By Raja Baradwaj Rajagopalan
We Indians might forget Salman Khan, the original shirtless wonder of India. We can’t forget Saurav, and his shirtless antics at the Lords. The good Lords could say no to trumpets, no to megaphones, no to so many other things a cricket fan would otherwise not forget to carry for a cricket match there. But they couldn’t stop him from doing a striptease at the “famed” balcony, Krish Srikkanth only smoked there mind you. Some (Women?) in the members stand were heard saying it was a Semi-final, for Saurav didn’t strip in full.
But that was the only thing in his entire cricketing career he didn’t do it in full, in king size. Forgetting the moment when Ranbir Singh Mahendra wrote on his ’92 world cup tour diary something like, “This young man has an attitude problems, he says he can’t carry drinks on to the field…”. He was ignored by the cricket establishment post these disparaging comments.
He quietly did his homework, scoring tons and tons of runs at the domestic level. And when he did make his comeback into the Indian team, good Lords it was a century in debut. And he never looked back, he went on to form a potent ODI opening combination with Sachin Tendulkar. Statistics has it that they are among one of the most destructive of opening pairs, for many years to come.
When the match fixing controversy was at its peak, and when India was mourning its loss of a couple of amazing talents he was made the captain of the Indian team. There were many who said he doesn’t have the experience, attitude or imagination. There were some who said he doesn’t have the talent. The some were among the whole SUM of people who, in just a while hailed him as the next best thing to have happened to Indian cricket. Many started taking offence to Geoff Boycott calling him the “Prince of Calcutta”. Geoff should have called him the King instead, they said.
But then, with fame comes fallibility. There were peddlers (to be read as people who sail using pedal boats, in nights especially after getting ful“filled”) who called him Lord Snooty, there were some who claimed they waited for him to emerge, for a toss.
But he did emerge out of the shadows, the shadows of the shy Indian. An Indian, who was used to taking all kinds of things and then complain.
Saurav would never complain, for he was a conformist to the Newton’s third law. For everything that came his way, he simply gave it back, in style of course.
But going by the same third law… For every successful & headstrong captain in Indian cricket, there is another headstrong coach & selection panel. For a while there was accusation flying from all quarters. A desperate “Dis” added before this graceful cricketer’s name.
Lots said and written about this man. But just when the pundits said his time was up and thanked him for his yeomen services to Indian cricket, he rose. The one other thing that raised that aggressively & energetically from its ashes was the phoenix, the mythological bird (and may be Mohinder Amarnath).
He was the best Indian batsman till the selectors thought scoring is another thing, you need to be below 30 of age. He didn’t take yet another unceremonious omission from the ODI team that seriously, he thought he would definitely make a strong comeback there. Because he still was part of the test establishment and he was India’s best batsman in for a long while.
This strong belief lasted till he was dropped for the Irani. JJ Irani would have turned in his grave, he would have felt like they failed to engrave his surname on the trophy, his trophy. So was the feeling for the millions of cricket fans across the world.
But he wasn’t as disappointed, for he knew he was the comeback man of contemporary cricket. Predictably he did make a comeback to the test team against the Aussies, but that was after a new cricket selection committee took charge. And by then he too had lost his patience, for one final time. Offside was too much of width, that had to be dispatched outside the boundary. That was the time he declared his cricketing innings over, after the Nagpur test.
The Prince of Calcutta, the God of offside, Lord Snooty or whatever one might want to call him, we can’t forget…
A man, who for the first time in Indian cricket history made sure he got his team, the team he wanted.
A man who scored runs by the bag, on the offside of course and made sure they were made elegantly
A man who made sure that the Indian flag flies high, and the heads see the high flying flag on the ground.
A man for who the pride of his country and its cricketers were more than any other thing, even the toss
A man who first showed that a shirt could express much more when not worn, much more than just simply covering ones chest.
A man who actually showed the world Indians can play competitive cricket.
Good bye DADA (Bengali).
I am sure you would remain in the periphery, as the DADA (English) of Indian cricket in some capacity.
We love you. The offside would definitely miss you, and so would we.
