The Great Indian Spinners-Part I

Biswajit Jha India has long been considered a land of spin bowling, where even the best batsmen of the world look meek against the supreme tweak. Though the situation has undergone a little change after the emergence of fast bowler Kapil Dev in the late 70s, Indian spinners have won more matches in their own den against the toughest of oppositions. Even the best batsmen usually struggle once spin is introduced into the attack in India. It has been seen for long as one of the toughest challenges for any batsman to counter the Indian spinners on crumbling pitches. Even Pontings, Laras, Flintoffs learned to play Indian spinners the hard way and failed more often than they succeed here. There was a time when the spinners would start the proceedings for India, or wait for a few overs by the ‘gentle’ medium pacers to take the shine off the ball, so that they could have a good grip. Throughout the 60s and 70s, it was the spinners including the great quartet of Indian cricket-Bishan Singh Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrashekhar, Erapalli Prasanna and S Venkatraghavan- who took Indian spin to great heights long before Anil Kumble carried the baton forward. Apart from them, there was Vinoo Mankad, a left-arm spinner with considerable repute, and leggie Subhash Gupte, who first heralded India’s spin supremacy to the world. But the first exponent of this rich Indian tradition was a bowler not known to many Indians of this generation. His name was Palwankar Baloo, a high quality left-arm spinner of ‘untouchable’ origins. Cricket in India under the British rule at that time (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) was played among religious groups like Hindus, Muslims, Parsees and English team, which consisted of the British ruling class. Baloo, a groundsman at Pune Club, would be asked to bowl after his day’s work as a net bowler by the captain of the club, J G Greig. Impressed with his bowling, Greig asked the bowler to move to Bombay so that he could showcase his talent there, which was then considered to be the cradle of Indian cricket. But the caste divide in the Hindu ranks came to haunt Baloo as he was denied an entry into the Hindu squad. The reason was that it was not possible for the upper caste Hindus to play along with an ‘Untouchable’. Though he appeared for the Parsees for sometime, he forced his way into the Hindu side by the dint of his sheer talent as a crafty left-arm spinner. Though he bamboozled the best batsmen of that era with his guile, his best moments under the sun came during the tour of England in 1911 with the All India Team that consisted of Hindu, Muslim and Parsee members, where the gifted left-armer took 114 wickets at an astonishing average of 18.86. Although he continued to figure in the Bombay Quadrangular, where he enthralled cricket lovers of that time till 1921, he never captained the Hindu team because of his caste. In his overall career, he took 179 wickets at 15.21, a figure which any bowler of any generation would like to achieve. Despite being a bowler of very high quality, his name was not so popular for the reason that he never represented India in any official Test match. But information from the match reports and cricket annals of that generation clearly suggest that he was a bowler whom the best batters of his time didn’t want to confront. Even Ramachandra Guha in his famous book on Indian cricket Corner of a Foreign Field highlighted Baloo as the first Indian cricket star, whose performance on the field played a huge role in creating a sense of achievement among the Indian untouchables. Such was his personality that even the greatest Dalit leader of India, B R Ambedkar used to idolize him in his earlier years. After his retirement, surprisingly, there was a dearth of quality spin bowlers in India and for the first time and probably the only time before the early twenty-first century, it so happened that the focus of Indian bowling shifted from spin to pace, with the emergence of two good pacers, Amar Singh and Mohammad Nissar, who later migrated to Pakistan after the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. Singh and Nissar led the team’s bowling attack in the initial days when India started playing official Tests with the only exception of left-arm spinner Rusi Jamshedji, a Parsee bowler, who made his Test debut in 1933 against Douglas Jardine`s (the infamous captain of body-line series) England team at a ripe age (in terms of cricket) of 41. Though he played only one Test with a figure of 3/137, he still holds the record as the oldest Indian player to make his debut. The acute shortage of good spinners was such that batting legend Mushtaq Ali was selected purely as a left-arm spinner in the first two Tests of his career. C S Nayudu, the younger brother of India’s first captain C K Nayudu, who despite doing well in domestic circuits, failed to fulfill his potential and had to satisfy himself by playing only 11 Tests in his chequered career spanning almost 20 years. This leg spinner made his debut for India against the touring England side in Kolkata in 1934 and remained in-and-out of the Indian team. When he finally jettisoned for good in 1952 at the age of 38, he could manage to play only 11 Tests for the country and took just 2 wickets. He would get vicious turn, but lacked the essential quality of keeping a tight line and length. His problem was beautifully described by his team mate Cota Ramaswami, who said, “C S bent his body so low while delivering the ball that his head was almost on a level with the top of the stumps. He stretched his arm fully and threw his body weight into his delivery so that the ball came off the pitch very quickly. He also spun the ball extremely well but unfortunately his length and direction were not always controlled.” However, in spite of his abject show at the international level, he remained a force to be reckoned with at the first class level where he took 647 wickets while playing for several teams like Andhra, Baroda, Bengal, Central India, Central Provinces and Berar, Hindus, Holkar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh. But after his retirement in 1952, some really talented tweakers came to represent India and enhanced the country’s reputation as the ‘Land of Spinners’. In the next edition of The Great Indian Spinners we will discuss about three great spinners- Vinoo Mankad, Ghulam Ahmed and Subhash Gupte, who carried forward the legacy of Palwankar Baloo and inspired generations of Indian spinners to follow.