Constantine and India

THIS column is, among other things, an exercise in cricket escapism, apt to remove oneself from the contaminated present to the pure past. To one who came of cricketing consciousness in the 1960's, what is especially remarkable about the game in the year 2000 is the dreadful condition of West Indian cricket. As I write, the team that has so comprehensively dominated world cricket in past decades is hard put to defeat lowly Zimbabwe, and at home too. This seems exactly the right time to remember West Indian players of years past. Let us remember then, the first of the Caribbean greats, and remember especially his connection with India.

Learie Constantine bowled fast, batted furiously, and was, besides, possibly the finest all-round fielder in the history of the game. With only a little help from George Headley, Constantine personally invented West Indies cricket. When Neville Cardus wrote a preface to his book Cricket And I (1933), he spoke of Learie as he could speak of no English or Australian cricketer. The West Indian, he remarked, is born into a land "which is young enough to play its games and not merely work at them". Watch Constantine's "cuts and drives, his whirling fast balls, his leapings and clutchings and dartings", and "we know they are the consequence of impulses born in the blood, a blood heated in the sun and influenced by an environment and a way of life much more natural than ours; impulses not common to the psychology of the over-civilised places of the earth". In the body of the book, Learie himself was at pains to point to the thought and the training that lay behind the cricket of the West Indians - it was not, as a careless reader of Neville Cardus might suppose, all "impulse" and "instinct". But there remains something to what the critic saw. Certainly the West Indians continue to play cricket with a panache absent from the game of the over-civilised and over-coached Englishmen.

When the first West Indian side toured the sub-continent, in 1948-49, Constantine had retired. But he had come here 14 years ago, his trip made possible by three or four cricket-minded Maharajahs. He appeared once or twice for a side sponsored by the Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram. Another time, in Delhi, he played for the Maharaja of Patiala's team against the Viceroy's XI in a one-day, one-innings, match. At this time Patiala was involved in a bitter fight with Lord Willingdon, incumbent representative of the King-Emperor. The visitor was, willy-nilly, drawn into the battle. In this match Patiala batted first and scored about 200, and when the Viceroy's team went in the sun, was at its fiercest. Constantine recalled later that as he ran in to bowl, "I found the weight of the sun in my back, its glare from the ground and the heat-haze in my eyes so overwhelming that the lot of the fast bowler was unhappy indeed, and for the first time in my life I wished for a breezy English day." At tea, Willingdon's team had made 150 for two. After the interval, Constantine was asked by the prince captaining the side what their chances were. Nil, answered the bowler, since the wicket is dead and the batsman set. Well, Learie, what about some bodyline, said the prince now. Well, he who pays the piper calls the tune. When "Connie" sent down his first bumper, the well-set Wazir Ali trod on his wicket. With the bowler cleverly mixing the yorker with the short stuff his side went on to win by three runs. But as he dryly noted in his memoirs, "the Viceroy's position appeared to remain quite unshaken despite any loss of prestige through the result" (or a mere cricket match).

The West Indian's next port of call was the southern city of Hyderabad. For the Gold Cup tournament - predecessor of today's Moin-ud-dowlah competition - he had been invited to play for the team run by the Maharajkumar of Alirajpur. His side was called the Retrievers, their opponents in the final, the Freelooters. These spendidly named teams, between them commanded the best players in India. Each, to quote the one outsider playing, was "an example of magnetised talent". The Freelooters had Vijay Merchant, L. P. Jai, P. E. Palia, and Dilawar Hussain, besides Constantine. The Retrievers included C. K. and C. S. Nayudu, Wazir Ali and Nazir Ali, Mohammed Nissar, and Lala Amarnath.

The final was a low-scoring match. The Freelooters, batting first, scored 121, Merchant making 31 of these, Baqa Jilani, 26. Nissar took five wickets and C. K. Nayudu four. Helped by 81 from Wazir Ali, the Retrievers led by 60, despite Constantine's six for 72. In their second innings, the Freelooters managed a more worthy 233, the centre-piece a second wicket partnership of over 100 between Merchant, who made 51, and Palia, who ended with 134. Set 178 to win, the Retrievers stumbled to 20 for four, three of these wickets claimed by Constantine. The subsequent events were thus described by the West Indians in his book Cricket In The Sun: "Amarnath made a brilliant century, which more or less turned the game ... We were the cup-holders, and put up a hard fight, but were finally and comprehensively overwhelmed, amid terrific excitement and enthusiasm, and so lost both match and cup". This account, accurate enough as it goes, should be supplemented by these vivid recollections of Vijay Merchant (writing 25 years later, in the Lala's benefit souvenir):

On the coir matting, Constantine made the ball lift from good length and his short-pitched balls passed by Amarnath's head. While Wazir Ali at the other end kept moving away from the line of the ball, Amarnath moved into them and hooked them with rare accuracy and power. To the other bowlers, he scored on the off-side but to Constantine he pulled and hooked anything that was short and in two cases he even latecut him through the slips ... Never have I seen in my cricket career such hooking of short fast balls

..., and the manner in which he was able to keep the ball out of the fielder's hands at deep fine-leg and deep square- leg spoke volumes for his greatness as a batsman.

Constantine was so struck by that innings that he recommended Amarnath to succeed him as professional at the Lancashire League club, Nelson. Constantine liked native India and admired its cricketers; as he was to recall, years later, he was "immensely improved by my experience against Indian batsmen and bowlers". But he was less impressed with the rulers. The colour-bar was rigid, more so than in Australia and the West Indies, "but then," noted the all-rounder, "White opinion in India is always half a century behind the rest of the world". Constantine had a small taste of this himself, when a popular campaign to have him play in the Quadrangular was quelled by the powerful Bombay Gymkhana. The campaigners had asked only that the European team for that tournament be renamed the Christians. This would make them consistent with the other religion-based teams - Hindus, Muslims and Parsis - allow them to play Constantine, and also pick promising Indian Christian cricketers, such as Vijay Hazare. It was a simple and logical change, but the White supremacists of the Bombay Gymkhana, which ran the European team, would have none of it. For against the attraction of having in their side the greatest all-round cricketer in the world lay centuries of an institutionalised and (in other spheres) a highly profitable racism.

Although Constantine could not play in the Quadrangular, the people of Bombay would have his darshan anyway. On November 6 he played in the city, for the Freelooters versus the Islam Gymkhana. The hero was bowled first ball for a duck, but it being a "friendly", the Gymkhana's skipper, S. M. Kadri, asked him to stay on, as all present, the fielding side included, only wanted to see him bat. Constantine knocked up 39 runs in three overs, three sixes and four fours included, and then retired, his and their honour satisfied. The West Indian was called next to Poona, but the match scheduled here was rained off. A couple of thousand people waited patiently for the rain to stop. In late afternoon the skies cleared, and although the pitch was unfit for play, Connie decided that the devotion of his fans would not go unrewarded. He came out of the pavilion, dressed in cricket clothes, a cricket ball, his sole prop. First he threw the ball high into the sky and then caught it behind his back. Then he took up position at one end of the ground and threw the ball low and fast to the other. Next a wicket-keeper was called out, and a stump erected. For about 15 minutes, Connie collected balls coming to his left and right and hurled them at the target. It was a performance worthy of Poona, city of the tamasha.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Previous : Gibbs breaks his silence
Next     : Tamil Nadu's misery ends