Scripts that made Chennai special

The 1981-82 India v England Test in progress at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. Pic/Getty Images

This month marks 40 years since the closure of my favourite cricket magazine, Sportsweek's World of Cricket (WOC). It ran from 1974 to 1984 - in the first year, as Cricket Quarterly.

A couple of years after its discontinuation, the publishers put out a monthly publication titled WOC; whose demise coincided with the end of the 1987 World Cup. WOC didn't quite have the same impact on me and, I dare say, on most cricket lovers, who were used to their quarterly fix.

The last Test match concerning India covered by World of Cricket Quarterly was the Chennai Test, in which Sunil Gavaskar reached his 30th Test century, which took him past Don Bradman's record tally of 29.

World of Cricket Quarterly used to have the best cricket journalists contributing to their issues, and most of their covers carried a list of ‘The World's Best Team of Writers.'

One such writer was KN Prabhu - ‘Niran' to his contemporaries.

I remembered how the flowery, formidable, and famous writer often brought up the Chennai Tests he covered in his feature articles for various publications.

Had he been living, he wouldn't have missed the fact that Chepauk, where India's two-Test series against Bangladesh opens today, is in its 90th year as a Test match venue.

Chepauk became India's third Test centre after Mumbai and Kolkata, during the 1933-34 series against Douglas Jardine's Englishmen.

More on that later.

Prabhu could well be the first Indian writer to report on 100-plus Tests involving India. The 1948-49 India v West Indies Test in Delhi was his first, and to celebrate his ‘century' he wrote glowingly about Chennai in World of Cricket (October-December 1979): "Madras, many-memoried city for one who watched his early cricket. Though it was not an unofficial Test [Indian XI v Australian Services in 1945-46], the heart still warms to the thought of Lala Amarnath's century against Miller [Keith], Pepper [Cecil] and company. For sheer gallantry, skill and all the graces, [Gundappa] Vishwanath's unbeaten 97 against [Clive] Lloyd's team [in 1974-75] will be hard to beat."

Chennai boy Prabhu, later to become a Mumbai resident, watched his first match at Chepauk in February 1938, when an Indian team took on Lord Tennyson's XI in a four-day game during the 1937-38 season. "I can recall sprinting and just boarding the tiny tram car that used to sway along Ice House Road, not far from Chepauk. As I bought my ticket, it was easy to come by without having to stand in a queue and as I entered the ground I saw [Vinoo] Mankad going down on his knee to square-cut [Arthur] Wellard," Prabhu wrote in Memories of Chepauk, a piece he penned for the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association Golden Jubilee Commemoration Volume in 1980.

As Sports Editor of the Times of India, Prabhu travelled to Chennai for the sixth Test against the West Indies in 1983. Gavaskar was poised for Test Century No. 30 and Prabhu was well prepared for the peak, which the batting icon scaled with a double century. "We shared a room in Madras. He was carrying some books and notes. It was also his last assignment before retirement," fellow writer Ayaz Memon told me on Tuesday.
Chepauk stayed close to Prabhu's heart till his July 2006 death. As he wrote, Chepauk was to him what Old Trafford was to Neville Cardus.

Chennai's inaugural Test in 1933-34 eventuated in a 202-run win for England. But the powerful side couldn't claim it was a breeze against CK Nayudu's India. Pacer L Amar Singh claimed 7-86 in England's first innings. NS Ramaswami, another fine writer in the Prabhu era, wrote in Cricket Quarterly (October-December 1974) that Amar Singh's deliveries were "clothed with the sinister grace of a war javelin."

Ramaswami also wrote about Amar Singh's 48 in India's second innings of that Test: "He hit often and he hit tremendously hard. One stroke, a hook from the pavilion end, carried the ball far over mid-wicket beyond the tennis courts, almost nearing the western wall. This was a truly colossal hit, fit to be compared with an earlier mighty stroke of CK Nayudu which carried the ball beyond the southern wall, into what used to be called the old Engineering College ground."

How can one dwell on Chennai and not mention the 1986 Tied Test?

"[Greg] Matthews had barely completed a pirouette and begun his ardent appeal for a leg-before-wicket decision against Maninder [Singh] before 52-year-old Vikram Raju, at 5.18 pm, thrust his right index finger towards the heavens and so consigned the match to a special place in history," was how Australian writer Mike Coward described the last wicket in his book Cricket Beyond the Bazaar.

The late Rajan Bala, another much-loved writer in the Chennai press box, wrote under a Wisden Cricket Monthly headline, ‘When is a stand not a partnership?' He was referring to India accumulating 415 runs scored by Dilip Vengsarkar, Vishwanath and Yashpal Sharma at one stage in the 1981-82 Test against England. Vishwanath and Yashpal put on 316, but Vengsarkar retired hurt at 71, hit on the head by a Bob Willis delivery. The Sportstar magazine's Robin Marlar felt that Vengsarkar would have been better off wearing a helmet.

England didn't win that 1981-82 Chennai Test like they had done on their previous full tour in 1976-77.

Their triumph in the 1984-85 Test ensured India couldn't win the series and David Frith, the editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly (WCM), was chuffed to be there. "Never in the whole history of the world had eyes beheld an England score such as stood on the board at Chepauk just before Allan Lamb was bowled. It read 563-2. What was going on out in the sunlit saucer of the Chidambaram Stadium was almost too much to grasp," he wrote in WCM.

The India v Bangladesh Test in Chennai which starts today is not the traditional Pongal Test, but its top performances could make for a fine crop of prose.

mid-day's group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.