#GreenRoars
T20I Star
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2015
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“I called Garry boy on 28th July on his 80th birthday, and he told me, ‘Only the living that get old’.” And then the guffaw, booming down the telephone line all the way from the farmhouse in Chhattarpur near New Delhi to Bangalore.
How many others living in Chhattarpur are likely to call Sir Garfield Sobers ‘Garry boy’? But that’s our Sardar of Spin, Bishan Singh Bedi.
He celebrates his 70th birthday on Sunday (September 25), and that’s as good a reason as any to catch up.
We catch Bedi in a fantastic, expansive mood.
Is it because Pink, his cricketer-turned-model-turned-actor son Angad’s latest film, is getting rave reviews?
The full-throated laugh comes first, and then, “No, no, no … I am happy he’s doing well, but I am a contented man anyway. I hope my family (wife Anju, daughter Neha and Angad) is happy. As for me, I have reached that stage of my life where it’s important to be at peace with myself rather than indulge in the flimsy concept of happiness.”
All right, so what do we start the chat with? The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) failed to invite Bedi for the 500th Test celebrations in Kanpur. Will it dampen his mood if we talk about it? Not really, as it turns out.
The invite that never arrived
“It was very strange alright. Could be anything – oversight, maybe? Or deliberate – I don’t know. Oh, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. It’s part of the game. No one can deny my involvement with Indian cricket, can they?” Certainly not.
“They (BCCI) didn’t even know it was the 500th Test,” he says. “If they did, the Test would not have been played in Kanpur. They would have chosen Mumbai or Bangalore or Kolkata. They saw it in the media and arranged something. That’s all. Can you imagine that they didn’t even invite Vishy (Gundappa Viswanath) or Nari Contractor either? Good lord!”
He does admit, though, that he would have liked to be there, if only to catch up with old friends.
Bishan Bedi can’t be in an all-time XI
We chat about our cities and traffic and the lawlessness that is rife now – “Delhi is becoming unwieldy. In every way. No law and order. Delhiites are horrible.” – when conversation moves to the Greatest Indian XI that Wisden India recently published, a list in which Bedi features at No. 11, one of two frontline spinners along with Anil Kumble.
He remembers the list right through – no prompting.
But – “Oh, no, no, no … I don’t agree with it at all.”
Which part? “Much of it.”
Who would you pick? “I wouldn’t have (Virender) Sehwag open with Sunil Gavaskar. Sunil, yes, we have had our differences, but he was outstanding. I would have Vijay Merchant with Sunil.”
Story time!
I think it’s because not many of us saw Vijay Merchant bat, I offer. “Nor did I,” he counters, “but he has to be in the greatest Indian Test XI. Sehwag was a product of one-day cricket. He did great things, but Merchant … he scored over 4000 runs on two tours of England when it was wet. I had a long discussion with Mr (Vijay) Manjrekar, just before he died, and I said I hadn’t seen a more organised bat than Gavaskar. He said he didn’t agree. ‘Did you see Vijay Merchant?’ he asked me. Mr Manjrekar said Sunil didn’t come anywhere near Merchant.”
Okay, Sehwag out, Merchant in. Next?
“Syed Kirmani in place of (MS) Dhoni. Tiger Pataudi in place of (VVS) Laxman, and as captain. No doubt about it. And Pras (Erapalli Prasanna). Pras and Vinoo Mankad. Not Bishan Bedi.”
So what do we have? “Gavaskar, Merchant, (Rahul) Dravid, Sachin (Tendulkar), Pataudi, Mankad, Kapil (Dev), Kirmani, (Anil) Kumble, Zaheer (Khan), Prasanna,” – he lists them, no doubt or hesitation.
You wouldn’t have Subhash Gupte?
“Oh yes, that’s another one. Gupte was way ahead of any leggie I have heard of. I didn’t see him, but I heard on the radio. He could turn it on a glass table, Garry said. But I didn’t see him. But I saw Chandra (BS Chandrasekhar) all right – the most incredible bowler, the greatest match-winner. A captain’s delight.”
Who else? He takes a pause finally, but just a pause.
