 Sweeping defeat
Sometimes you do something innocent on a cricket field and it results in disastrous consequences for your team. In my case, back in 1979-80, it was a full-blooded sweepshot I played off Shivlal Yadav's bowling that led to my team Andhra Bank's defeat by a Hyderabad Cricket Association XI.
Ours was a star-studded eleven led by S Venkataraghavan and including guest players Anshuman Gaekwad, Surinder Amarnath, Duleep Mendis, and Ved Raj. Andhra Bank's chairman O Swaminatha Reddy, who desperately wanted to enter a team in that year's Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup, fulfilled the HCA's stipulation of at least four Test players to qualify for entry into the tournament by inviting these high-profile cricketers. I had been totally against this move as this would mean dropping some of our leading players, all of them state or South Zone cricketers. I even offered to stand down to enable our vice-captain C R Chandran to take his rightful place in the team.
There was much unhappiness all round as the guest players kept five of my teammates out, and none of them was released to play for other teams in the tournament. This made M L Jaisimha, captain of the F D Stewart XI, very angry as he badly needed players for his side and we refused to part with any. Adding to the confusion was the replacement of our captain Vijay Paul by S Venkataraghavan, with my manager asking me to request Venkat to play under Paul's captaincy. As it turned out, Venkat did lead the side, all five guest players took the field and Chandran refused to let me yield my place to him.
Batting first, we were caught on a drying wicket taking appreciable turn. Shivlal, who was in the Hyderabad XI only because I was turning out for Andhra Bank, struck gold against some extremely poor batting by our star imports and we were soon 70 odd for 9, when I walked in to bat. I was determined to stick around with left-handed Meher Baba, a home grown Andhra Bank cricketer, and we managed to add nearly 50 runs for the last wicket. My contribution was some 15 to 20 runs and I remained unbeaten, if I remember right.
The crucial act of mine that had such a telling impact on the match was my powerful sweep off Shivlal Yadav which hit forward short leg L Rajan on his knee and rendered him hors' d' combat for the rest of the match. Rajan was Hyderabad's opening batsman, whose place at the top of the order was now taken by skipper P Krishnamurti, well past his best playing days, and originally slated to bat at No. 10. Now, Krishnamurti had a few points to prove against the Hyderabad Cricket Association and also enjoyed playing against Venkataraghavan, whom he was determined to collar to demonstrate his batting prowess in the evening of his career. He launched a sizzling assault on the bowling, reserving his worst for Venkat and made a swashbuckling 126 at more than a run a ball.
Krishnamurti's onslaught meant that HCA took the first innings lead despite effective bowling by Meher and me that troubled all the other batsmen. Catches were spilled frequently, leading to no more than respectable figures for me and Meher, while off spinner Shivlal Yadav, my replacement in the Hyderabad side, hit the headlines and went on to play for India not long afterwards. It didn't help matters that Jaisimha who was so angry with us left for Bangalore the same evening to pick the Indian probables prior to the tour of Pakistan. My name was a prominent omission.
V Ramnarayan
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