An award of which C. K. Nayudu would have approved

NOBODY COULD hit `one stump' from cover-point with the deadly accuracy he did. So much so that not even with Cyril Washbrook , in the covers, did I find him suffering in comparison - on the 1952 tour of England. He was Vijay Hazare's vice- captain on that cataclysmic `0-for-4' tour, a tour during which I interacted enlighteningly with Hemu Adhikari as the total cricketperson. And I discerned in Hemu Adhikari the same militant approach to the game as C. K. Nayudu. The C. K. Nayudu award, therefore, fits Hemu Adhikari `down to the battleground'.

Cricket was war to Lt. Col Hemchandra Ramchandra Adhikari. Rest in peace he could not for a moment in the arena of play! You think Sachin Tendulkar took too long to set the field as captain? Then you never watched the pinpoint precision that Hemu Adhikari - as a Services' leader of men - brought to the job! As the martinet manager of our 1971 touring team - India rubber- victorious, in England, for the first time ever - Hemu Adhikari made the drastic decision (when the Karnataka ace was our number- one spinner with 124 wickets at 27.94 runs each from just 25 Tests) to keep Erapalli Prasanna out of the three-match series during that summer to be able to give the supremely fit S. Venkatraghavan his off-spinning head.

Manager Adhikari's gut point here was that, already, Bishan Singh Bedi and B. S. Chandrasekhar were no great leg-shakes in the field, so that the springy Venky it had to be at the expense of the chunky Prasy. It was a daring gamble. But when a gamble succeeds, it is hailed as foresight (in this instance, on the part of the Hemu Adhikari-Ajit Wadekar combo - then historically proceeding to beat Ray Illingworth's Ashes- smeared England 1-0). Hemu Adhikari, remember, cut his cricket teeth under `The Iron Duke', Douglas Jardine, in the February 1944 Services XI (vs Indian XI) match at the Brabourne Stadium, being run out for 81 when looking strokeful enough to race to a hundred. Douglas Jardine, a forbidding sight to me still in his Oxford Harlequin cap, did not know where to draw the body-line! And, from Jardine, Adhikari learnt to play the game ultra-hard at an early age and stage.

Look at Hemu Adhikari's career record for India - just 872 runs from 36 innings in 21 Tests (ave 31.14), 21 Tests in which he closed his resourceful hands on but 8 catches . As you digest those figures, you do wonder how Hemu Adhikari qualifies for the C. K. Nayudu award ahead of Subhash Gupte. But then to judge Hemu Adhikari by his cricket in the middle alone is to overlook the profound influence he exercised on the course of the game, in India, during its determinant years as our first National Coach. Hemu himself was no slow coach in the field even when rising 50 and that enabled this taskmaster to ensure that his writ ran exemplarily among his wards. Plus the man had vision. Just one happening I cite will serve to drive home the point.

We were at the Wankhede Stadium and one of Adhikari's pupils was doing everything wrong with the bat. As I looked askance at Adhikari, Hemu said: ``Don't look at the boy - I myself don't! Watch not the movement of his feet but the movement of the ball - off his quicksilver bat - to the boundary! It's his natural game and I don't want to interfere with it.'' The youngster in question was `Krishnamacharger' Srikkanth. I saw Hemu Adhikari himself go for his shots with refreshing abandon in his salad years and discovered him to be one of the finest players of spin that India has produced. Adhikari might have appeared less sound against genuine pace, yet he never lacked in grit and courage. Maurice Tremlett worked up tremendous pace on a rain-freshened wicket at Taunton, bowling for Somerset vs Indians, but Adhikari stood firm - until he was rapped raspingly on the knuckles and put out of action for two weeks.

The short point is that Adhikari never flinched from pace even while being a far better performer against spin - with a flawless technique on bad wickets. Adhikari's 60 in a total of 157 on the third (and final) day of the fourth Test vs Nigel Howard's England at Kanpur (in January 1952) was an innings of rare character and skill against Roy Tattersall and Malcolm Hilton turning the ball almost at right angles. No less accomplished (while going in at No 8) was Adhikari's unbeaten 81 (after Lala Amarnath's India had been reduced to 180 for 6, batting first) in the opening Ferozeshah Kotla Test of the 1952-53 watershed series vs Abdul Hafeez Kardar's Pakistan.

