When cricket was fun

Cricket was an indispensable part of growing up in sleepy Madras of the 1950s and 1960s. Everywhere in the city, there were cricket-mad children, their fancy fed by radio commentary and newspaper reports, and the occasional visit to the cricket ground to watch their local heroes. In most houses with sizable compounds, siblings, cousins and their neighbourhood friends played much of their cricket within the four walls of their homes. They had charcoal stumps drawn on a number of walls in the compound, every corridor and hallway was a makeshift ground when it was too hot outside, there were pitches within the compound that kids levelled and rolled—even had cowdung sprayed by helpful domestic staff—but for most the crowning glory was a vast 'ground' nearby, empty plots of land still to be swallowed by residential buildings.

Usually, the wicket was a beauty, levelled by humans and cattle using them as shortcuts from one street to another. The ground was often manicured by grazing buffaloes, which seemed to equal the human population of the streets.

Only when it rained did the playing surface pose problems, challenging the technique and courage of the barefoot batsmen, while transforming military medium pacers into demon fast bowlers. The hoofmarks of the buffaloes on wet soil hardened into dangerous ridges from which the ball reared up steeply. Batting then became largely a matter of survival of the luckiest.

There were countless such private grounds which the young cricketers simply entered one day and occupied, so to speak, until the Rip Van Winkle who owned the plot woke up suddenly to build his dream house, in the process shattering the dreams of many prospective Prasannas and Venkataraghavans, Pataudis and Bordes. Only for the dreams to be resumed in technicolour as soon as the intrepid young cricket warriors conquered their next new territory.

Cricket did not stop even in the classroom, where boys played 'book cricket', by opening pages at random and affixing runs or dismissals to the two imaginary batsmen - they could be Mankad and Roy in one generation and Gavaskar and Viswanath the next. If for example you opened page 54, the second digit was the reference point for the scorekeeping, and the batsman got four runs (or two, under a different set of rules), if the page number ended in a zero, the batsman was declared out and so on.

Madras cricket of those days had its share of characters. P.R. Sundaram, a first rate fast medium bowler and an entertaining wielder of the long handle, was also one of the funniest men seen on a cricket field. He kept up a fairly constant chatter on the field, and was not above laughing at an umpire after he had given a dubious decision. He once informed an official after he had lifted his finger in response to his own loud appeal, that the poor batsman had not played the ball on its way to the wicketkeeper. On another occasion, he bowled a googly as his opening delivery of the match and laughed with his arms akimbo at the batsman who had been bowled shouldering arms.

Some others raised a laugh without intending to. There was 'Kulla Kitta' Krishnamurthy, who opened the innings for Crom-Best Recreation Club, one of numerous short statured players known by that nickname over the years, who, dismissed off the first ball of a match once, told the incoming batsman as they crossed: 'Be careful. He moves the ball both ways.' 'Dochu' Duraiswami bowled a series of full tosses in a junior match at the Central College ground in Bangalore and later declared to his teammates: 'I have never bowled on a turf wicket before.'

Opening batsman Balu sat up all night reading Don Bradman's 'The Art of Cricket' with every intention of putting precept into practice, only to be run out first ball next morning, his partner's straight drive brushing the bowler's fingers on the way to the stumps, and catching him out of the crease! 'Clubby' Clubwalla was another popular character whom the crowds loved to boo, for his slow batting and fascinating contortions whether batting at the top of the order or bowling his alleged off spin with a most complicated action. He was a stonewaller par excellence who once made 37 runs in a whole day of batting.

There were other unforgettable characters. Probably the most popular was K.S. Kannan, the veteran all-rounder who became one of the best-loved coaches of the state, more famous for his original English than his undeniable cricket skills. For a man who was fluent in Tamil, his mother tongue, but could barely pass muster in English, he loved expressing himself in the Queen's language, with invariably hilarious results. 'Give me the ball to him,' he would tell one of his wards, and 'ask me to pad up one batsman.' 'Thanking you, yours faithfully, K.S. Kannan,' were the famous last words of a speech he made at a school function.

In recent years, the stylish right hand batsman T.E. Srinivasan has been famous for his wit and eccentric behaviour. On an Australian tour, his only one, T.E. allegedly told a local press reporter, 'Tell Dennis Lillee T.E. has arrived.' On the same tour he persuaded a security official at a Test match to warn innocent Yashpal Sharma that he would be arrested if he continued to stare at the ladies through his binoculars. Yashpal's panic and the resultant roar of laughter from the Indian dressing room caused a stoppage in the middle as the batsman Gavaskar drew away annoyed by the disturbance.

