Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (4 page)

At the end of it all, Sir would tell me to run two full circuits of Shivaji Park with my pads and gloves on. That was the last part of my training and I’d be completely exhausted by the end of it all. It was a routine I would repeat right through during my summer holidays and it helped me to build up physical and mental stamina.

Occasionally my father came to take me home and I would always ask him to treat me to a special fruit cocktail at a juice centre near the club. While this regular demand was a little unreasonable, because at the time I did not realize that my parents also had to take care of the needs of my brothers and sister, my father would invariably end up giving me what I wanted, just to see me happy.

On other days, when I made my way home from Shivaji Park on my own, I’d often fall asleep on the bus – if I managed to sit down, that is. Anyone who has been on a Mumbai bus at peak hours will know just how difficult it is to get a seat. On days when I wasn’t so lucky, it was still a challenge just to stand with the kitbag, because the bus conductors would inevitably complain about me taking up the space of another passenger. It could be embarrassing because the conductors were often rude and would sometimes ask me to buy two tickets. I didn’t have the money for a second ticket and I had to learn to take these remarks in my stride. Dirty clothes often added to the embarrassment. After I’d played in them all day, the clothes were usually in quite a smelly state and this was the cause of a lot of discomfort and guilt on the way home. With time I evolved a way of wrapping the kitbag around me. Just as the helmet and pads became a part of me while batting, so the kitbag became an extension of me on the bus.

So when people ask me these days if I have ever been on public transport, I tell them I used to travel on crowded buses and trains four times a day during my first year at Shardashram. And from a very young age I used to do it alone. I’d often take the bus or train from Bandra to Churchgate, and it was all a great learning experience. Within a few months I had made a lot of friends and we had great fun travelling together to matches.

After a year of commuting between Bandra and school, my family realized that the daily travel was getting too much. I had to catch a connecting bus midway into the journey and if I missed the connection I’d be late for school. Also, the one-and-a-half-hour journey would end up exhausting me and it had started to have an impact on my training time. More worryingly, I had twice fallen sick in the first year of my daily commute to Shardashram and had also contracted jaundice.

It was decided that I should move in with my uncle and aunt, Suresh and Mangala, because they lived at Indravadan Society, an apartment block close to Shivaji Park. In the end, I stayed with them for four years and they were hugely supportive of my endeavours and had a formative role to play as I grew up. In fact, there were times when I even made my aunt throw balls to me in our living room. I had bought a couple of golf balls and transformed them into an oval shape with the help of a blade. I had done this intentionally, so that when my aunt threw one to me, the ball would change direction after pitching, either coming in or going away. The whole idea behind this was that, while killing time at home, I would learn to play with soft hands without damaging things in our living room. Throughout the drill, my aunt would sit on her chair, and after playing the ball I would collect it and hand it back to her. When my aunt wasn’t around, I would hang up the ball in a sock and hit it with the edge of my bat. Hitting it with the bat’s full face was much too easy and when I hit it with the edge I would try to middle it as many times as possible. When it did not hit the middle, it would come back from different directions (it became an inswinger or an outswinger) and it was fun to negotiate the challenge. These drills helped my hand–eye coordination and also my awareness of which direction the bat should come from to meet the ball.

My uncle and aunt’s house was a thirty-minute walk from school. It meant I could get more rest in the morning and could come home for lunch around 1 p.m. and go back to play a practice game at my club by early afternoon. Sir would invariably schedule three practice games a week for me and would ensure that I batted at number four in each one of them. He could do that because it was his club. I would bat in my favourite position in all the matches I played and if I got out I’d have to change quickly and go out and field. This was a good incentive to keep batting and not get out at all, as I didn’t enjoy fielding anything like as much as batting. After the match I’d resume my own training in the evening before calling it a day at 7.30.

On days when there was a school match, we’d try our best to stretch it to a second day. For example, if we were set to chase 300 we’d score 260–270 runs on the first day and keep the remaining runs for the next morning. This would allow us to miss school on the second day, and after quickly wrapping up the match in the first half an hour, the team would head off to the beach to play cricket. Playing beach cricket was always a lot of fun and we would all have a great time.

