THE ORIGINAL GILCHRIST

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..