OFF SPINNERS: THE FOOT SOLDIERS OF CRICKET

The Southern Flavour

By V Ramnarayan

“Freaking off spinners!” the great Ceylonese cricketer FC de Saram dismissed my whole tribe with a single contemptuous wave of his hand when British journalist and off spinner Robin Marlar interviewed him some 45 years ago. True de Saram was known to be a destroyer of right arm finger spin, but I see a semblance of truth in his scurrilous comment, for I am convinced we are the foot soldiers of cricket, easy meat for right handed batsmen, without even the redeeming pace bowler’s recourse to hurling bouncers when the batsman punishes us, though some of us have tried it without success on rare occasions. . Fingers, hands, arms, legs, trunk and heart and mind have to function in perfect coordination for us to be able to fight the odds stacked against us. Success when it comes, especially on placid tracks, with all these elements of the trade coming together, is sweet music indeed. And on turning tracks or dustbowls, the finger spinner can indeed be king

There are match winners among off spinners on the world stage. I speak, not of them, but of lesser mortals. When my friend N Jagannath Das recently asked me to evaluate some of my peers and seniors who bowled off spin for Hyderabad, I did try to do a sincere job of it, but I have had some time since to ponder the question, and now attempt to present my thoughts on some of the best in the field I have known from the southern states. I am keeping Test and ODI bowlers out of the scope of my survey.

Hailing from Madras, I naturally grew up playing and watching cricket there. The first off-spinner to make an impression on my young mind was R Chandrasekaran, now in his 81^st year. I watched him bowl for the strong State Bank of India team in the Madras league. He was a tall, athletic figure on the field, imparting sharp spin with his big fingers, easy runup and nice side-on delivery action.  He could bat well, too, once scoring 176 in an SBI inter-circle match vs. Bombay Circle, as good as a first class hundred. Chandru comes from a sporting family. His elder brother Nagarajan was a left hand batsman of merit, and younger brother Prabhakar, my classmate in school, was a brilliant all rounder whose heroic display with bat and ball took Madras close to victory over Bombay in a Ranji Trophy final. Another brother, Mohan, was a football goalkeeper for the state. With, first, skipper AG Kripal Singh, and after him, S Venkataraghavan, dominating the scene, Chandru’s chances at a first class career grew dim. His SBI teammate R Raghavan was an all rounder who bowled effective off spin, too. 

During the period I was trying to make my mark for Presidency College, K Ganapathi of Vivekananda College was perhaps the best off spinner in the inter-collegiate circuit, besides being a more than useful opening batsman, compact and correct in all he did. It was he who had kept me out of the Viveka team the previous year, and it gave me great pleasure to combine with leg spinner PS Ramesh to bowl Vivekananda out for 121 when we met on the Marina ground at the start of the 1964-65 season. We lost the match by one run, and I think Ganapathi did some damage to our innings. He might have succeeded in first class cricket, but there was no room for him in the Madras state team where Test bowlers VV Kumar and S Venkataraghavan were firmly established. Another high quality off spinner came along a few years later in N Bharathan, who had all the attributes of a genuine spinner—flight, turn and the ability to deceive the batsman in the air and off the wicket. For AC College of Technology and Madras University (not to mention YMA and SPIC in the TNCA league), he was a champion performer with both ball and bat. He played a key role in Madras University’s maiden triumph in the Rohinton Baria trophy in 1970-71. At the under-25 and university level, I remember at least one hundred by him, and a couple of big partnerships he had with that fine batsman PR Ramakrishnan. I rate Bharathan as the best of my tribe of bowlers to emerge in the 1970s. My contemporary P Vijayaraghavan of Salem was another fine off spinner born in the wrong era: of spin bowling riches in this part of the world. Because of my absurd longevity in the game at the competitive TNCA league level, I came to rub shoulders with a few excellent off spinners, in fact, bowling along with Test bowlers M Venkataramana and Aashish Kapoor eventhough I was old enough to be their father. J Randas, like Ramana a Madurai lad, came into the Alwarpet CC the season I quit. A tall, willowy young man with a natural action that did not allow him to bowl a bad ball even if he tried to, Ramdas was also a quality opening batsman, who pulled his weight in the star-studded Jolly Rovers side for many years after he transited from serious cricketer to  finance professional holding a key position in the private sector. In his youth, Ram had the distinction of leading India U-19 to victory over Pakistan U-19 in Pakistan. It was India's first win over Pakistan. 