Both my parents would visit me at my uncle and aunt’s almost every day after they finished work. For my mother in particular it was an arduous journey, since travelling there from her office in Santa Cruz in peak-hour traffic on public transport was a real challenge back then. The fact that both of them would happily put in the time after a full day’s work, just so I would not feel neglected, was remarkable.

In the 1986–87 season I started to make runs consistently and also scored my first hundred. We were playing Don Bosco School at Shivaji Park and I was not out on 94 at the end of the first day. A few days before this match I had invited Sir to my house for dinner. Sir, however, said he would come only when I had scored my first hundred in school cricket. Feeling excited and anxious, I decided to sleep with my father that night and kept tossing and turning till late. My father tried to comfort me, saying I should go to sleep and that my body needed rest after batting all day. I couldn’t and only managed to get a couple of hours’ sleep before waking up very early the next morning.

Sensing my anxiety, my father took me to a Ganapati temple in Bandra to seek the blessings of Lord Ganesha and only then did I leave for Shivaji Park. On my way I visited another Ganapati temple, the one I regularly visited before games. There was a water tap inside the temple premises and I regularly used to drink from it before I went to the ground. I did the same that day and in the very first over hit two boundaries to reach my hundred. True to his word, Sir came for dinner that night and it was a deeply satisfying moment.

One of my best early seasons was at Shardashram in 1987–88, when I played in both the Giles Shield and the Harris Shield. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of Mumbai cricket, the Giles Shield is meant for boys under the age of fourteen and Harris Shield for those under sixteen. Looking back, it seems remarkable that I played in both, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. These tournaments are acknowledged as breeding grounds for young talent in Mumbai and good performances tend to get noticed in the city’s cricket circles.

In the Harris Shield that season I scored a record 1,025 runs in five matches and was out only once. It now seems extraordinary, but my scores in the quarter-final, semi-final and final read 207 not out, 326 not out and 346 not out. What’s more, after scoring 326 not out in the semi-final of the Harris Shield, I walked right across the Azad maidan (recreation ground) to the other side to play in a Giles Shield match, in which I made 178 not out, winning us the game.

I started out with a hundred in the first match of the season, scoring 125 before getting out, and it was a dismissal I have never forgotten. I was out stumped to an off-spinner who was hearing-impaired and I vividly remember the expression on his face when I was beaten by a beautifully flighted delivery. But the ball went on to elude the keeper and within a fraction of a second the bowler’s expression turned from euphoria to despair as he saw the missed stumping opportunity. Yet I did not go back to the crease and instead started walking back to the pavilion, allowing the wicketkeeper to complete the stumping. It was the only time I was out in that season’s competition. While I didn’t consciously mean to show sympathy to the bowler, it was one of those moments that are difficult to explain. It was not an act of charity exactly. Rather, it was a good ball and I knew I had been comprehensively beaten. The keeper fumbled the take and the bowler looked distraught at the missed opportunity. He had done everything for the wicket and deserved the dismissal.

In the semi-final of the Harris Shield against St Xavier’s in February 1988, a three-day game, we were 84–2 when I went in to bat at number four, with Vinod Kambli, an extremely talented youngster in Mumbai’s cricket circles at the time, already at the crease, having gone in at number three. We immediately plundered the St Xavier’s attack and never let up all the way through what would become a record-breaking partnership. With the Azad maidan being an open ground and a very big one, the opposition had to run long distances to retrieve the ball after a hard-hit boundary and we found ourselves singing songs and enjoying ourselves in the middle of the pitch. It was our way of switching off while batting together for long periods. At the end of the day we were both not out, with Vinod on 182 and me on 192, and, needless to say, Shardashram were in a commanding position in the game.

