In 1952, keeping up with family tradition, an eleven-year-old travelled to England for higher education. On board his ship were the three Ws of West Indies cricket - Sir Clyde Walcott, Sir Everton Weekes and Sir Frank Worrell. He used the opportunity to play deck games with them, for playing cricket in that confined space wasn't really possible. That young man was Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and ten years to the day, at Barbados, on a fine March morning in 1962, he walked out as India captain with Sir Worrell for the toss.
You would want to say 'what sheer coincidence', but no, destiny had a plan for him. His father Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi had played Test cricket for both England and India, captaining the latter against the former in 1946, and when such a path has been laid out for you, it is tough to look away. His friend and team-mate first at Oxford and then in the Indian team, Abbas Ali Baig told me recently, 'Almost everyone knew he had the potential to lead the country. He was royalty and had come in with a reputation. He just needed to rise to the challenge and to everyone's pleasure he did.'
The year was 1959 when he had first caught attention. India were on tour in England and were getting beat. The travelling scribes took notice of this young Nawab making waves with runs galore, but most of all it were the twenty-eight catches he took that stood out. Here was a cricketer who scored his runs differently, an attacking approach to the game unseen for nearly two decades now. Plus he had the wherewithal to chase the ball around, the presence of mind to use sharp fielding to good effect. How could he not play for and indeed lead India one day, what possible glories can he show us, they must have thought?
He nearly didn't. A freak road accident in 1961 (July 1) caused damage to his right eye. Not many would be willing to pick up a bat soon after, but Tiger Pataudi wrote the manual on how to play cricket with only one eye. It took time though, perfecting his technique in a new manner. He would pull down his cap to cover the injured eye, making his vision unilateral, and only using the left eye to judge the line and length of the delivered ball. You can measure the strength of his resolve from the fact that five months after the accident he made his Test debut for India, on December 13. He went on to play 46 Tests, scoring 2793 runs at 34.91. Imagine how many he would have really scored with two good eyes?
Two innings of his stand out; the first was his maiden Test hundred at Chennai, in the fifth Test of the debut series against England. He got his 103 runs in two hours and thirty-five minutes of batting, and with Nari Contractor at the other end, put up 82 runs in one hour. India fans had first seen this fire in C.K Nayudu and Lala Amarnath, both never playing an innings not laced with sixes and fours. But somewhere it got lost, when Vijay Merchant and Vijay Hazare perfected the art of playing along the ground. Tiger Pataudi reminded his generation and the ones to follow, how to loft the ball again. For every candle we hold out to Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag or our umpteen T20 stars, the festival of lights ought to be celebrated on 10 January. Because it was in 1962 that Indian cricket first turned a new leaf.
The 'other' innings is in fact two, both played under gruesome pain and duress. The year was 1967, Tiger was now captain. The Indian team was in Australia and unhelpful conditions for their spinners meant they were being pummelled. He had a hamstring problem which forced him to sit out the first Test. But half recovered he was back for the second in Melbourne, the team needed him. It can be measured from the scorecard when he went in to bat, 25 for 5, after winning the toss. Hampered by his eye and now the hamstring that wouldn't allow him to lunge forward, only the freedom to pivot on his back-foot, he made 75 runs in the first innings and then another 85 in the second. India still lost by an innings and four runs, and not many such defeats are etched in time, perhaps for the want of sheer bravado.
Of course, taking Tiger Pataudi's reign in summation, you will find many such defeats, abject surrender to the opposition. Try not to indulge in statistics for once, they don't always do justice. Instead remember the advent of the 'spin quartet' and then look at the first overseas Test victory achieved in New Zealand (1967-68). Then wonder how that was possible immediately after being haplessly beaten in Australia. I put up this question to Ajit Wadekar, the man who made his debut under Tiger Pataudi and then succeeded him as captain. I asked, 'what was his most significant contribution to Indian cricket?'
He replied thus, 'He never felt his team was inferior to any opposition and he used to tell us as much. Perhaps it was a consequence of his royal upbringing or his learning from English cricket circuit, perhaps both. But it is a fact that Indians were always in awe of the foreign teams and Tiger helped us get rid of that inferiority complex.'
If Indian cricket today is considered a modern-day marvel, then once upon a time it was a wild growth of opportunism, mismanagement and defeatist attitude. Someone needed to burn down that forest and recover the land on which to build this behemoth.
Mansur Ali Khan 'Tiger' Pataudi lit that match.
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