Cricketer or Commentator, he stood tall!

The Tony Greig I knew

Raju Korti

My first glimpse of Anthony William Greig, better recognised by the cricket buffs the world over as Tony Greig, dates back to 1972-73 when I was among the countless school-going boys hysterical about the game. The Englishmen were led by another Tony (Lewis) who looked more like a Hollywood star and who became an instant hit with the Indian media with his impeccable manners. On that tour of India, the scene stealer was, however, Tony Greig with his 6 feet 7 inch altitudinous frame. That of course was not his only stake to fame as Greig with his aggression and crowd-friendly antics was lustily cheered wherever the teams played. To me the most abiding memory of that tour was Greig, protecting the boundary and catching oranges thrown at him by exuberant people with the same practiced ease.
Greig was a revelation on that tour with an all round performance. As a batsman he would step out boldly to the Indian spinners and hit them out of the park. As a bowler able to bowl gentle medium pace and cutters, he could extract an awkward bounce from the placid Indian pitches.
Greig had both height and stature if you know what I mean. Thanks to Wisden Almanac and Sports and Pastime which had articles by the likes of Neville Cardus, Jim Swanton, Jack Fingleton and Richie Benaud, we youngsters were very well informed. We knew how Greig who would have never been able to play international cricket because of the Gleneagles Treaty, was pitchforked into the English team due to his Scottish parentage. The Treaty barred nations, including South Africa from international cricket because of its racist apartheid policy and with the scenario that accrued, Greig would have been condemned to his home grounds alongside greats like Ali Bacher, Pollock brothers, Eddie Barlow and Mike Procter since the Pretorian regime was adamant on its colour prejudice.
In a way, Sunil Gavaskar who strode like a collosus on the cricketing firmament in that historic 1971 tour of Carribean, was partly responsible for introducing us to the South African giants. Garry Sobers, who I consider as the game's greatest all time ever, plumped for Gavaskar in that Australia Vs Rest of the World. The latter had some of these.
A couple of years later, Greig's antecedents came in handy for the Channel Nine media tycoon Kerry Packer who used him to rope in the best of West Indian, Australian, Pakistani and South African talents for the World Series of Cricket dubbed as "Packer Circus". It turned out to be that in letter and spirit. All the cricketers were banished by their country's respective boards for their "betrayal". For all the interest and hoopla generated by the Packer Series, the matches were low scoring and most of the games became only figures in record books. The point here is Greig's leadership qualities had surfaced even before he was inducted by the MCC in its Test eleven. His role in that jumboree later not only cost him England's captaincy, which he had inherited from Mike Denness, but also a lot of vitriol and barbs through a strong backlash.
During the home summer of 1974, England faced three Tests against India and three against Pakistan. Greig averaged 42 with the bat and scalped 14 with his hundred against India at Lords as his best. This was good tune up for the Ashes tour of Australia where the Englishmen -- uncharitably called Poms -- were the favourites. As it turned out, the Englishmen were made to hop, skip and jump by the blistering speed of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. While his other team-mates were clueless what had hit them, Greig played the lone hand with a gritty 110. He was a stand-out character in a losing team and won the admiration of the "hard playing" Aussies, who liked his approach to the game.
