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 Fateh Maidan |
Hyderabad
Blues |
 Today,
it is an anachronism as a cricket venue, got ready only when international
matches are posted there, as the current home of the Hyderabad Cricket
Association, the Gymkhana ground in Secunderabad does not have the stands
needed to accommodate the large number of spectators such matches bring. For
decades, however, Fateh
Maidan, where stands the Lal Bahadur Stadium, has been
synonymous with Hyderabad cricket, though it belongs, not the cricket
association, but to the Andhra Pradesh Sports Council. I began to hear of this
much loved cricket venue when I first read newspaper reports of the
Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup tournament. I was at the time in college cricket in
Madras, and it was quite thrilling to read of the exploits of some of my
friends and rivals - in a cricketing sense - at this prestigious competition,
in which the cream of Indian cricket took part.
 A G Satvinder Singh was one
cricketer I particularly admired who was picked to represent the Vazir Sultan
Colts, and his engineering college teammate S Venkataraghavan too made a mark
in the Gold Cup. I imagined then a tree-shaded ground where the aristocracy of
Hyderabad gathered to watch the sleepy proceedings of cricket of an altogether
more leisurely vintage than we are now accustomed to watching. I was not very
wrong, as I found out years later when I actually entered the ground, except
for the concrete and steel stadium. The shamianas in front of the pavilion
seated the beautiful people of Hyderabad, the most stylish, the most elegant
and the most spectacularly good looking men and women of the twin cities.
This was the ground where
India was accused of wasting time to save a Test match against New Zealand,
led by Graham Dowling. With India merely a couple of wickets from a defeat,
the game was interrupted by a brief spell of rain - it was one of those freak
showers which sometimes struck the stadium alone, leaving all other parts of
the city dry. The ground staff, showing a remarkable tardiness in getting the
ground ready, Dowling and a couple of his men entered the field, mop and
bucket in hand, but were prevented by the umpires from doing any ground duty.
This was also the ground
where I watched a number of Ranji Trophy matches before I myself started
playing in them. One unforgettable memory is of Abid Ali and a couple of his
teammates waving furiously at me, signalling for me to join the players in
their enclosure while I sat in an adjoining stand, entry to which my
complimentary ticket - courtesy the same players - entitled me. I had in the
previous week played my first match at the ground, not counting an earlier one
in which I did not get to bowl, and had so impressed Abid and Co., that they
arranged for me to bowl in the state team’s nets prior to the match I was
now watching. This was a Ranji knockout match against Delhi, and though not in
the original squad, I nearly played the match, I was told, with off spinner
Noshir Mehta breaking a finger a day before the match.
Fateh Maidan offered a
beautiful batting wicket, though it could be quite a sporting surface,
whenever groundsman Venkatswami was allowed to leave some grass on it. At
different times, the authorities experimented with different approaches to
laying the wicket, including a brick base once, but as an off spinner, I
always enjoyed playing there, though not once during my career did it present
a turning track. At its benign best, it was a challenge to bowl on, an
interesting one because you knew its nuances and knew how to adapt your
bowling to suit them. When it offered some purchase, it was a pleasure to bowl
on, with the ball hurrying off it; sometimes the batsman could be bowled off
the middle of a defensive bat, the ball spinning back on to the stumps.
It was inside Venkatswami’s
little office that Abid Ali sometimes took his morning tea, either after
practice, or before a match. This is where I received some sage advice from
the squat, solemn looking groundsman, including the intriguing tip that it
helped improve your fitness and concentration if you ran barefoot on the dewy
grass of the ground on the verge of an important game. This is where I watched
many a Moin-ud-Dowla match in the company of some Indian cricket’s greats
like Salim Durrani, E A S Prasanna, V V Kumar and Rajinder Goel, sitting in
the balcony of their rooms overlooking the ground, and listening to some
delightful, if frequently apocryphal, cricket stories.
Hyderabad plays its first
class matches at the Gymkhana, and is soon to have its own stadium at distant
Uppal, but for many of us old-timers, our cricket memories are inextricably
intertwined with our memories of Fateh Maidan.
V Ramnarayan
wordcraft@vsnl.com
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