An off spinner batsmen feared during the 1960s and 70s, especially on matting wickets, was K Bhavanna of Andhra who once had the star studded Hyderabad batting line-up literally on the mat, his prize scalps including those of Jaisimha and Pataudi, if memory serves me right. He delivered the ball from considerable height, obtaining steep bounce, and often hitting batsmen on the knuckles at a sharp pace.

Just as in Tamil Nadu, I am sure the presence of great bowlers like Prasanna and Chandrasekhar in the state team must have blocked the progress of other spinners in Karnataka. MR Sridhar was a competent off spinner who could also bat, and I have heard good things about N Sadashivan as an off spinner-batsman in the 1960s. Much later, Prasannasimha Rao made an impressive debut for Karnataka in the absence of Prasanna, away on an overseas tour, but faded away soon afterwards. At least two off spinners with dubious bowling actions won matches for Karnataka during my period. I think both were noballed by umpires who were empowered to do so then. Karnataka’s shrewd captain Brijesh Patel simply made the bowlers change ends when that happened, and the square leg umpire at the other end would not call, just as Brijesh must have hoped for. This ploy however did not work with umpire Piloo Reporter who never flinched from no-balling a bowler for chucking even from his position as straight umpire. Kamal Tandon was perhaps the outstanding Karnataka off spinner of the 1980s.

The leading off spinner in Hyderabad when I landed there in 1971 was Noshir Mehta, with an impressive track record in the Ranji Trophy. Tall and athletic, Noshir was in the classical mould, and won the respect of batsmen everywhere. He had everything going for him, nice flight, appreciable turn, and a good drifter away from the right hander. He was also a capable bat lower down, and a good fielder. In any other era, he would have probably played for India. As it was, he hardly got into the zone side. Among my juniors, Shivlal Yadav and Arshad Ayub played for India. A young off spinner who impressed one and all in the late 1970s was little Ananta Vatsalya who tended to draw comparisons with Prasanna with his flight and loop, but here was yet another case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. Vatsalya moved to Bangalore and did play for Karnataka in the early 1980s, but nothing much was heard of him later. He has been a successful racehorse owner for some years, and exhibits an unusual flair for poetry.

I now come to Kanwaljit Singh, the off spinner with a phenomenal record never to be picked for India. One of my knowledgeable friends does not share my enthusiasm for the sardar’s bowling, but I think he watched Kanwal during an abortive attempt he made to turn out for Tamil Nadu, with his entry into the Hyderabad team effectively blocked by the presence of Shivlal and Arshad. Kanwal did not fare too well in Chennai, and I could understand how difficult it was for him to settle down in an alien, not so welcoming atmosphere, as I went through similar pangs myself years earlier. Make no mistake about it, Kanwaljit Singh was a class act as an off spinner, and is promising to be one in a new avatar, as a singer of Hindi film songs, especially Kishore Kumar numbers.   

It was sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s that my bank teammates and I were bowled over by the natural loop, turn and bounce of a Sikh off spinner turning out for Nizam College in a local league match. He did get a couple of wickets against our strong batting line-up, and the memory of that fine performance lingered. I was hardly surprised to see a repeat performance next season, only it was not, strictly speaking, a repeat performance. That had been Gurmeet Singh, and this was Kanwaljit Singh, his younger brother. It is one of those unsolvable conundrums of Indian cricket why Kanwal, with his genuine off spin wares, outstanding career record and fierce determination, never played for India. He came into the Hyderabad squad during my last season there, and I have remained a fan of his bowling ever since.

I have tried to cover the better southern off spinners of my era and a little beyond. I am relatively unfamiliar with those that emerged after the 1980s.