Sons of the father

A BIOGRAPHER of the country's first Prime Minister has necessarily to speak of the daughter and grandson who were also elected to the same office. Likewise, a cricket writer honouring Lala Amarnath has necessarily to append a postscript on his playing progeny. His task is more pleasurable, too. For the Nehru-Gandhis who followed Jawaharlal Nehru destroyed a once high reputation, whereas the later Amarnaths superbly upheld the cricketing traditions of their ancestor.

The patriarch had always intended it to be so. Thus he made his eldest son, Surinder, a left-hander, against his natural inclinations, to give him an early advantage against bowlers in a land where there are few southpaws anyway. (The Lala's example was to be followed by Hanif Mohammed, who taught his youngest brother, Sadiq, to bat the other way around, and by Hemant Kanitkar, whose successful guinea pig was his son, Hrishikesh.) Surinder made his name as captain of the all-conquering Indian Schoolboys side of 1967, whose other members included kid brother Mohinder and the greatest of all Indian stumpers, Syed Kirmani. Against English Schoolboys, at Lord's, his side needed 10 to win with two balls left - and Surinder struck two sixes to get them.

Surinder scored thousands of runs in the Ranji Trophy, several hundred in front of me. I remember especially two fine half- centuries in a match between Delhi and Karnataka, where he played Prasanna and Chandrasekhar with calm assurance, keeping out of the good ones and stroking those that erred in length for four. His best shots were the cut and the pull. These he played to good effect in his first Test match, against New Zealand at Auckland in January 1976, scoring 124 in the first innings. He also batted quite capably against England in 1976-77 and against Pakistan in 1977-78, but was then dropped, and never recalled.

Surinder was a brooding and introverted character who talked little on the field, or off it. Always sticking out of a trouser pocket was a red handkerchief Lala Amarnath had once owned. The father never forgave the Indian selectors for picking the boy late and dropping him early. In the Lala's defence, it must be said that Surinder was also an outstanding cover point, this at a time when most Indian Test cricketers were outrageously bad fielders. Including, as it happened, Mohinder Amarnath.

Mohinder played alongside his brother for Indian Schoolboys, Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab, Delhi, North Zone and India. Making his debut against Australia at Madras in the final Test of the 1969-70 series, he bowled well, sharp inswing at medium pace, but was then dropped for six years. When he returned to the Indian side, it was as a batsman who bowled a bit. In an international career that ran for close on 20 years, he was to make more comebacks than Amitabh Bachchan.

Mohinder will be remembered, above all, for his part in the last two matches of the 1983 World Cup. In the semi-final, against England, he bowled tidily and then hit an exquisitely paced half- century, watchful against Botham and Willis while milking the lesser bowlers. In the final, where India batted first, he started well but was then bowled off stump by Michael Holding, the ball accelerating down the hill. His wicket was celebrated by the West Indians more joyously than the wicket of Gavaskar that preceded it, for, the previous winter, Mohinder had scored 600 runs in a Test series in the Caribbean. However, his work in this match was not done yet. When the West Indies batted, chasing a mere 183, Madal Lal and Roger Binny chipped away at the middle order, but it was Amarnath who destroyed the tail.

In Test cricket, Mohinder reserved his best for the West Indies - and for Pakistan. Cricket chroniclers have spoken of his mastery of pace, the controlled hooking off Marshall and Holding, Imran and Sarfraz. But, befitting a son of the Lala, he was also a superb player of slow bowling. Where his brother Surinder played from the crease, seizing on anything short, Mohinder went down the track to drive. In that little cameo in the World Cup final, he hit two successive boundaries off Larry Gomes, inside out, and over extra cover. He also played that rather more skilful slow bowler, Abdul Qadir, with complete assurance.

There was a Mohinder innings I should have watched, for missing which I am kicking myself yet. It was in 1990, when he had just been dropped from the Indian side for the eighth (and, as it turned out, the last) time. Delhi was playing the sponsor's side in the final of the Wills Trophy, but my home was a long way from the Kotla, and some political party or other had threatened a bandh. I thought buses would not run, but they did.

The next day's paper had a photograph of Mohinder playing a sweep shot. He had hit a matchwinning 90. From memories of other times I had watched him bat, I painstakingly reconstructed the other strokes - the dab past point, the glide past square leg, the front foot drives past cover and past mid on. Against Indian bowlers on Indian wickets and in a limited overs game, there would, of course, have been no hook shots.

The Amarnath I myself saw most of was the youngest, Rajinder. He played for Indian Schoolboys before joining St. Stephen's College in Delhi in the same year as I - 1974. He bowled much like his brother and father had - late inswing off an eight step run. One of the first matches we played together was a "friendly", where Rajinder - or Johnny as we called him - was asked to umpire while we batted. He called a wide and then, in the next instant, called "over". I was appalled that a son of the Lala did not know the rules. But in the time I saw enough to see that he, nonetheless, had cricket in the blood, had a sure instinct for the game's nuances and an ice-cool temperament. In a crucial inter-college match, played on a rain-affected pitch, wickets were falling like nine pins to a lean Sikh slow bowler named Paramjit Singh (later of Orissa and East Zone). Rajinder swatted him from two sixes over mid-wicket and, once the short legs had dispersed, calmly took his singles.

Johnny Amarnath played in later years for Delhi, Punjab and Haryana. His finest moment came at Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium in 1982, where he emulated his eldest brother in hitting two half centuries against B. S. Chandrasekhar (after this match, which Karnataka lost to Haryana, Chandra announed his retirement). From the time Johnny played his first representative match - for Delhi Schools - his father would tell any scribe who cared to listen that he was a more gifted cricketer than his brothers. Not that he was shy of praising his other sons.

There was a lovely moment on Pakistan television in the 1982-83 series, where Mohinder came in at 10 for 2, and immediately hooked Imran for six. The Lala now spoke into the microphone: "They dropped the boy for three years saying he cannot play fast bowling".

Four years previously, Lala was in the commentary box while India was at the receiving end of another thrashing in Pakistan. For a day and more, Zaheer Abbas and Javed Mianded had batted together, and the home broadcasters had run out of superlatives. At the tea interval, with Zaheer 220 not out and Miandad a mere undefeated 160, a Pakistani in the box magnanimously asked the guest: "Now, Lalaji, who do you think are the best India batsmen?" Amarnath sucked in his breath - for Gavaskar and G. R. Viswanath were also playing - and bravely answered, "Mohinder, ... Surinder."

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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