When Greig toured India in 1976-77 -- this time as Captain and justified the mantle by winning a series in the sub continent against the best spinning attack in the world -- I was a college going youngster who understood that he had done his home work exceedingly well. I had seen the tall Greig holding his willy at almost his chest height while standing up to the pacers and quickly repositioning his stance to be able to bring his bat down while confronting the Indian spiners.
The equations had changed by 1987 World Cup when I was already a journalist with The Hindu while Greig had assumed the new avtaar of a writer-commentator. In the Press Box, I was lucky enough to be sandwiched between Greig and another commentator whom I rate as among the best experts, Trevor Bailey. I did an in-depth feature on Bailey and Greig, who was privy to all the conversation between us, tapped me on my back. "That was wonderful mate," he told me without concealing his appreciation. That little boost set up my interview with him at the hotel where he was put up. He was quite amused to know that he had caught one of the oranges I had thrown at him during the 1972-73 series.
By that time, I had seen enough of Greig to know how brutally blunt he could be. I recall how his ebullient oratory had created quite a flutter when he expounded the West Indies players' reputation for wilting under pressure.
"I like to think that people are building these West Indians up, because I am not really sure they're as good as everyone else thinks they are. People are forgetting they were beaten 5-1 by the Aussies and just about managed to keep their heads above water against the Indians a short time ago. Sure, they have a couple of fast bowlers, but I don't think we will run into anything faster than Lillee and Thomson. So I am not worried about them at all. The West Indians are magnificent when they are on top. But if they are down, they grovel, and I intend to make them grovel."  
There was a furore as expected. The word "grovel" had sinister connotations for the West Indians, many of whom had slave ancestry. Moreover, apartheid and Gleneagles Agreement were the issues of the day, so a white South African using the word "grovel" heavily accentuated the faux pas. Stung to the quick, the West Indian bowlers took a great delight in adding yards to their run-up when Grey took the crease and took his wicket. But true to his nature, Greig had no remorse.
Partly because he had seen me speaking at length with the likes of Bailey, Christopher Martin Jenkins, Henry Blofeld and Peter Roebuck (who jumped to his death), Greig let it unleash, no holds barred. "I still think of the West Indians in the same breath," he told me. I too didn't mince my words. "As a commentator, I thought your bias showed and though you spoke as fluently as the BBC Test Match Special commentators like Brian Johnston, Don Moseley, Christopher Martin Jenkins and Henry Blofeld, you often overplayed your hand. Was it exuberance or design?" I asked him. "Oh they are all seasoned veterans and peerless, but I am what I have to be," he said with that same flourish that he brought into play while describing the ear rings of ladies who came to watch the matches in Gulf. His narration could swing to both extremeties and often he got carried away while commentating, not really bothered with its repercussions. But you had to hand it to him that he was in a league of his own even as a commentator, whether you liked him or not. In that meeting Greig spoke a lot, sometimes criticising the Indians and sometimes showing unabashed admiration. But then he was like that, always speaking with rare candour and never playing close to chest.
So it was when he matter-of-factly spoke of his lung cancer and the inevitability of it. Compare this with our own Yuvraj Singh whose bout with cancer was chewed to cud by the media and people.
In his last lecture at the Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey, Greig said " I have never had any doubt I did the right thing by my family and by cricket."
He truly epitomised that.


