The Spin Maestro
By
Suresh Menon
Bishan Singh Bedi
Former Captain and Spin Bowler, Indian Cricket Team
Bishan Singh Bedi Former Captain and Spin Bowler, Indian Cricket Team
He was the most generous of bowlers and wore his stature lightly. This generosity extended to the opposition too. Bedi believes in the brotherhood of spinners, and all of them have access to his experience and wisdom. All they have to do is ask. On a turning track in Bangalore in 1986-7, a low-scoring match ended in Pakistan’s favor by sixteen runs after their left-arm spinner Iqbal Qasim was handed this gem from Bedi: ‘On a turner, the most dangerous ball is the one that goes through straight.’
Against Tony Lewis’ Englishmen in 1972-3, Bedi claimed twenty-five wickets to Chandrasekhar’s thirty-five, as the spinners harassed the batsmen. Bedi was often brought on in the third over and had the batsmen in trouble from the start. It was a measure of both his confidence and his generosity that he found time to bowl to Dennis Amiss in the nets to help him sort out his problems.
You have to go back nearly a century, to Australian leggie Arthur Mailey, to find a kindred soul. Mailey took flak for helping out opponents. Extravagantly talented, both he and Bedi bowled with the lavishness of millionaires. Bedi’s credo was first spelled out by Mailey who said, ‘I’d rather spin and see the ball hit for four than bowl a batsman out by a straight one.’ On another occasion, Mailey said: ‘If I ever bowl a maiden over, it’s not my fault but the batsman’s.’ It is a sentiment Bedi would understand.
Despite One-day cricket, he refused to bring his art down from the classical heights into the sphere of everyday utility. This refusal to compromise has been the hallmark of Bedi the player, the man, the administrator, coach, and columnist.
After his playing days, Bedi became in turn, a national selector and manager. He also began to write columns in the national press that even today continue to speak uncomfortable truths. Bedi will rage against the system; he will continue to take players to task if he believes they are bringing the game into disrepute.
Yet despite the fame and fortune, there is an engaging simplicity to Bedi that attracts new generations to his views in the media.
Beneath the various personas as a public figure, however, the original boy from Amritsar still exists – under the various coats of rumor and myth and stories of what others have wanted him to be. As he grows older, Bedi has been shaking off some of the deposits of fable and fantasy, of folklore and legend that have collected around him over the years, and re-emerging as the boy from Amritsar with a special skill he worked relentlessly on. There is nothing he enjoys more than returning to the house where he was born, meeting with friends that have known him all his life, and talking about the old days. And there too he calls it like it is.
Most people are publicly modest but privately quite immodest about their achievements. In Bedi’s case, it is the reverse. In a letter to me, he once wrote: ‘How I played my first Test is still an unsolved mystery. That I went on to captain the country is even more mind-boggling. Cricket is a funny game – always throwing up surprise packets.’ Few graceful performers are that gracious.
I have often wondered what Bedi might have become had he not been a cricketer. His family thinks he might have been a singer; he has a lovely voice. Others think he would have made a fine investigative journalist, digging deep into important issues. But in whatever field, he would have been the quintessential teacher, passing on his knowledge and experience, and warning against bringing the calling into disrepute. His favorite word, after all, is ‘integrity’.
