On and off the record with Aunshu

Ex-batsman Gaekwad, who succumbed to blood cancer in Baroda last week, performed the job of handling the media during his India coaching years with aplomb; stories about himself were fascinating

Aunshuman Gaekwad, who passed away last week just when we all believed that blood cancer hadn’t beaten him just yet, played by the rules.

When I first interacted with him in the early 1990s, during his stint as a national selector in Gundappa Vishwanath’s committee, I couldn’t get a word out of him even on issues unrelated to selection. Things changed when he took over from S Madan Lal as coach in 1997. I found him most approachable, generous with his time and, at times, he even spoke about his playing days with no intention of blowing his own trumpet.

He told me what it took to earn a recall to the Indian team in 1983— 15 hundreds in competitive cricket. That year he had to tackle the West Indies yet again—on their home soil. He told me how confronting it was to tackle their quick bowlers as an opening batsman. “First you had to combat Mikey [Holding] and Andy [Roberts] and when one of them was taken off, in came [Joel] Garner and then [Malcolm] Marshall. Mikey and Andy would come on again. There was no respite,” he once told me. Incidentally, Holding and Roberts sent him messages of encouragement when he was battling cancer.

Often, because I would love the way he related the incident, I would cajole Gaekwad to tell me about the dressing room fight involving Farokh Engineer and S Abid Ali during the India v East Africa 1975 World Cup game at Leeds. Gaekwad would recall being caught in the crossfire of tumblers and cups being hurled and how team manager GS Ramchand (the former India captain) feared that the liquids splashing around would stain his favourite suit.

It’s not only chats like these that made Gaekwad rank high when it came to the best coach for the media. He believed in transparency and providing the true picture of things. It was not easy dealing with the media, especially in 1998 and 1999, but Gaekwad did it with aplomb. He would tell me how he had to deal with the world media as coach of the 1999 World Cup team. The 1998 tour of Sri Lanka for the Singer-Akai Nidahas Trophy challenged him to a lesser extent. 

His team had to contend with Sri Lanka, the reigning world champions, a capable New Zealand team, as well as bad weather. Gaekwad provided an insight about the effects of rain-marred games. “All planning goes haywire. At team meetings we discuss where we need to improve, but it turns out that what we plan today does not work tomorrow because there is an interruption,” he said after another game against the Kiwis ended in a no-result at Colombo.

Ultimately, things looked up for India with a series/tournament triumph which came after several attempts against Arjuna Ranatunga’s champion outfit. But, for a lot of the time, Gaekwad was looking up at the sky in the hope of clear weather.

The small group of travelling Indian media persons, including a photographer were invited by the Taj Samudra hotel management to  a celebration party. After I had interviewed man-of-the-match Sachin Tendulkar in one corner of the room, Gaekwad came to us and said that some players were not comfortable with the photographer being around as they celebrated. We offered to leave, stressing to him that as guests of the hotel, we did not land up uninvited.

I had to complete one last interview for the night—the coach himself. The Colombo humidity had got to me and I admitted to Gaekwad that I wanted to interview him that very moment because my health wasn’t good. He urged me to rest (no question of that happening though) and promised to come to my room after the party, to be interviewed. He stuck to his promise. Which member of any touring team would do that for a journalist today? But that was Gaekwad and those were different times.

On the following year’s tour to Sri Lanka for the Aiwa Cup triangular, which involved Sri Lanka and Australia, a fellow journalist from Kolkata and I approached Anil Kumble for an interview. Kumble invited us to his room at the Taj Samudra, but realised that we had not informed coach Gaekwad about this interaction. We convinced Kumble to continue with the interview and assured him we would let Gaekwad know at the practice session to be held the same evening. When we reached the ground, we spoke to Gaekwad and, to our relief, he had no problems with it. When I say Gaekwad was helpful to the media, it doesn’t mean he agreed to every request. I was following the team during the 1998 triangular series featuring India, Australia and Zimbabwe. Before the final game against Australia at Delhi, I wanted to interview Ajay Jadeja, who enjoyed an extraordinary build-up to the series finale—306 runs including two centuries; unbeaten in all his four innings before Delhi. Gaekwad declined to make Jadeja available for a chat. He told me later that he didn’t want anything to come in the way of another match-winning knock. As it turned out, Jadeja scored 48 but India ended up losing the most important game of the series.

Just like the Test series, India lost the final match in an otherwise impressive run. This was Delhi, that was Bangalore, where Gaekwad had expressed his disappointment to a small group of journalists about ICC match referee Peter van de Merve suspending Sourav Ganguly for the opening ODI, after he showed his displeasure at being adjudged leg before wicket to Adam Dale for 17 on Day Two of the Test. Match referees had taken punitive action on team officials reacting to their decisions, so I quickly urged Gaekwad not to say anything more. He was lucky to get away. This was the rare occasion he didn’t play by the rules. The world of cricket will miss him.

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

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