   

The long and short of MSD

Raju Korti

Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni doesn't seem to be getting any wiser with passing age, but there is one change in him that's quite perceptible. His answers to the Media's questions, which invariably would be longish and more often than not predictable, are getting as short as the time he spends at the crease these days.
Indian cricketers, by and large, inflated by the greens and overawing fame, are vulnerable to complacency. Dhoni has rode his luck thus far and to be fair to him, has deserved his spoils. What has failed to get into his -- what is usually labelled as -- "ice cool head" is, on the cricketing turf, nemesis does catch up.
His spinning gambit against the dour Englishmen backfired as it had to, yet, like the proverbial rope that refuses to un-knot itself, Dhoni persisted in the tactic until his mistake snowballed into a Himalayan blunder.
All the good work that Ashwin and Co did was brought to an effective nought by the seasoned Swann and Panesar.
After the much vaunted Indian batting line-up collapsed like a pack of cards at the Bangalore T20 against Pakistan, Dhoni made a profound observation: "We should have got more runs on the board. We got a good start, fantastic effort by the openers but then we kept losing wickets after that. We were short by 10 or 15 more runs which we should have got easily. 145 would have been a safe score on this track."
Of course, the skipper that he is, he conveniently skipped the fact that it was his lazy, casual shot that triggered the collapse. And if he knew 145 was a safe score, he had enough firepower in his batsmen, inluding himself, to score those. Hasn't it been sometime that he has been pleading for the induction of more energetic and younger players in the team? On a few occasions, he has either obliquely, or through convoluted statements suggested that the so called dead wood in the team may be shown the exit door. If only he could realise that he finds himself at the crossroads for precisely the same reason.
The Dhoni influence, what with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) chief N Srinivasan doing his bidding, worked with bigwigs like Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. My gut feeling is the three whose names record books would feel proud to have, didn't hang their boots in very happy circumstances. If we are to go by Laxman's version, Dhoni didn't even show the courtesy of picking up his call before he announced his abrupt retirement. By his own admission, Dhoni sounded proud of the fact that he was a difficult person to get through to. Wonder how the skipper interacts with juniors. Or is it easy for his bloated ego to deal with players who are trying to cement their place in the national side?
All's not been very well with the Indian team. There has been no love lost between Dhoni and Sehwag. Not that Sehwag is a holy cow by any means, but the likes of him have to be handled with kid gloves. Yet, during the series against the Kangaroos, Dhoni squarely laid the blame on oldies who he felt were not agile and energetic on the field. The oldies included Sachin Tendulkar as well, but Tendulkar could carry on, being too big for Dhoni to play games with.
In recent times, Dhoni has been blaming the batsmen in straight or very many words. He seems to have lost sight of the fact that apart from keeping wickets, he has to defend his own as well. The much trumpeted helicopter shot has almost diappeared and the Dhoni we see today is a run grafter rather than the aggressive batsman we have known him to be. His post-match briefings are as un-exciting as the batsmanship he displays these days. His captaincy in the past few seasons has been unimaginative. As Ganguly rightly pointed out "He looks a great captain when he is winning." 
What you give unto others, comes back to you eventually. The clamour for his sacking is becoming louder. Yes, Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar did say that Dhoni was still the best bet since there was no viable alternative at the moment, but that opinion is pregnant with meaning. He is the captain by default.
The Aussie team is also going through a transitional phase. The Australian Cricket Board had a similar predicament knowing Ponting's glorious days were over and it was time to hand over the mantle to Michael Clarke who wasn't exposed well enough to the rigours of the job. But the ACB took a decision and reposed faith in him. Clarke more than proved equal to that task, just like Alaistair Cook did when Andrew Strauss paved the way for him.
The BCCI must learn to take hard decisions. Dhoni's logic of giving younger players a chance should apply to himself to begin with. Remember the West Indies Criket Board too did not hesitate to dump the likes of Richards, Lara, Haynes, Richardson when they weren't performing to their past potential.
Keeping someone in the team merely on the basis of his past laurels isn't great cricketing sense. Indian cricket has any number of examples of those who got an extended charity just to enable them a place in record books. If "why" rules over "why not" while annoucing retirement, the BCCI must give them a honourable exit and a place under the Sun.
Question is will they?



  

On a sticky wicket!

Will we ever see this scene on Indian wickets?