Ha, Abdul Hafeez! To this southpaw - who emerged as Pakistan's first national captain (after partition) while adding `Kardar' to his name - Hemu Adhikari indirectly owed his remarkable advance as a stand-out field in any position. It happened in the November 1944 final between Hindus and Muslims - the last such match of the A. F. S. Talyarkhan-lambasted Pentangular series at the Brabourne Stadium.

The Muslims (led by Syed Mushtaq Ali) had all but lost out in that final to the Hindus (captained by Vijay Merchant), when Abdul Hafeez materialised on the scene as a fresher. Hemu Adhikari was asked to position himself at intimidating silly mid- off to that left-hander. And Chandu Sarwate had the nervy Abdul Hafeez spooning up not one but two catches. Both were sitters and Adhikari put both down!Feeling ran high in a Hindu-Muslim Pentangular contest and no one have I heard cursed more roundly than was Hemu Adhikari that hapless evening. ``I could not show my face anywhere after that - as a Services' man, I felt all the more ashamed of myself.!'' I recall Adhikari telling me. ``Those two catches I unaccountably let go saw Abdul Hafeez move on to a score of 35 and help the Muslims excitingly win that 1944 Pentangular by one wicket, as this left-hander added some vital runs with K. C. Ibrahim (137 not out at the finish).

``That day itself I resolved,'' went on Adhikari, ``that I wouldn't return to big cricket until I became top-class in the field. I practised very hard, trying to throw down a single stump `on the run'. And, soon, I saw that fielding was but a matter of striving zealously for peak fitness. It was thanks to Abdul Hafeez that I came to lay down fielding as the first precondition for any player to be in a team I was leading or managing.''

Thus Hemu Adhikari remembers not so much his maiden Test hundred (a match-saving 114 not out vs John Goddard's West Indies in the November 1948 first Test at the Kotla). He better remembers the success with which he uplifted a totally downhearted Indian team on his belated return to the same Kotla heath - as captain for the fifth and final Test of the 1958-59 series in which, while hitting 63 and 40 and gratefully dismissing Conrad Hunte (92), Basil Butcher (71) and Dennis Atkinson (37) with his `donkey- drops', Hemu Adhikari salvaged the name of India with an honourable draw. For that was the scary series, against Roy Gilchrist and Wesley Hall, in which India had three captains (Polly Umrigar, Ghulam Ahmed and Vinoo Mankad) in the first four Tests. Indeed, morale had descended to a new low, as India lost the fourth Test at Madras' Corporation Stadium by a whopping 295 runs - to be 0-3 down in the series. In those extenuating circumstances was Hemu Adhikari recalled (from near retirement) for the final Test at the Kotla and took charge like a general to the manner born. It is this accent on mental and physical discipline that turned Hemu Adhikari into a supercoach later. Hemu's eye for spotting talent at a formative young age was unerring. For all his harsh exterior, as captain and coach alike, Adhikari kn ew when to let those under him unwind.

Neat and exact in everything he did, Hemu Adhikari served Baroda, Services and India with distinction. As Lt. Col Adhikari, he was always in command. Of the vintage award now bestowed upon him, I would, therefore, say but one thing - that C. K. Nayudu would have approved. For Hemu Adhikari was a ferocious fighter all the way. His career aggregate of 8628 (ave 41.88) - spanning nearly a quarter-century and including 18 hundreds - always saw Hemu Adhikari run his first run extra-fast. A dapper dazzler he was in his running between the wickets. At cover-point, he was feared by the best batsmen in the world. In the June 1952 ``Mankad's Test'' at Lord's, Tom Graveney (in the course of striking a cultured 73) once fractionally stepped out of the crease in playing a cover- drive. As Graveney saw Adhikari swoop like a hawk on the ball, `Long Tom' scampered back in a heap, urging Hemu, with upraised hand, not to throw! Graveney knew that Adhikari would not ever fail to throw down the stumps.

Throw down the gauntlet Hemu Adhikari always did and that is what made him a supple performer worth watching to the end. It is in the physical fitness of things, therefore, that Hemu Adhikari should be decorated with the C. K. Nayudu award as one who, in his game, always upheld the Churchillian principle: ``You do your worst, we will do our best!''

RAJU BHARATAN

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