“Sehwag was a law unto himself. You want players in the classical mould: Merchant, Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar … Viswanath – what a batsman. But Vishy and Sehwag won’t be in my XI. Don’t get me wrong – I would like to see classical batsmen. That’s where hand-eye coordination falls short for me. So it’s my misfortune that I can’t include Sehwag. He is a remarkable team man and a great entertainer. So commiserations to Sehwag, and to Vishy too. And I don’t know how to include Chandra either. Who do we leave out?”
Either Kumble or Prasanna or Mankad, I guess. “No, then we can’t fit Chandra in. Vinoo Mankad, he has to be there. I can’t be there. Vinoo Mankad was the greatest allrounder. He has to be there.”
Why not yourself, Mr Bedi? “You have Vinoo Mankad bowling left-arm spin and batting anywhere you want him to, why do you need me?”
It seems like a good time to ask him what, after all these years, he thought about himself. His public persona might not always suggest it, but Bedi is a humble man. “I was a very poor athlete. You know that. Everyone knows that. Not kidding. Forget modern cricket – even then, that was my biggest handicap. I had to do something extraordinary with the ball to stay in the side. Chandra, Pras … they were way ahead of me. And Mankad, before. Anil, after my time.”
That brings us to the quartet (Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan).
The odd man out in the quartet
“They were brilliant. All great intellectuals of the game. All of them were highly educated too – I was the third-class graduate. The odd one out. Just a cog in the wheel. We were very proud of each other. Never a moment of jealousy … if one of us got five (wickets), the others celebrated. We used to discuss a lot. Even today, if I have a doubt about something, I will call Pras.
“I used to stand close to the stumps in the nets and listen to the ball whirring when it left Pras’s hand. Chandra also. Lovely people. No showmanship. Absolute darlings.”
And Tiger? Bedi has spoken and written about Pataudi often enough, but still.
“Tiger Pataudi was fifty years ahead of his time. Justice Lodha has come too late. Tiger was the greatest thing to happen to Indian cricket. No Indian team, according to me, without Tiger Pataudi is complete, and Tiger has to lead the side.
“He was an outstanding human being. The first person I have known, who would come and tell us, ‘You are not playing for your state. Think India’. That stuck with me, with Pras, and Vishy, Chandra, but not many others. Tiger never ever talked about himself. When we played – if he doffs his hat at you, that’s the greatest compliment. He helped us grow, all four of us spinners.”
If you are true to cricket …
The Bedi most of us know is the outspoken one, who calls Muttiah Muralitharan a “javelin thrower” and is typically in the news for firing a broadside at someone or the other. There is the other side to Bedi too, which anyone who knows him even a little knows about: He has that rare ability to see the good in everyone.
“Yes, that’s true,” he says thoughtfully, “but if there’s some nonsense floating around, I want to stand up. No Tom, Dick and Harry can walk over me. I have an independent mind. People can disagree with me, and I can disagree, but as grown-up adults, we can agree to disagree.
“A lot of our giants prostrate in front of the administrators. I couldn’t be one of them. It could be a weakness also. But it was built into me. I can’t change.
“And, listen, if a life spent in cricket doesn’t teach you to be upright and honest and humble, nothing else will. Cricket is all about honesty. This is not cricket – why do we say that? Why? Because if you have given yourself to cricket, if you are true to cricket, you have to be humble and honest and upright. And grateful. There can’t be any other way.”
No regrets, no stepping back
Example 1: Kingston 1976, when Bedi, the team’s captain, declared the first innings closed at 306 for 6 in protest against the West Indians’ intimidatory bowling – at the body from around the wicket.
Example 2: Madras 1977, when Bedi, still the captain, accused John Lever, the England paceman, of rubbing Vaseline on to the ball to keep the shine on.
Example 3: Sahiwal 1978, again captain, he forfeited a One-Day International against Pakistan when India needed 23 runs from 14 balls with eight wickets in hand as a sign of protest against the succession of bouncers Sarfaraz Nawaz had bowled.
Just three of the many times Bedi has been embroiled in controversy in a long, much-storied career.
Any regrets?
“I don’t regret anything. I stood up for my players. I was blessed with the ability to take a stand. And I did. We walked out in Jamaica. In a way, that is how the one-bouncer-per-over rule came. It was like Bodyline.
“Sahiwal. Now you will be no-balled if you bowl bouncers in ODI cricket. Even in Tests there are rules.