Raju Korti

Before I dwell on the pivotal issue in this blog, let me bring to you a flashback of 1971 summer when a casting vote coup by then Chairman of Indian Selectors Vijay Merchant catapulted stylish and elegant left hander Ajit Wadekar as the skipper of the team to tour West Indies. Merchant’s master-stroke, among other things caused – no less – to roll the head of the incumbent skipper Nawab of Pataudi. But that of course is peripheral to the issue.
The first among the volley of questions thrown at Wadekar by a charged media was did the Indians have a game plan to tackle the battery of West Indian fast bowlers on the bouncy tracks there. Wadekar’s riposte was brilliant: Good batsmen are never afraid of good bowlers or bad pitches. As it turned out, Wadekar and his men made history winning against the mighty West Indians led by the indomitable Garry Sobers. The series was dominated by old warhorse Dilip Sardesai and the new batting sensation Sunil Gavaskar.
The West Indian pitches and then the subsequent ones in the series against England showed India had the potential to negotiate the blistering pace of John Snow and John Price. Put simply, the pitches, obviously conducive to the home teams, did not in the least inhibit quality players like Gavaskar, Viswanath and Vengsarkar.
Contrast this against the stink raised by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)  Vice President Niranjan Shah a few days back when he let lose a verbal fussilade against the Eden Gardens Curator Prabir Mukherjee for defying Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s clear hint of preparing a turning track for the recent Kolkata Test.
Mukherjee got Shah’s goat for speaking out his mind to the media, terming it as a breach of code of conduct. Given BCCI track record of muzzling the players’ and officials’ voices, Shah’s outburst wasn’t surprising in the least. The BCCI in its infinite wisdom has rarely been sporting and still hasn’t come to appreciate the need for transparency. Often, its decisions, taken behind closed doors, are merely conveyed to the public, rationale be damned.
Mukherjee, a weather-beaten veteran of his craft, wasn’t amused when Dhoni brazenly declared that the Indians would be more than happy to have a spinning track to checkmate the Englishmen sensitized to fast tracks. Now it is old hat that the home team asks for pitches that suits its conditions. So it is not as if Dhoni committed a grave sin. He did what his predecessors did all along. Don’t the overseas players delight in the discomfiture of the Indian batsmen when they take their crease on their pitches?
Mukherjee was miffed and rightly so, that a seasoned curator like him was virtually ordered to do so. Anyone with a right cricketing sense will concede Mukherjee’s point.
Why do the Indians fight shy of playing on fast pitches? And why does it have to be a tit for tat elsewhere in the world. Can we not have a semblance of cricketing wisdom that ensures there are sporting pitches consistently all over. For one, it will keep the Test Cricket – which is the real cricket – alive. The shorter version of the game with its Wham Bang Thank You approach is now losing its excitement and sheen with its overkill.
Every time Indian teams go to England, Australia or South Africa to be haunted by those short-pitched deliveries, come back more determined than ever to give the overseas teams a dose of their own medicine by opting for a dusty, spinners’ paradise. Recall how Matthew Hayden had turned the 2004 Wankhede pitch in Mumbai as a “candy bar”.
Of course, by all means have a turning track when the overseas teams come here, but why shy away from preparing fast and bouncy tracks for the upcoming players during the domestic matches? If the diminutive Viswanath could caress a Jeff Thomson’s 150 Kmph delivery with a late cut, what stops the likes of Kohli and Gambhir from displaying similar panache? A far cry from the days of Nari Contractor felled by an express delivery from Charlie Griffith during the 1962 series in the Carribean. Since then, all debates and discussions on having sporting pitches in the country were quietly buried.
Fifty years later, the Indian paranoia to have turning wickets continues. Remember how even an accomplished batsman like Sourav Ganguly walked out huffing and puffing when he saw the lush green pitch at Nagpur. Far from trying to prove a point, Ganguly and his men were beaten comprehensively by Ponting and Co. This time round it has been different in that the Englishmen have beaten the Indians at their own game and how. How are the players, least of all the BCCI going to overcome? Maybe they will want overseas teams to come without a spinner!
 Let’s get back to what Mukherjee said: “It is unethical to tamper with the pitch as per the liking of the captain. I have not done it in my life. Why should I do it now? What happens if the pitch does not last for five days? Let them give me in writing then I will do it.”
Mukherjee faced flak for defying the Board speaking in Dhoni’s voice. The breach of code was just a specious excuse. But such deep rooted are the Indian fears that far from standing by his side, the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), turned against him.
Quite possible the Indians may bounce back to win the Mumbai Test, but the fact will remain that Cook cooked the Indian goose on its own soil.
The Englishmen have certainly queered the pitch for the Indians, never mind the pompous 3-0 rout the latter kept dreaming of.