A city of character

If Chennai is a bustling metropolis today, with a night life not far behind that of Bangalore or Hyderabad, two other metros of the South, Madras, its previous avatar, was the epitome of conservatism, viewed as an overgrown village, where everyone went to bed at 8.00 pm and woke up at the crack of dawn to drink a ritual cup of coffee and read the newspaper, before dutifully trotting off to the streetcorner temple to pay obeisance to his or her personal god.

A magnificent stretch of sand and bright blue sea is the most visible physical feature of Chennai. Among the longest beaches in the world, the Marina has for hundreds of years been the local residents’ refuge from the sweltering heat and humidity. At the crack of dawn, you will find vast numbers of people, young and old, walking or jogging on its paved footpath, while an equal number of men, women and children relax on its sands in the evenings, seeking relief in the seabreeze from the sweltering heat and humidity of the day.

Many of the buildings on the promenade are impressive examples of architecture that blends western and Indian traditions, a legacy of the British empire, with the Madras University, Presidency College and Queen Mary’s College, prominent among them.

These buildings and these health and fitness-conscious, daily visitors to the Marina perhaps truly reflect the essential character of the city: solid, quietly conservative, peace loving, by and large.

The British gave the city its modern infrastructure, its institutions of higher education, its judicial system, and its uncommon fluency in the English language, while a rich continuum over the centuries of Indian traditions, art, literature, music and dance, religion and philosophy, have all combined to develop its unique culture—at once traditional and open to new ideas and thoughts.

Within walking distance of the Marina is the Parthasarathi Swami temple, and just a long run away is the Kapaleeswara temple of Mylapore‑‑but two of the city’s many temples, churches, mosques and other places of worship. Somewhere in between is the Santhome Church, while a sizable Muslim minority offer their prayers in the Triplicane mosque, again within easy reach of the beach—each of these a splendid tribute to the city’s multi-cultural ethos.
Triplicane or Tiruvallikkeni, to give its correct original Tamil name, was home to at least two great sons of pre-independence Madras: Subrahmanya Bharati, the fiery poet whose electrifying verses inspired many a freedom fighter, and Srinivasa Ramanujan, the mathematical genius of world fame. In Mylapore was born a couple of centuries earlier, Tiruvalluvar, the great saint-poet famous for his Tirukkural, a compendium of 1330 couplets, which offer complete guidance on every conceivable aspect of life.

While Tanjavur was once rightly regarded as the cultural capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, today the centre of gravity has decidedly shifted to Chennai, with, for example the great musical compositions of the Trinity of Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, practised, sung and celebrated in profusion in this city, whose December music and dance “season’ is probably unparalleled for size and diversity of programming. The city is also a bustling film producer, with the second largest movie industry in India after “Bollywood” of Mumbai. A R Rehman leads a pack of talented composers whose music for films has achieved international recognition. The Tamil film industry has also been a continuous supply line of politicians at the state level, including a few chief ministers down to the present one, a legacy of the Dravidian parties using cinema as a medium of political propaganda back in the fifties.

Fast emerging as India’s Detroit, with Ford and Hyundai setting up manufacturing bases here, Chennai is also an important centre of computer software, IT and IT enabled services, second only to Bangalore, and second for reasons not of talent, but of locational advantage, in which the Karnataka capital scores better, thanks mainly to its pleasant climate. While Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh together account for a substantial percentage of the world’s software population, Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu are the most computer and Internet savvy in all India, with Tamil second only to English as the language most used on the worldwide web in this part of the world.

It is a sports-conscious city, with a large number of passionate enthusiasts of cricket, followed closely by a burgeoning chess community, led by Viswanathan Anand, one of the world’s best players. The city has some of the best cricket grounds in India, most of them developed and maintained by corporate patrons of the game on college campuses, a unique brand of industry-institution cooperation. Chennai also has excellent, world standard facilities for other ball games, track and field and aquatic events, golf courses and even a top class motor racing track not far from the city. Tennis, squash, badminton, table tennis, field hockey, soccer, athletics, beach volleyball, swimming and sailing are some of the popular sporting activities. Tamil Nadu has a talented cricket team, which figures prominently in the national championship and the M A Chidambaram Stadium, the headquarters of cricket in the state, has been the venue, since the 1930s, of several international matches and the cricket World Cup.

Chennai is an important centre of school and higher education. The State government sponsored mid-day meal scheme has for decades been a model for third world countries to emulate in their attempts to spread literacy and ensure nutrition for the children of their poor. In addition to conventional, state approved streams of schooling, the city has had the benefit of the pioneering initiatives of some of the finest educationists of modern times. Staying at the Theosophical Society of Adyar during the years of the Second World War, the great Italian, Maria Montessori, introduced her world-renowned method of education designed to exploit the potential of a child to the fullest extent, to students and teachers she trained here, thus laying the foundation for the Montessori movement in India. Eminent thinker J Krishnamurti, who founded the Rishi Valley in nearby Andhra Pradesh, spent many productive years at Chennai; the school run by the Krishnamurti Foundation is another important landmark of Adyar. Not far from there is the Kalakshetra Foundation, an international institution founded in the 1930s by Rukmini Devi Arundale, dancer, dance teacher, choreographer and institution builder extraordinaire.