“As for Lever, he was using Vaseline on the ball. Now you are not allowed to use any foreign substance on the ball. You can criticise me, but can you disagree that all the things I stood up against have now been outlawed?
“All the evils that have happened in the game is because of the players. Why does a match referee go out for tosses now? Because of match-fixing. Chucking – it was created by the players. Can’t blame the administrators for it. They woke up and took steps. Jamaica. Sahiwal. It was required. I still feel a bouncer is a legitimate delivery for a bowler, but umpires must be empowered to identify if it is intimidatory or not.”
And, to answer the original question, “No regrets at all, none whatsoever.”
Once a cricketer, always a cricketer
“My life still revolves around cricket,” he says. “I still train kids, we have summer and winter camps. I read a lot of cricket and I see a lot of cricket. I am not a doctor or lawyer or anything. I am a cricketer. I don’t know anything else.” Cue – guffaw. “The cricketing philosopher in me is forever grateful to the grand willow game for all my peace and everything close to it.”
Before we wrap up, there’s time for one more story.
“I met PV Sindhu the other day at a function after she returned from the (Rio 2016) Olympics (with a silver medal), and she was talking about her sacrifices. I was invited and was sitting in the front row. I asked her, ‘Do you really want us to believe you sacrificed a lot’? Since when did passion become a sacrifice? You are passionate about badminton, mad about badminton. Madness is junoon. How can junoon be sacrifice? If you are passionate about something, as she is about badminton, you don’t weigh the pros and cons. You just do it.”
***
Among the cricketers of his generation, Bedi is probably the most ‘in the news’ and that’s because of his outspoken ways – he calls a spade a shovel and suffers no fools. You might wonder if being critical is his default mode, but it isn’t. It’s just that Bedi is the first port of call for many journalists when there is a contentious issue to discuss. He is the one major cricketer who won’t hem and haw, hold back, hedge his bets.
It might have worked against him in many ways all these years too.
But, as he says, “I don’t know any other way”.
It’s easy to like, really like, Bishan Singh Bedi, 70 years young today. Still fighting the battles he wants to fight, his will and word undiminished by the years. Humble to a fault, a fierce friend by all accounts, and an all-round cricketer – in the truest sense of the term.
http://www.wisdenindia.com/intervie...ll-of-honesty-a-career-without-regrets/223280
How many others living in Chhattarpur are likely to call Sir Garfield Sobers ‘Garry boy’? But that’s our Sardar of Spin, Bishan Singh Bedi.
He celebrates his 70th birthday on Sunday (September 25), and that’s as good a reason as any to catch up.
We catch Bedi in a fantastic, expansive mood.
Is it because Pink, his cricketer-turned-model-turned-actor son Angad’s latest film, is getting rave reviews?
The full-throated laugh comes first, and then, “No, no, no … I am happy he’s doing well, but I am a contented man anyway. I hope my family (wife Anju, daughter Neha and Angad) is happy. As for me, I have reached that stage of my life where it’s important to be at peace with myself rather than indulge in the flimsy concept of happiness.”
All right, so what do we start the chat with? The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) failed to invite Bedi for the 500th Test celebrations in Kanpur. Will it dampen his mood if we talk about it? Not really, as it turns out.
The invite that never arrived
“It was very strange alright. Could be anything – oversight, maybe? Or deliberate – I don’t know. Oh, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. It’s part of the game. No one can deny my involvement with Indian cricket, can they?” Certainly not.
“They (BCCI) didn’t even know it was the 500th Test,” he says. “If they did, the Test would not have been played in Kanpur. They would have chosen Mumbai or Bangalore or Kolkata. They saw it in the media and arranged something. That’s all. Can you imagine that they didn’t even invite Vishy (Gundappa Viswanath) or Nari Contractor either? Good lord!”
He does admit, though, that he would have liked to be there, if only to catch up with old friends.
Bishan Bedi can’t be in an all-time XI
We chat about our cities and traffic and the lawlessness that is rife now – “Delhi is becoming unwieldy. In every way. No law and order. Delhiites are horrible.” – when conversation moves to the Greatest Indian XI that Wisden India recently published, a list in which Bedi features at No. 11, one of two frontline spinners along with Anil Kumble.
He remembers the list right through – no prompting.
But – “Oh, no, no, no … I don’t agree with it at all.”
Which part? “Much of it.”
