22 September,2016 07:54 AM IST | | Clayton Murzello
BCCIu00e2u0080u0088should have recalled how well they went about their golden jubilee celebrations while erecting the stage for today’s 500th Test
The congregation of India players and captains delighted spectators at Wankhede Stadium prior to the start of the BCCI's golden jubilee Test match contested between India and England in 1980. Pic Courtesy/Patrick Eagar, Wisden Cricket Monthly
Many cricket lovers reckon the BCCI's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1980 were truly memorable. As a kid of 12, I remember seeing a clutch of photographs in Sportsweek magazine on the celebrations held before the Test between India and England at the Wankhede Stadium.
Never before had so many India Test players gathered in such large numbers for one Test. Thanks to BCCI inviting all Test players, we got to see how the stars of yesteryear looked in their India blazers.
Back then, unlike now, all Test players were invited (I will come to the one exception later in the piece.). Even Lall Singh, who was part of the first Test team in 1932, made it from Malaysia where he had migrated. The players formed a circle around the captains (Bishan Singh Bedi and MAK Pataudi couldn't make it on time) and Sunil Gavaskar, always aware of the game's history, went around collecting autographs. By all accounts, all captains were part of BCCI's guest list. Even heads of overseas cricket boards were invited. Billy Griffith, the then president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) presented BCCI a painting from a collection at Lord's - the famous one of four kids tossing the bat in the air before a match. Wonder if the BCCI preserved it.
Tony Lewis, the England captain who led the MCC in India during his winter of 1972-73, reported the 1980 Test for the Sunday Telegraph and was delighted to be introduced to the likes of Polly Umrigar, Ramesh DivÂeÂcha and Ghulam Ahmed, who he watched as a kid in England. "It occurred to me at lunchtime, as all the old players mingled, that rarely has such Indian talent been concentrated within a few yards," he wrote.
Dicky Rutnagur, the late Indian scribe who worked in the UK, wrote: "The scene was a beautiful, sentimental journey into the past. Memories of childhood adolescence and a long professional life in cricket journalism flitted past as the stars of yesteryear, some feeble, some silÂveÂrÂ-Âhaired waved to the stands."
Cricket writer PN Sundaresan in Sportsweek reckoned the splendid pre-Test celebrations provided a challenge to the players. "To switch over to the unemotional serious business of a Test match would not have been an easy one, particularly for the members of the Indian team."
However, Gundappa Viswanath, who led India in that Test, told me yesterday that although the morning festivities of February 15 were unforgettable, he was not overcome by emotion by the time he went out to toss with Mike Brearley. The same Viswanath, who was to make that Test sportingly significant by recalling Bob Taylor to the crease after the England wicketkeeper was given out, has not been called to Kanpur's celebration crease for today's Test.
The Board looks foolish when it gets reported that only post-1970 capÂtains are called, with the exception of Chandu Borde. The Pune man was not even a regular captain and he led in the 1967-68 Adelaide Test only because regular MAK Pataudi was down with a hamstring injury.
I was stunned to hear that a past captain like Nari Contractor was not invited to Kanpur. Didn't any official realise that Contractor was part of GS Ramchand's Indian team which beat Australia for the first time there in 1959-60? Bedi too has been ignored. Is it because he has been at war with the establishment? Or have the current cricket rulers forgotten he led India to three significant overseas Test match wins at Port of Spain, Melbourne and Sydney in the 1970s? I'd go with the former possibility because grudges cannot be ruled out when it comes to administrators and cricketers. It happened in 1980, too, when former stumper Budhi Kunderan, who had criticised the BCCI a decade earlier, was "disillusioned and disappointed" not to have received an invitation for the Golden Jubilee Test. Not that he would have asked for an air ticket to fly in from Scotland, where he settled down. "I did not imagine certain remarks made by me to an Indian journalist in 1970 on my retirement from first-class cricket would have been held against me. I'd have been proud and honoured to have been with all the other Indian Test cricketers in Bombay," Kunderan was quoted as saying in the April 1980 issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly. That said, Mumbai 1980 had more hits than misses. The same cannot be said of Kanpur 2016. Opportunity wasted. What a shame!
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