The Guindy Engineering College, now part of Anna University, the colleges of Madras University, the Indian Institute of Technolgy, and autonomous institutions like Madras Christian College, Loyola College and Women’s Christian College are among the oldest and finest centres of graduate and post graduate education in India. Amazingly, some of these are among the oldest modern institutions of learning in the world!

There are ever so many other things that Chennai is famous for—from its ubiquitous Udipi restaurants specializing in idli-dosa-vada and south Indian “degree” coffee, its many silk sari shops and jewellers, a great variety of entertainment options covering dance, drama, music and cinema, religious discourses, Gita lectures, yoga, pranayama, reiki and pranic healing, a bewildering array of martial arts, alternative medicine and healing systems, both indigenous and exotic. The British Council, Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller Bhavan and the American Consulate, all of them in the forefront of cultural interchange between India and these countries, have over the decades succeeded in bringing some of the leading artists, poets, authors and other men and women of eminence to perform for and interact with the residents of Chennai.

The Chennai climate is healthy, by and large, and its standards of hygiene are of an acceptable standard. The Madras Medical College and the General Hospital are institutions with a rich history, and the city is today the home of some of the best medical talent in the country, and of a number of excellent diagnostic centres and hospitals. A whole new hospitality industry has grown in the last couple of decades around the thousands of patients (and their families) coming to Chennai from all parts of India for specialised treatment.

No account of Chennai can be complete without a word about its traffic and its roads. If you think the Chennai traffic is bad, it’s a sure indication you haven’t seen much else of India. And as for the poor condition of our roads, we can assure you it’s a temporary inconvenience. After all, people in Chennai have only had to put up with bad roads for a mere ten years or so! Who knows, we may even have the best bus and metro rail service in India before the 21st Century runs out, at the pace at which these are being developed.

Grand Prix

One of the most inspiring stories in Chennai’s cricket league was scripted by Grand Prix, a youthful side promoted to the First Division in 1982.

This collection of schoolboys and college cricketers practised along with members of another club, Grove CC, inside the compound of “The Grove”, the late Sir C P Ramaswami Iyer’s residence on Eldams Road.

That first season in the first division showed Grand Prix in a shining light, though they finished in the middle of the points table if not in the bottom half. (A year later, they were to finish among the top four teams of the league and earn the right to take part in the Simpson Trophy). Followers of Chennai cricket would be aware of the huge gap in standards between the first and second divisions of the TNCA league. Newly promoted teams invariably struggle to hold their place, even though they have finished first and second in the lower rung to earn that promotion.

One of the primary reasons for this barrier, besides the overall superiority of the senior teams is the psychological one of having to do battle against seasoned cricketers, some of them big names at the national or even international level. By exception, the Grand Prix players were a confident lot, possibly because most of them were academically bright and drew inspiration from watching and reading about great cricketers and their heroic exploits. None of them seemed to be overawed by the reputations of their new opponents.

In that first season, Grand Prix were in danger of losing a match outright to Alwarpet Cricket Club, a team that included K Srikkanth, V Sivaramakrishnan, Satvinder Singh, P Mukund, Bharath Kumar, Vasudevan and Harjinder Singh, a powerhouse of talent if ever there was one. When the mandatory last twenty overs of the match began, defeat was staring them in their face and the ninth wicket fell with 13 overs still to go. The Alwarpet bowlers were confident of wrapping it up but they did not reckon with the stonewalling ability of Ravi Chellam, now a nationally known environmentalist, but then the personification of callow youth. They were not to know Ravi had almost pulled off a similar rescue act just a week ago. Determined, even cocky, he kept up a continuous flow of words of advice delivered in an unexpectedly stentorian voice to his partner. Together they offered a broad defensive bat or their pads to everything the bowlers sent down. No amount of sledging, cajoling or downright bullying by the close-in fielders had any effect on the pair, which played out the remaining overs. On the contrary, the incessant chatter by the batsmen irritated the fielders and bowlers into making mistakes.

Grand Prix had a good run in the senior division, largely through the outstanding contributions of W V Raman and L Sivaramakrishnan, two who went on to play for the country, but superbly supported by less known players like N Ramesh, K K Sridhar, Shankar, Madan, P S Raman and a whole bunch of gutsy youngsters. But soon, the inevitable happened and the most talented of them were grabbed by company teams and some were lost to job responsibilities in Chennai and elsewhere or higher studies abroad. Some four years down the road, the team was relegated to the second division and thereafter slid all the way down. Such is the plight of private clubs in an era of professional teams sponsored by corporate patrons of cricket, though without such support Tamil Nadu cricket would surely languish in today’s competitive environment.