The following morning, we both made our double centuries and then just kept on batting – despite Achrekar Sir wanting us to declare the innings. At one point he sent our assistant coach to the boundary to instruct us to declare. We could hear him scream our names and shout instructions, but we pretended not to hear and tried not to look in his direction. He kept at it for ten minutes before he realized that it was a futile attempt and returned to the dressing room. We just wanted to carry on batting and enjoy ourselves in the middle.

At lunch we had reached 748–2, of which I had contributed 326. As soon as we left the field I was informed by the assistant coach that I was in serious trouble. When I asked why, he told me that Achrekar Sir had wanted us to declare in the morning and I had disobeyed him by carrying on. Sir was of the opinion that we had more than enough runs to declare, and if we weren’t able to bowl the opposition out for less we did not deserve to be in the final. I decided to declare right away to save myself from Sir’s ire that evening. Vinod asked me not to, however, because he was not out on 349. He pleaded with me to give him one more ball so that he’d reach 350. I said that it wasn’t my call and we needed Sir’s permission to continue. So I rang Sir from a public phone next to the ground and the first question he asked was how many wickets we had managed to take before lunch. That was Sir’s style. He was well aware that we hadn’t declared and hadn’t taken any wickets, but he wouldn’t say so. I informed him that we had batted till lunch and that I was about to declare. With Vinod pleading beside me, I quickly mentioned to Sir that Vinod wanted to speak to him and handed over the phone. But Vinod was scared of Sir and ended up not saying a word about batting on for another over.

I duly declared the innings and, despite having batted for a day and a half, went on to open the bowling with the new ball and bowled a lot of overs in the innings. I did not feel the least bit tired; all the hard work in the summer camps had started to pay off. I started out bowling medium pace, then changed to off-spin when the ball was semi-old and leg-spin when the ball had lost all of its shine. Vinod too bowled very well and picked up six wickets as we dismissed St Xavier’s for 154 to make the final.

That partnership of 664 was the highest in any form of cricket in the world at the time. Coming in the semi-final of the Harris Shield made it all the more significant in the local cricket community. It gained us both a lot of recognition. We had become quite a pair and what made batting with Vinod fun was that I never knew what he’d get up to next. In one match in the same season he actually started flying a kite while we were batting together. Suddenly I couldn’t see Vinod, because he had walked 20 metres away from the pitch and was holding the string of a kite – right in the middle of the innings! It was his way of enjoying himself and I knew he’d get a severe reprimand from Sir for doing so.

Sir wasn’t to be seen on that day, however, and Vinod was confident of getting away with it. I wasn’t so sure. I had a feeling that Sir was watching us from somewhere and would surely pick up the issue at the end of the day’s play, as was his style. Sir was known to hide behind a tree on occasions to watch us play, and in fact it rarely happened that he’d miss a game of ours. At the end of the day he would then give us a ‘demonstration’ session, so called because Sir would demonstrate what we had done wrong in terms of footwork, stance or stroke selection. Sure enough, at the demonstration session at the end of that day, I was given a chit to read aloud and the first item was ‘Vinod kite’. Sir, upset at what Vinod had done, asked him what he thought he was doing flying a kite while batting and warned him never to do so again. He promised, but with Vinod nothing could be taken for granted.

Having defeated St Xavier’s comprehensively, we were runaway favourites in the final against Anjuman-I-Islam, which was to be played at the Cricket Club of India, which is India’s equivalent of the MCC, established in 1933. It was my first competitive game at CCI and a number of Mumbai cricket luminaries were present to see us bat in the final. They had heard about the world-record partnership and wanted to see if we were good enough to have a career in cricket. Dilip Vengsarkar, Sunil Gavaskar and CCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur were in attendance and I did not want to disappoint them.

On the eve of the final I was given a superb gift by Hemant Kenkre, Sunil Gavaskar’s nephew, which served as an added incentive to perform well. At the time I did not have good pads to play with and Sir had a word with Hemant about it. Hemant had with him a set of pads used by Sunil Gavaskar, the really light ones with blue padding inside, and decided to give them to me. I was delighted and humbled and went with Ajit to his house to collect my gift.