday afternoon Mount Road crowd.
Almost a decade later, I played for Rajasthan
Club, Calcutta, under the captaincy of another colourful character. Swaranjit
Singh, a former Cambridge Blue, was a quality left hand batsman and swing
bowler known for his confident demeanour on and off the field. He had the rare
distinction of driving Gilchrist for four and following it up with the cheeky
if indiscreet query: "How do you like that shot, Mr Gilchrist?" The
beamer that followed not only sent Swaranjit's turban into orbit, it also meant
the end of Gilchrist's career. The incident occurred during a match between
West Indies and a zonal side, at the end of which Gilchrist was sent back to the Caribbean
on disciplinary grounds. In the years that followed, the fast bowler's mental
health went steadily south, leading to a tragic end..
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