There is no doubt that Lala Amarnath was the most colourful Indian cricketer; and I say so inspite of having only ever met him once (actually I wasn’t even introduced to him, I merely helped him down a staircase at the Eden Gardens after a couple of officials had done the vanishing trick !).

But when I was working on Jimmy Amarnath’s biography many years ago, he recounted some wonderful stories that speak of an authoritative and yet kind man, a stern but ambitious father; and a very shrewd man!

Not many know, for example, that Surinder Amarnath was born right handed and Lalaji actually converted him to a left hander by pinning one hand behind his back ! When the brothers were still kids, he reckoned that a day would come when they might actually compete for a place and that if Surinder batted left handed, it might help both of them.

Improbable as I found it, Jimmy swore by the story and it was actually part of the book we did !

The other story is actually about Jimmy’s debut in the 1969-70 series against Australia. Surinder was in the squad for the Calcutta test though he didn’t actually get to play. Lalaji took Jimmy along as well as a kind of reward and when they got there, he found that the practice pitches were damp. He summoned Jimmy, got him into cricket gear and told him to bowl in the nets. For good measure, he called a couple of selectors to have a look as well.

As Jimmy was warming up, Lalaji took him aside and told him to hit the deck. Jimmy was a bit surprised because he was really a swing bowler at just over medium pace. But he knew enough about his father to obey and so he ran in, used his shoulder and hit the ball about halfway down the pitch. “As soon as I did it, I knew why he had asked me to do so” Jimmy recalled many years later. The first ball took off and hit the roof of the net over where first slip would have been. By the time the most fiery spell of his life had been bowled, he was in the team for the Madras Test that followed !!

He must have been some cricketer for nobody with a record like his can have the kind of respect he did. But as captain and then as selector, he exercised the kind of influence that very few in Indian cricket did. He also had a very down-to-earth and commonsense approach to cricket that sometimes works better than extensive theorising. A couple of days ago Balwinder Sandhu told me this story that probably sums up Lalaji best.

During the Delhi test against the West Indies in 1983, Lalaji, now 71, strolled across to the Feroz Shah Kotla and asked Kapil Dev what team he was going to play. “Two spinners, maybe three” he said. :Chhota ground hai bhai, spinners ko baahar maarenge,” he said and suggested that the boundary rope be pushed back a bit (the Kotla boundary then, as now, was very small; just about 65 yards). Apparently, Sandhu says, the suggestion was accepted, the boundary rope was pushed back 5 yards, the DDCA lost out on some income but Shivlal Yadav picked up a couple of wickets to catches on the boundary line !!

Harsha Bhogle

Meanwhile, on Rediff's cricket page, check Harsha Bhogle’s column, a real video interview with the Late Lala Amarnath and the live scores of the two Tests. Check it out, and more, at http://cricket.rediff.com

Mail Cricket Editor