Every schoolboy in India is required to read one cricket essay: Neville Cardus on the “strange oriental light” of Ranjitsinhji, the batting genius who so captivated England in the golden age of cricket before the First World War. Very often the essay has 10 be committed 1o memory and reproduced in a school examination,
At Lord’s, three batsmen who have undergone that experience and who have marked themselves as the true heirs of Ranji, are playing for India.
Sachin Tendulkar, aged 17, Sanjay Manjrekar and Dilip Vengsarkar all have the wristy elegance which enabled Ranji to stand up straight, take a good length ball and, with a flick of his wrist, turn it past astonished fielders to the fine leg boundary: and, in the process to fashion a new stroke, the leg glance.
What makes the trio unique is that their cricket upbringing has been shared. All three are from Bombay, Vengsarkar and Manjrekar went 0 the same school, appropriately named after King George, and Tendulkar, who was digesting Cardus only a few months ago, and whose father is a professor of literature, was educated a few ‘miles away.
All three first learned their cricket in the “gullies”, the narrow stretches of concrete between the tall buildings of Bombay, where three rules of tennis ball, cricket stipulate that you can be caught one bounce, and where powerful wrists must be developed to keep the ball down, because failure to do so ‘means a last ball or a broken window.
Later, two of them came under the special influence of Dadar Union, the prestigious club of Bombay’s Shivari Park. The great Sunil Gavaskar played for the club, Vengsarkar and Manjrekar still do,
So important is club cricket in India that even at the height of Gavaskar’s fame he would return home as soon as an overseas tour had finished, catching the first available flight, o play in a club match.
At Dadar Union, Vengsarkar and Manjrekar grew up under the fiercely competitive eye of Vasu Pranjape. Pranjape has always been a great believer in the Australian Virtwes of the game play it hard, play it straight and give no quarter.
Vengsarkar, the elder statesman of the trio, is unusually tall for an Indian 6fiand built in the lissome mould of Ranji. His great ‘forte has always been the drive, particularly the drive past mid-on or through midwicket, played standing up straight to the bowler a and then, with a flick of his wrists, dispatching the ball just wide off the fielder.
It’s this ability to play straight that has paid Vengsarkar such rich dividends. He Troves (0 play in England, particularly at Lord’s, which is hardly surprising.
Of Vengsarkar 17 Test hundreds, only ‘four have come outside India all four in England, and three of them in successive Tests at Lord’s.
Sanjay Manjrekar is in the short, stocky mould of Gavaskar. Like many short men, he’s a ferocious cutter. But here he combines now Indian cricketing heritages: the use of the wrists and a specialty that his father, Vijay Manjrekar, developed.
Vijay’s great stroke was the square cut he would lean back, make room outside the off stump, and using his wrists like a whip, send the ball square of the wicket 10 the point boundary. When he plays that shot, Sanjay is almost a reincarnation of Vijay.
Tendulkar, who was born long after Vijay’s square cut became just a cricketing ‘memory, is the most intriguing of the trio not merely because he is so young, but because he can be so impetuous.
Lord Harris, who as Governor of Bombay did 50 much to encourage early Indian cricket, believed that Indians could never hope to emulate English batsmen: they just did not have the patience 10 build an innings,
Manjrekar and Vengsarkar, following in the mould of Vijay Merchant and Gavaskar, have demonstrated that when it comes 10 patience, Indian batsmen can outlast the English.
Tendulkar is more like the headstrong Parsee batsmen whose impatience prompted Lord Harris’s forecast. Tendulkar treats Test cricket as if it was schools cricket, and while an early innings of his convinced Gavaskar that he was better than him at that age, Tendulkar does not yet have the ‘great man’s dourness.
In India there has been much headshaking about Tendulkar’s poor shot selection, and i was this that was exposed against New Zealand earlier in the year.
Tendulkar got to 88 in the Napier Tes and was on the verge of becoming the youngest player, at 16, to score a Tes hundred. But instead of grafting for the remaining 12 runs, he chose to attack and failed.
Gavaskar, however, who has given him his pads, in convinced that Tendulkar will learn to select his shots. When he does, he could become that very rare Indian batsman: one with the highest technique who likes accumulating runs but also making them at great speed.
Up till now, Indian batsmen have either been like Gavaskar, who built his innings slowly, or like Gundappa Viswanath, who ‘made runs very attractively and quickly, but never very copiously.
Certainly, his dedication suggests that he ‘has the ability to do He has been known to talk cricket in his sleep. One cricket manager, who shared his room during a youth tour, was astonished to hear shim declaim in his dreams: “Go for two!”
Ranji would have understood such dedication. He came to England marvelously gifted but needing 10 tighten his technique against fast bowling. So he employed the best fast bowlers of the age to bowl constantly at his leg stump, and that is how he fashioned the leg glance.
The impetus for Ranji’s cricket came from his desire to prove that Indians could play the English game, and a personal ‘motivation 10 succeed 10 the throne of Nawanagar, a princely Indian state.
The determination of Tendulkar, Manjrekar and Vengsarkar comes from the intense work ethic of the Maharastrain ‘middle class of central Bombay, Their history has been long and glorious, and now they seek to further it through cricket,
Article extracted from this publication >> August 24, 1990