Who would you pick? “I wouldn’t have (Virender) Sehwag open with Sunil Gavaskar. Sunil, yes, we have had our differences, but he was outstanding. I would have Vijay Merchant with Sunil.”
Story time!
I think it’s because not many of us saw Vijay Merchant bat, I offer. “Nor did I,” he counters, “but he has to be in the greatest Indian Test XI. Sehwag was a product of one-day cricket. He did great things, but Merchant … he scored over 4000 runs on two tours of England when it was wet. I had a long discussion with Mr (Vijay) Manjrekar, just before he died, and I said I hadn’t seen a more organised bat than Gavaskar. He said he didn’t agree. ‘Did you see Vijay Merchant?’ he asked me. Mr Manjrekar said Sunil didn’t come anywhere near Merchant.”
Okay, Sehwag out, Merchant in. Next?
“Syed Kirmani in place of (MS) Dhoni. Tiger Pataudi in place of (VVS) Laxman, and as captain. No doubt about it. And Pras (Erapalli Prasanna). Pras and Vinoo Mankad. Not Bishan Bedi.”
So what do we have? “Gavaskar, Merchant, (Rahul) Dravid, Sachin (Tendulkar), Pataudi, Mankad, Kapil (Dev), Kirmani, (Anil) Kumble, Zaheer (Khan), Prasanna,” – he lists them, no doubt or hesitation.
You wouldn’t have Subhash Gupte?
“Oh yes, that’s another one. Gupte was way ahead of any leggie I have heard of. I didn’t see him, but I heard on the radio. He could turn it on a glass table, Garry said. But I didn’t see him. But I saw Chandra (BS Chandrasekhar) all right – the most incredible bowler, the greatest match-winner. A captain’s delight.”
Who else? He takes a pause finally, but just a pause.
“Sehwag was a law unto himself. You want players in the classical mould: Merchant, Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar … Viswanath – what a batsman. But Vishy and Sehwag won’t be in my XI. Don’t get me wrong – I would like to see classical batsmen. That’s where hand-eye coordination falls short for me. So it’s my misfortune that I can’t include Sehwag. He is a remarkable team man and a great entertainer. So commiserations to Sehwag, and to Vishy too. And I don’t know how to include Chandra either. Who do we leave out?”
Either Kumble or Prasanna or Mankad, I guess. “No, then we can’t fit Chandra in. Vinoo Mankad, he has to be there. I can’t be there. Vinoo Mankad was the greatest allrounder. He has to be there.”
Why not yourself, Mr Bedi? “You have Vinoo Mankad bowling left-arm spin and batting anywhere you want him to, why do you need me?”
It seems like a good time to ask him what, after all these years, he thought about himself. His public persona might not always suggest it, but Bedi is a humble man. “I was a very poor athlete. You know that. Everyone knows that. Not kidding. Forget modern cricket – even then, that was my biggest handicap. I had to do something extraordinary with the ball to stay in the side. Chandra, Pras … they were way ahead of me. And Mankad, before. Anil, after my time.”
That brings us to the quartet (Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan).
The odd man out in the quartet
“They were brilliant. All great intellectuals of the game. All of them were highly educated too – I was the third-class graduate. The odd one out. Just a cog in the wheel. We were very proud of each other. Never a moment of jealousy … if one of us got five (wickets), the others celebrated. We used to discuss a lot. Even today, if I have a doubt about something, I will call Pras.
“I used to stand close to the stumps in the nets and listen to the ball whirring when it left Pras’s hand. Chandra also. Lovely people. No showmanship. Absolute darlings.”
And Tiger? Bedi has spoken and written about Pataudi often enough, but still.
“Tiger Pataudi was fifty years ahead of his time. Justice Lodha has come too late. Tiger was the greatest thing to happen to Indian cricket. No Indian team, according to me, without Tiger Pataudi is complete, and Tiger has to lead the side.
“He was an outstanding human being. The first person I have known, who would come and tell us, ‘You are not playing for your state. Think India’. That stuck with me, with Pras, and Vishy, Chandra, but not many others. Tiger never ever talked about himself. When we played – if he doffs his hat at you, that’s the greatest compliment. He helped us grow, all four of us spinners.”
