Travelling light

A king among openers

When I recently learnt that octogenarian KR Rajagopal‒on a visit from Bengaluru to receive handsome cash awards from the TNPL and CSK‒was staying at the Crowne Plaza hotel, barely five minutes from my residence, I was eager to call on him before he left the city. As my driver was on leave, however, and my current level of fitness did not allow me to walk or drive to the hotel, I was unfortunately forced to be satisfied with a phone call. Raja was not to be put off. He dropped in at my flat almost immediately after my phone call, with his 24x7 caregiver Chandru in tow. Chandru, a find of Mr N Sankar, Chairman of the Sanmar Group, and my former boss (as he had been Raja's more than fifty years ago), is a product of Udavum Karangal, the well known NGO for destitute children. Raja, who lost his wife a couple of years ago, lives alone in the erstwhile garden city, as his daughters are settled abroad; Chandru and he seem to take excellent care of each other.

It was an emotional reunion, especially for me, the recipient of Raja's spontaneous warmth and kindness, and we inevitably relived our cricketing past in the conversation that ensued. I only played against Raja and marvelled at his batting genius from 22 yards a couple of times, but I watched his brilliant batsmanship and wicket keeping quite frequently from the safety of the gallery when he set the Marina on fire with his pyrotechnics. Raja was all praise for some of his seniors in domestic cricket. CD Gopinath came in for special mention. To Raja, it seemed, no batsman of the era was more complete than Gopi, who is now 91 and lives in Coonoor. He remembered two innings in particular˗both for Madras vs. Mysore˗the first a mammoth 234, and the second a hundred made in partnership with fellow centurymaker MK Balakrishnan rescuing Madras from a perilous five down for a paltry score. The first was at Central College, Bangalore, where Gopi cut and drove the likes of Deepak Dasgupta and LT Subbu with panache, and the second at Coimbatore. Balakrishnan, AG Kripal Singh and his lefthanded brother Milkha Singh were some of the other batsmen he admired. "Milkha was all class," Raja reminisced. "So was the wrist spinner VV Kumar, a wizard with his leg breaks, googlies and top spinners, all delivered with utmost guile, accuracy and economy, a rare combination." Like others of his era, Raja rates Kumar higher than most contemporary tweakers.

Here is what I wrote on Rajagopal some years ago, and I see no reason to take any of it back today:

K R Rajagopal came like a breath of fresh air to Madras cricket from Bangalore, when he joined the star-studded Jolly Rovers team of the 1960s. He quickly established himself as one of the most entertaining batsmen in the state, an opener crowds went miles to watch.

“Rajagopal was one of the most aggressive opening batsmen around. He played his shots from the word go, shots based on a straight bat, free downswing and follow-through. With his keen eye, swift footwork, perfect balance and steely wrists, all buttressed by a sound technique, he looked for scoring opportunities all the time, and for a few years culminating in the 1967-68 season, he electrified both local and national matches played at Madras.

In an era of swing bowling, Raja had an equally delightful answer to the outswinger and the inswinger. He cover drove imperiously, but he also played a gorgeous ondrive. He was equally fond of hooking and cutting.

Raja struck a fine partnership with his teammate and captain Belliappa. Both were openers and wicket keepers, and as state captain, Belliappa was the first choice behind the stumps, though Raja was brilliant in that department. When Raja was a strong contender for a place in the Indian team touring Australia in 1967-1968 after a magnificent domestic season as a batsman, another wicket keeper Indrajitsinhji was preferred to him on the pretext that Raja did not keep for his own state.

Raja is a simple man. For most of his playing days in Madras (he earlier played for Mysore), he worked at Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli, and took the night train to Madras to play league matches on the morrow for Jolly Rovers, the highly successful team sponsored by his employers. He brought as luggage a ridiculously small bag and went straight to the house of another "Raja", P N Sundaresan, The Hindu's cricket correspondent and the father of his teammate P S Narayanan. On the morning of the match, Raja would jump on to the pillion of Narayanan's Lambretta, tousled hair, stubble on his chin, crumpled shirt and trousers and all, with his cricket shoes wrapped in an old copy of The Hindu.

(My brother Sivaramakrishnan, the left hander, recalls a ludicrous incident when Raja, playing for the opponents, had to borrow Siva’s trousers after realizing after the toss he had forgotten to pack his flannels. My brother is some six inches taller, so Raja had to use many pins and clips and string as well as sheer willpower to keep his pants on while making a bright half century, adjusting his wardrobe every ball).

Such was Raja's pre-match preparation, but once he put on his pads and settled down to face the first ball of the innings, the change in him was electric. Slight of build and short in stature, he was a picture of poise as the bowler started his run towards him. Little notice did he give of the daring strokes he would soon play all round the wicket. Few batsmen in the history of Tamil Nadu cricket have given as much pleasure to so many.”

A Test match at Chepauk is an occasion to catch up with many old friends. In the 20th century, the late S Annadorai was usually among those present, none the worse for his years, climbing the stairs effortlessly, trading old anecdotes with people he watched over as they grew up in cricket. He was his jaunty old self, as full of beans well into his eighties, as he was decades ago, when he would announce the City Colleges or Inter-Association Junior team with a flourish to anxious young cricketers who had gone through the trauma of selection trials. A former joint secretary of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, he had been a junior selector and Chairman of the league sub-committee as far back as 1955. A trusted lieutenant of S Sriraman, Annadorai never rose beyond being bridesmaid to occupy the secretary’s chair in the TNCA.

The joke doing the rounds in my playing days was that with Annadorai around as convener of the selection panel, you stood a good chance of being picked if you had an alien-sounding name—Coorgi and Anglo-Indian names were said to be particularly lucky. The moment the official stylishly announced “Monteiro” or “Cariappa”, knowing glances were exchanged among the players assembled. Perhaps those players fully deserved their inclusion, but human nature being what it is, we could never resist the temptation to conclude that there was bias in favour of the exotic. After all, familiarity does breed contempt, doesn’t it?

Annadorai had a long innings in Chennai cricket. He ran a club called City Central League for decades. Hailing from a land owning family in Mannargudi near Kumbakonam, he spent a great deal of his time and money on the promotion of his favourite game, cricket. An outspoken man, he believed in calling a spade a spade, only you might not agree with his definition of a spade. A great believer in young talent, he was also a stern critic of individual players, whom he tried to correct and motivate in his own inimitable style, not always to the liking of the player concerned.

It was through Annadorai’s initiative that the Colts’ tour of Bombay took place on a regular basis. Despite his eccentric views, and his own version of catch practice—India's bowling coach B Arun does a very good imitation of it—the old man was a popular manager, because he took excellent care of the boys and often spent his own money to give us wonderful treats, buying us dinner at top class restaurants, taking us to the movies and so on.

The Colts’ tour was a first rate learning experience for young cricketers from Tamil Nadu, for it afforded them their first exposure to turf wickets and Bombay professionalism for ten days at a stretch. The tour was also without tensions of any sort because the visitors were not expected to win too many matches, as most of the opposition was from the top drawer. Quite possibly because of that, the Colts won more often than lost.

The only jarring if somewhat amusing note was struck by the average age of the team. According to the dictionary, a colt is a young horse, and you would naturally expect the team to consist mainly of teenagers, but as players in the second and third divisions of the Chennai league were eligible for selection, you often found veterans of several summers in the squad. The common joke was that the Colts were in fact “Kezha Bolts”, meaning a Dad’s Army, “kezha” meaning old, and “bolts” added for rhyme.