Bishan Bedi’s unchanged melodies

No one in this wide world could get the deceased ex-India captain to agree that T20 cricket was good for the game. He abhorred it. He didn’t even want to talk about it and never saw its positive side

My earliest screen memory of Bishan Singh Bedi, who passed away on Monday, is of a happy, bouncy man celebrating the fall of an England wicket during his last Test series in 1979. I loved the highlights package on Doordarshan but was completely bowled over by the way he celebrated and this may have not been wickets claimed by him.

I wondered how someone who had been axed as captain a few months prior could be so cheerful.

Yes, I had followed that disastrous 1978-79 tour of Pakistan, where Bedi had not emerged smelling of roses.

Never in my wildest dreams I imagined back then that I’d get to know the man. But I did. It all started in Bangalore 1998 when senior journalist G Rajaraman requested him to grant me an interview in the Chinnaswamy Stadium press box during the India v Australia Test.

This was my first interaction with him after 1990, when he (then cricket manager) allowed me to interview some of the India players before they left for the Austral-Asia Cup in Sharjah. He was under no obligation to do so especially for an upstart completely unknown to him. It was at that same spot in the Brabourne Stadium five years later that I asked another coach permission to speak to a new entrant. “No you can’t,” came the reply.

Bishan could be the most warm, loveable man on earth. But he had a history of strong, unchangeable opinions. Yes, stubborn is what I wanted to say.  No one in this wide world could get him to agree that T20 cricket was good for the game. He abhorred it. He didn’t even want to talk about it and he just didn’t concede the plus side of the Indian Premier League. “Rubbish, nonsense.” Even “premature ejaculation,” he would describe it as.

Very few administrators earned his admiration and he spent a cricketing lifetime fighting them. And just like he expected every cricketer to be a good student of the game, he wanted each administrator to be a good servant of cricket.

There was no question of winning arguments with him. I tried to come close. He was always under the impression that former Test batsman AG Kripal Singh was his colleague in the selection committee which picked India’s 1983 World Cup-winning team. I pointed out that the South Zone representative was Ghulam Ahmed and not Kripal Singh. He stuck to his guns on the basis of his recollection that Kripal Singh watched the 1983 final with him at his Delhi home. I even produced a photograph of the selection committee and a list of selectors for that season from the BCCI Annual. “You know how BCCI get it wrong,” he said. That’s the last we spoke on the issue.

He could be wrong in cricketing forecasts too. For example, he didn’t give Sourav Ganguly a chance to succeed as captain in 2000.

“Ganguly’s elevation to the hottest seat is no mean achievement. There is no doubt in my mind that at the end of the day, Ganguly’s fate will not be any different from that of his predecessors,” he wrote in Cricket Talk magazine. Yes, Ganguly did get the sack, but it was five years after Bedi’s prediction and I don’t recall him criticising that decision in the media.

Whenever I needed a strong view on a controversy, Bedi’s was the number I dialled. At times, what he said was unprintable, would invite legal issues. Never did he say something with a don’t-quote-me-on-this rider.

He had no time for bowlers with suspect bowling actions. On Tuesday, Mike Coward, the celebrated Australian writer, sent me a passage from his book Champions, published by the Bradman Foundation several years ago. It contained an interview which Bedi gave him. Throwing had to be there while he spoke on the spirit of cricket. “Don’t chuck,” said Bedi. “That’s not cricket. Why do we say ‘it’s not cricket?’ It’s an English proverb, you know. We never say  ‘it’s not football, or it’s not hockey, or it’s not tennis or it’s not golf.’ No, it is always associated with cricket because cricket is associated directly with uprightness, and honesty and integrity.”

We shared a common love for cricket books. He loved reading Australian writers Jack Fingleton, Ray Robinson They were his favourites and Gideon Haigh from the current lot. Robinson and he were friends and Bedi was one player Robinson reached out to for help while writing The Wildest Tests. He also appreciated good work done by current journalists and once complimented a newspaper on Twitter for devoting an entire page to domestic cricket matches.
 
Bedi took great pride in playing domestic cricket. Captaining Delhi to two consecutive Ranji Trophy titles—against Karnataka in 1978-79 and against Bombay the following season must have been career highs for him. The devaluation of the Duleep Trophy annoyed him no end and from a personal point of view, his best moment in the tournament was leading North Zone to a title triumph in 1973-74 against his pal Hanumant Singh’s Central Zone at the Brabourne Stadium.

Among domestic batsmen, his favourite was Ramesh Saxena, who figured in only one Test - in the English summer of 1967. “I never saw anyone in Indian cricket who could jump out to spinners like Saxena. He could create terror for the opposition. Unfortunately, Ramesh lacked in mental application and he had no one to guide him,” Bedi told me.

When Bedi was not discussing serious cricket, he would be cracking jokes. Indeed, you couldn’t miss him even in a crowd. He’d straight-talk like an Australian, be courteous like most Englishmen and New Zealanders and laugh aloud like a West Indian. And we all know that he was a proud Indian. Even as a 11-year-old I could sense that from the bubbly, bespectacled and brilliant cricketer on television in 1979. 

Bishan Singh Bedi made cricket beautiful.

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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