Guest Column| Bishan Singh Bedi: Beethoven with the cricket ball
He was an artist who would dominate the globe as much with his flight and turn as with his sparkling wit and warm humanity. Bedi’s in-your-face truths against the high and mighty of his times – in and outside the cricket world – not only changed the game forever but even taught his countrymen the two things they had always lacked: Confidence and character.
The rampaging Aussies descended on Indian shores boasting of immortals such as Doug Walters, Ian Chappell, Ashley Mallet, Graham McKenzie, and John Gleeson. Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi’s India had just one player from North Zone – Bishan Singh Bedi – lithe, lissome and languid, as India came to the third Test at Ferozeshah Kotla, trailing 0-1.
What followed was a waltz which the world watched with a mix of awe, disbelief and rapture. Pataudi tossed the ball to a nimble and loose-limbed lad after just six balls by opening bowlers. And this is how the symphony played: Chappell bowled Bedi 0, Walters bowled Bedi 0, Stackpole bowled Bedi 4, Taber bowled Bedi 7, McKenzie bowled Bedi 1. The mighty Aussies had fallen to the mesmeric and tantalising flight of a lad from Amritsar bylanes. Overall, Bedi knocked over nine wickets at an economy rate of 1.64 runs per over – hard for modern yuppy gen to believe, used as we are to seeing spinners clobbered for close to 10 runs per over.
Also read: ‘You will be missed immensely Bish’, say legendary spinner’s friends
This was just a curtain-raiser for an artist who would dominate the globe as much with his flight and turn as with his sparkling wit and warm humanity. Bedi’s in-your-face truths against the high and mighty of his times – in and outside the cricket world – not only changed the game forever but even taught his countrymen the two things they had always lacked: Confidence and character.
But the shoot-from-the-hip warrior could be incredibly simple, humble and never let go of gratitude. “I owe everything to skipper Pataudi,” Bedi would tell me in the commentator’s box during a match against Asif Iqbal’s Pakistan.
Spirited Sardar who changed rules of the game
Brought up on a lore when Allan McGuilvery and Tony Cozier streamed their scrumptious cricket commentary on Bedi’s “rhythmic, economical and diagonal run up to the wicket”, I had expected to meet a legend when I first met Bedi. I ended up meeting a child-like and unassuming friend for life. That was Bedi, uncomplicated, easeful, gracious but bold in embracing truth. He was a combative musketeer, always ready to give it all back to India’s snobbish opponents, and a “friend of even non-friends” (as he once put it to me over glass(es) of beer in Ludhiana). Any teenager with a passion for learning could tug at Bedi’s shirt sleeves with a sense of ownership to seek parental advice. The man would transform himself instantaneously from a legend or parent into a “school mate”.
His stories in courage abound. Only Bedi could dare to “concede a match” against Pakistan, and that too when India needed just 23 for a win. He declared the innings as “protest against sickening Pakistani umpires’ refusal to wide ball” Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz for bowling high bouncers, sailing several feet above the batsmen’s heads. Doing it anywhere would mean risking your career but doing it in front of hostile Pakistani crowds was nothing short of asking to be lynched. But would the spirited Sardar care? Bedi’s courage changed the rules of the game forever and overhead bouncers became “wide balls” after that.
And only Bedi could declare in protest with half his team still to bat when Windies umpires refused to warn Holding-Roberts-Garner trio against deliberate hostile “bodyline bowling” Holding later graciously declared, “Morality and my mother were on Bedi’s side.”
‘If his ball doesn’t get you, his wit will’
The fast-food cricket generation of today would do well to look at these figures of Bedi in India’s first ever ODI victory: 12 overs, six maidens and just six runs! - still the most economical by any bowler in a World Cup match.
Teased by the Sardar’s spin on pace-friendly English pitches, the great Barry Richards once shouted at Bedi in mock-anger, “This is not cricket, Sardar, using Indian magic! Your ball swerves right, swerves left, goes high and sinks low, curls in and curls out, all of it mid-air. You are “Bicious.” Bedi smiled shyly away for the next ball. Barry bowled middle stump!
On Bedi’s sharp wit, this is what Imran Khan told me in Amritsar (November 29, 1979) “Bishan Bhaji? If his ball doesn’t get you, his wit will.”
And while on Bedi’s witticisms, taste this: On India’s tour to Windies, Solkar, standing at forward short leg, was hit on the head by a Clive Lloyd missile, and had to be taken to hospital, unconscious. As Bedi emerged from the hospital room, he responded thus to queries from anxiously waiting scribes: “Oh Ekky (Eknath Solkar)? He is doing fine. In fact, he is talking a lot more sense than he used to before this knock on his head. Thank you, Clive!” Bedi quipped, winked and walked away smiling.
Father figure for budding cricketers
When the Ludhiana Cricket Association barred Test cricketer Yash Paul Sharma from playing following a rumpus at the Punjab Agricultural University grounds, Bedi would tell me, “Oh yaar, who are these nincompoops cracking sillier jokes than mine?”
No wonder, Yash, Madan Lal, Navjot, Mohinder, Surinder and Rajinder Amarnath, Bhupinder, Mahesh Inder or PAU youngsters like whacky-leggie Sanjeev Ahluwalia or pacers Param Paul, Naveen Sharma or wicketkeeper Maninder Walia or batsman Jai Gopal, or right-arm leg spinner Yash Pal Sharma (Jr) or Ranji star Bharti Vij or Vinod Chitkara – all adore Bishan Bhaji. More importantly, they loved him, and always will.
Budding cricketers will never find a more protective, more possessive and more caring parent than “Bishan Bhaji”. And cricket will never find another “Beethoven with a ball”.
The ultimate compliment to “Bish” comes from his foe-turned-fan-turned-friend, the great Michael Holding – “Mickey Boy” to Bishan Bedi. “As a cricketer, his ball was there and yet not there when you reached for it. As a man, he was the game’s greatest moral voice who liked to be morally right; not popularly right.” bains.bains@gmail.com
The author is a former international sports commentator and freelance writer