Touring & other talkies

While watching Pravahi, Arun Khopkar’s documentary on bharata natyam dancer Alarmel Valli, you were impressed as much by the comfort and projection quality of Sree cinema in the Satyam complex as by the film itself and the art of its protagonist. The multiplexes in the city and the one at Mayajaal, beyond the ECR tollgate‑‑especially the latter‑‑make filmgoing a pleasurable experience, even if the gate does impose a heavy toll on your wallet. For this, I guess we must thank the omnipresence of television and the instant gratification it provides millions of consumers in their living rooms, which forced film exhibitors to upgrade their theatres and make them desirable destinations.

There was a time when going to a movie at select venues in Madras was a thrilling experience. English film buffs looked forward to new releases at Minerva and New Elphinstone, which, if I am not mistaken, survived into the seventies. Tucked away in a quiet corner not far from bustling Broadway, Minerva was a tiny little hall, the quality of the movies exhibited there its sole claim to fame. How many wonderful Hollywood films we old Madrasis have seen there! A movie at Elphinstone was a different adventure altogether, made so by Jafar’s Soda Fountain with its gleaming counter and mouthwatering icecreams, to which you made a beeline during the interval.

The sixties brought new excitement in the form of Safire and Blue Diamond near where the Gemini flyover is now. At Safire and Anand, a kilometer down the road, we first saw 70mm cinema, while the continuous shows at Blue Diamond were a huge draw. There, if you were crazy enough, you could finish watching a movie and stay on for the next show.

Unforgettable are ‘touring talkies’ like Jayanthi and Theyagaraja, now permanent cinema halls at Tiruvanmiyur, but tents which moved from place to place in the sixties, thanks to the temporary licences they were given. It was all pretty informal, and the projector operators were not above restarting an already running film to please college students who came in late in groups. Special weekend attractions were English films offered as add-ons to Tamil pictures. Two for the price of one!

On Murugan's trail

On Murugan's trail
What do we do on Tamil New Year’s day? Precious little except laze around, in these days of nuclear families and hectic lifestyles, when you don’t have the time to participate in the family puja or enjoy the unique flavours and tastes of the sumptuous repast mother lays out for you. (For the uninitiated, the new year lunch has a bit of everything: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy. It’s about the only time neem forms part of the south Indian meal).

In recent times, the Tamil new year seems to have been relegated to a mere sideshow, with no one except TV stations paying any attention to it. The only other sign that it is a festive occasion is the much-hyped release of new films on the day. This year, after a considerable gap, we are told, films starring two major icons of Tamil cinema, Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan, opened to huge expectations.

Increasingly, Tamil families celebrate the native new year with less enthusiasm than they do its English counterpart, with the equivalent of midnight mass quite a prominent if incongruent ritual at most of our urban temples on 31st December. The number of greeting cards I receive has been going down steadily; this year I received none, though true to recent trends, a few friends sent me messages on my cellphone and a couple of others emailed me.

The first SMS I received on 14 April said 'Inia puthandu vazhthukkal'. It was from my good friend Anvar, whose devotion to Tamil rivals his passion for photography. I had run into him after a long gap the evening before, at a birthday party for Mr S Muthiah, the Man from Madras Musings. Years ago, Anvar and I did assignments together for Mr Muthiah. Our road trips together had been interesting experiences for me, especially when my two companions swapped stories from contemporary Tamil history. Depth of knowledge on the subject was hardly surprising in the older man, often described as a Madras historian, but I was more than impressed with the researcher's bent of mind the young photographer displayed.

During one of these freewheeling conversations, Anvar revealed his deep interest in the Murugan cult. It is his ambition to produce a film on the Aru padai veedu pilgrimage trail, involving travel to six Murugan temples and documenting the rituals and traditions observed by the simple folk who offer worship there.

On a personal level, Anvar promised the lord at Palani a couple of years ago that he would bring his wife soon after their wedding. He found out however that before he did that, he had to visit another Murugan temple at Tiruchendur in fulfilment of a vow by his bride's family! There, he disclosed his name and his wife's with some trepidation, while making a personal offering to the lord, but to his pleasant surprise, the priest not only blessed them, but wished them both a speedy return to the temple baby in hand.

Anvar is a devout Muslim and I often wonder what drives him on this particular mission. Is it a search for his roots, or is there a romance in the lore of a boy-god that transcends religion? I'll never know the answer but people like him give you hope. His New Year greetings brought back memories of happy times, and lightened for me the general gloom of the pathetic 'entertainment' our indefatigable TV channels offered throughout the day.
(First published in April 2005)