A GUTSY ALL ROUNDER

Jyothiprasad: A Game Changer

By V Ramnarayan

At  25, I was already a veteran of many league seasons, when I first met P Jyothiprasad, a talented teenage all rounder fresh from his successes as an Indian Schoolboys player.  He and MV Narasimha Rao were inseparable those days, both very agile and fit, always full of fun and laughter. It was a case of instant friendship between Joe—as many of us called Jyothi—and me despite the age difference. I found in him a kindred spirit, someone who approached the game with a wholeheartedness that appealed to me as did his unmistakable talent. Bobjee or Narasimha Rao, Vijay Paul, Joe, Dileep Reddy and Hafeez were among the dozen or so players Andhra Bank recruited in the early 1970s to build a strong side that could rock the leading teams of the day like State Bank of India and State Bank of Hyderabad. Other inclusions like Meher Baba, H Ramprasad and Mujtaba Ali Baig added further strength to the eager young team ready to take on the world.

Jyothi used to bowl sometimes in the SBI nets before the Andhra Bank team was formed. I think he actually played a couple of games for us in anticipation of joining SBI, but my memory may be playing tricks here. I found him a naggingly accurate bowler of a sharp medium pace, very nippy off the wicket, and tending to bowl a wicked incutter on a stump line. He had a square, chest-on action in the early days, an action which he gradually modified to be more side on, developing an outswinger for variation as he grew in experience. Rarely could a batsman take liberties with the young Jyothiprasad, and boundaries came mostly off the edge of the bat. He was a brilliant fielder anywhere, with a superb pick and throw, but in time came to specialise in the position of forward short leg. He was in the Eknath Solkar class in that position. I owe many of my wickets, first for Hyderabad, and later for Andhra Bank as well, after I joined them, to Joe’s fearless catching at bat-pad. He stood slightly deep at short leg, preferring to watch the ball all the way and dive forward or sideways, but almost always going for the two-handed catch, with his palms cupping the ball securely from below. Rarely did he miss a catch. He ran out batsmen with a flick of his wrist when they left the crease in defence or attempted attack, and the ball went to him at short leg. An outstanding effort of his was the run out of Rahul Mankad on his Bombay debut when the young man stepped out to the very first ball he faced. It would have been a shattering debut for the young man had he not made a half century in the second innings.

And what a swashbuckling batsman Joe was! His defence was sound, based on a solid technique, but when he hit a ball, it stayed hit. He was also a very good judge of a single. His intent was always positive, no matter what the situation. He was an original lateral thinker, never afraid to disperse a field crowding him menacingly. He once gave me a startlingly simple explanation of his habit of launching a flurry of daring strokes at the start of his innings and then settling down to a more sedate pace. “The outfield is wide open when the close-in cordon is breathing down my neck,” he said. “Even if I mistime a shot or two there’s no one out there to take catches. Once the field is spread out is the time to settle down to picking singles and twos.” An example of the success of this tactic was a spectacular 50 he made against Bengal with Hyderabad in a spot of bother with a rampaging Dilip Doshi threatening to run through our side.

As a tailender, I found it a pleasure to join Joe at the crease. He was quite expert at steering the innings to safety in the company of nine, ten and jack. I was lucky to be involved in a few useful if not substantial partnerships with him. He placed a lot of confidence in you by giving you the strike without overdoing the business of farming it. One particular match I remember in this regard was the final of the Ghulam Ali Trophy at the Osmania ground between Andhra Bank and Syndicate Bank which ended in a tie. It was one of the last matches I played for the bank, and though I took 13 wickets in the match, my partnerships with Joe—who was of course the senior partner—in both innings gave me just as much satisfaction. After that memorable game, both teams landed at my place for a wonderful celebration.

This was around the time Jyothi was making strenuous efforts to regain some of his lost form, the result of a brief period of indifference on his part. Soon afterwards, Joe was dropped from the Hyderabad team along with Vijay Paul, a most unfair exclusion in each case. Both of them staged spectacular comebacks afterwards, serving the team with distinction for a few more seasons. I had left Hyderabad by then, but I watched Joe’s performances with great pleasure from afar.

Joe is a true friend. When I quit State Bank and applied for a senior position in Andhra Bank, I was in an unhappy situation, and mentioned my interest in the position to Joe, who spoke to the late Mr CS Sham Lal, the senior officer overseeing cricket matters there. That intervention certainly played a role in my appointment.

Jyothiprasad was a champion all rounder. I always felt he was India material, at least in the shorter format. He once dropped Sunil Gavaskar on the first ball of a Duleep Trophy match off his own bowling. It was a hard return catch, but who knows how Jyothi’s career might have changed had he held on to that catch (as he so often did)? In today’s scenario, he would have certainly flourished in two if not all formats of the game. It was a pleasure to be his teammate.