If you are true to cricket …
The Bedi most of us know is the outspoken one, who calls Muttiah Muralitharan a “javelin thrower” and is typically in the news for firing a broadside at someone or the other. There is the other side to Bedi too, which anyone who knows him even a little knows about: He has that rare ability to see the good in everyone.
“Yes, that’s true,” he says thoughtfully, “but if there’s some nonsense floating around, I want to stand up. No Tom, Dick and Harry can walk over me. I have an independent mind. People can disagree with me, and I can disagree, but as grown-up adults, we can agree to disagree.
“A lot of our giants prostrate in front of the administrators. I couldn’t be one of them. It could be a weakness also. But it was built into me. I can’t change.
“And, listen, if a life spent in cricket doesn’t teach you to be upright and honest and humble, nothing else will. Cricket is all about honesty. This is not cricket – why do we say that? Why? Because if you have given yourself to cricket, if you are true to cricket, you have to be humble and honest and upright. And grateful. There can’t be any other way.”
No regrets, no stepping back
Example 1: Kingston 1976, when Bedi, the team’s captain, declared the first innings closed at 306 for 6 in protest against the West Indians’ intimidatory bowling – at the body from around the wicket.
Example 2: Madras 1977, when Bedi, still the captain, accused John Lever, the England paceman, of rubbing Vaseline on to the ball to keep the shine on.
Example 3: Sahiwal 1978, again captain, he forfeited a One-Day International against Pakistan when India needed 23 runs from 14 balls with eight wickets in hand as a sign of protest against the succession of bouncers Sarfaraz Nawaz had bowled.
Just three of the many times Bedi has been embroiled in controversy in a long, much-storied career.
Any regrets?
“I don’t regret anything. I stood up for my players. I was blessed with the ability to take a stand. And I did. We walked out in Jamaica. In a way, that is how the one-bouncer-per-over rule came. It was like Bodyline.
“Sahiwal. Now you will be no-balled if you bowl bouncers in ODI cricket. Even in Tests there are rules.
“As for Lever, he was using Vaseline on the ball. Now you are not allowed to use any foreign substance on the ball. You can criticise me, but can you disagree that all the things I stood up against have now been outlawed?
“All the evils that have happened in the game is because of the players. Why does a match referee go out for tosses now? Because of match-fixing. Chucking – it was created by the players. Can’t blame the administrators for it. They woke up and took steps. Jamaica. Sahiwal. It was required. I still feel a bouncer is a legitimate delivery for a bowler, but umpires must be empowered to identify if it is intimidatory or not.”
And, to answer the original question, “No regrets at all, none whatsoever.”
Once a cricketer, always a cricketer
“My life still revolves around cricket,” he says. “I still train kids, we have summer and winter camps. I read a lot of cricket and I see a lot of cricket. I am not a doctor or lawyer or anything. I am a cricketer. I don’t know anything else.” Cue – guffaw. “The cricketing philosopher in me is forever grateful to the grand willow game for all my peace and everything close to it.”
Before we wrap up, there’s time for one more story.
“I met PV Sindhu the other day at a function after she returned from the (Rio 2016) Olympics (with a silver medal), and she was talking about her sacrifices. I was invited and was sitting in the front row. I asked her, ‘Do you really want us to believe you sacrificed a lot’? Since when did passion become a sacrifice? You are passionate about badminton, mad about badminton. Madness is junoon. How can junoon be sacrifice? If you are passionate about something, as she is about badminton, you don’t weigh the pros and cons. You just do it.”
***
Among the cricketers of his generation, Bedi is probably the most ‘in the news’ and that’s because of his outspoken ways – he calls a spade a shovel and suffers no fools. You might wonder if being critical is his default mode, but it isn’t. It’s just that Bedi is the first port of call for many journalists when there is a contentious issue to discuss. He is the one major cricketer who won’t hem and haw, hold back, hedge his bets.
It might have worked against him in many ways all these years too.
But, as he says, “I don’t know any other way”.
It’s easy to like, really like, Bishan Singh Bedi, 70 years young today. Still fighting the battles he wants to fight, his will and word undiminished by the years. Humble to a fault, a fierce friend by all accounts, and an all-round cricketer – in the truest sense of the term.
http://www.wisdenindia.com/intervie...ll-of-honesty-a-career-without-regrets/223280
. Does it happen to a lot of posters or is it just me ? 
