SPECTATOR SPORT
Indian summer
Frank Keating
I'M rooting for India — or will be pronto if England begin to plod along, just waiting for something to turn up. Certainly the series promises well and any romantic should have set off for Lord's this week wearing the grin of a Bisto kid — mmm! the tangy whiff of jasmine and frangipani and spice to go with cricket's olde tyme qualities of crispy, wristy batting and ditto bowling. Plus, if last week's pipe-opening one-dayers were anything to go by, a carnival atmosphere engendered by a civil- ised throng with British passports which clean bowls, neck-and-crop, Norman Teb- bit's cranky 'cricket test'.
I wonder how India's batting prodigy, Tendulkar, will have coped by the end of the tour. He was only 17 in April, yet this is his third international tour. He was 151/2 when he began in first-class cricket for Bombay — and reeled off 100 not out, 58 and 89 in his first three innings. Within a year he was in the Test team against Pakistan, and having seen off Imran and Akram, the world's finest leg-spinner, Quadir, took the ball with a threatening glint and told the young man that his time was assuredly up. Tendulkar despatched Quadir's first over for five fours and a six. Then to New Zealand last winter. Hadlee was waiting. Tendulkar played him for Over five hours for 88.
Not the English way. We start badly, then build the innings slowly o'er the years. That blunt and grizzled old cuss, Close, remains our youngest ever Test player, at the comparatively ancient 18. His first three Test innings only troubled the notch- er once — ie. 0, 0, 1. Even with the moderns: Gooch was 21 when he scored 0, 0, 6 in his first three knocks for England. At the same age, Botham began with 25, 0, 7; Gower with a reasonable 58, 39, 56; and Hussein last winter with 13, 18, and 35. Gatting was capped at only 20, but 5, 6 and 0 had him back on the sausage-egg-an-chip county slog for another few years.
The way Tendulkar breezed in, un- abashed, in the one-dayers last week made me think fondly of Bombay's previous, and just as diminutive, demon, Gavaskar. What a lovely man — and what a bat, far and away the outstanding operator since the war. And what an entrance 20 years ago. He was three years older than Tendul- kar when he was tossed into the Test arena after only six first-class matches. In the West Indies, in 1970-71, with Sobers still leading the attack. Gavaskar went in first and made, successively in his first four Tests, 65, 67 not out, 116, 64 not out, 1, 117 not out, 124 and 220 — 774 runs in all,
at 96.75. When he retired a few summers back, I bought Sunil supper at the Giffard Hotel, Worcester. Could we sit down early, he asked, because he had a late night date with a Mimi Weiss and would like to be in bed by 10.30. Oh dear, and I thought for his bonny wife, Marshneil, back home. It turned out he meant Miami Vice, the cop series. 'If I am batting in the morning, an hour in bed with the TV makes me sleep better,' said Sunil.
That first blazing teenage tour of his made me money, I told him. That winter of 1971 I was subbing on the Guardian sportsdesk. Bed down all the soccer re- sults, then a skinful over at the Blue Lion while waiting for the close-of-play details from the West Indies. Around midnight, unfailingly, I'd get a call from an Indian chap who worked as a night-shift ganger on the London Underground. Full details of scores, please, how many boundaries Gavaskar, please, and so on. By the end of the series we had become good telephone pals — and then I got a letter from him, enclosing four grubby fivers. He was going back to India a rich man, thanks to me. His surreptitious midnight calls had armed him with the info to strike outrageous best with his West Indian night-shift mates. The morning paper would bring verification of, say, how many boundaries Sunil had hit off Sobers — and he would collect the bundles of booty. 'When it comes to cricket,' said Gavasker, smiling softly, 'we Indians are more clever than you think.'
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