Citizen Ken

OF all the English cricketers who played in India before the Second World War, it was Douglas Jardine who was most admired. He left an impression because of his dogged batsmanship, his masterful captaincy, and, not least, because he treated Indians with a respect he had previously withheld from the Australians. From the field research that I have undertaken, more or less haphazardly, it appears that the first postwar Englishman to really be remembered in India was Ken Barrington. Like Jardine, he was a Surrey man although born (so to speak) on the other side of the tracks.

Barrington was a batsman of courage, skill and eccentricity. An attacking strokemaker to begin with, he remade himself as an innings-builder. While Graveney, Cowdrey and Dexter played the shots or got out he kept one end going. Yet, he never forgot his earlier self: on eight separate occasions he brought up a Test half-century or century with a six. He could bowl a handy leg break and also fielded superbly at slip or short leg. Above all, he was a man of resolute character. Australian wicketkeeper Wally Grout once said of Barrington that "when he comes out to bat, I can see the Union Jack waving behind him", surely one of the most heartfelt tributes ever paid one cricketer by another.

When he came here with Ted Dexter's side of 1961-62, Barrington made a deep impact on Indian crowds. He endeared himself by doing imitations of cricketers they had recently seen, such as Gary Sobers and the gum-chewing Australian Ken Mackay. When he was thrown a pair of sunglasses by a spectator, he put them on and even bowled in them.

The man Barrington most resembled, on the other side, was Vijay Manjrekar. Both were batsmen who kept their strokes under wraps for hours after they came in, waiting till they had scored 60 or 70 before unfolding the drive or hook. Both fancied themselves as slow bowlers, although their captains generally thought otherwise. In this series they matched one another stroke for stroke, almost exactly, for one scored 594 runs in the five Tests, the other 586. In the Indian dressing room, Manjrekar was also known as a prankster and mimic.

Manjrekar, however, was for us a gar ki muli dal barabar, a known product, whereas Barrington had the charm and appeal of the exotic outsider. Throughout the land, boys, as well as men, were to imitate the way he played forward, the way he sent down his leg-breaks, the way he took up his position in the slips. The first team I followed, Friends Union Cricket Club in Bangalore, had within its ranks a capable all-rounder who bowled high-tossed leg-breaks, batted with care and orthodoxy, and did his hair up in a puff like the England player. I believe his mother named him Rajanna, but we knew him only as "Ken". (That, 35 years later, is what I still call him). When I played cricket in Delhi, in the 1970's seventies, there was a chap who turned out for Salwan Club, which is a team of Punjabis. He was known, simply, as "Bringtin". I have no doubt that in Calcutta there is a former club cricketer, now in his fifties perhaps, who likes to answer to the name of "Bearing-tone".

Years later, some English journalist asked Barrington the secret of his success in India. "Eggs and toast, old chap," replied Ken, "that is all I ordered wherever I went in the subcontinent." I retold this tale to a Bengali colleague of mine at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. "Nonsense," he replied. "During the Test match at the Eden Gardens I myself threw him an orange, which he caught, peeled, and ate fully."

Despite Barrington, Dexter's side were to lose the series of 1961- 62, India winning two Tests, with the other three drawn. Two winters later, another England team came out, led by M. J. K. Smith. It was this tour that placed in my hands my first cricket book. It was issued by Esso, the oil multinational, and it contained details of the touring party and their likely Indian opponents, picture on one side, thumbnail sketch on the other. You could collect the publication at the nearest petrol pump, and in those pre-Murdochian days it represented a giant step in the march of sports sponsorship. We read here of "Micky Stewart, the stalwart Surrey opener", and of his counterpart "M. L. Jaisimha, the dasher from the Banjara Hills". The photos were of a piece, the players all clad in double-knit sweaters, white ringed with dark blue, no question of ugly logos and adverts, let alone pink pyjama suits.

These, then, were the first foreign names that I learned to enunciate - Binks, Bolus, Stewart, Smith, Larter, Parks, and not least, Barrington. There was no television, so we knew not how these English cricketers looked or acted in the field; the names and portraits were all we had to indicate how they might bowl or bat. Hence J. B. Mortimore, the visiting off-spinner, was christened by a slightly older friend as "Fat Peacock", or moti- mor. This boy, aged seven to my five-and-a-half, would come in to bowl in our street games swaying from side to side, like a bird unable to carry its weight after a repast.

Cricketing wise there is not much to recall from that year. All five Tests were drawn, with not one of them coming close to a climax. One figure might explain it all - Bapu Nadkarni's bowling analysis in the first Test in Madras. India scored 457 for 7 declared, in about two days. England took their time scoring 317 in reply, Barrington 80, Nadkarni 32-27-5-0. The Englishmen then proceeded to Poona to play the West Zone, where poor Ken split the webbing of his hand taking a catch. He was sent home, and while waiting for his flight at Santa Cruz airport bumped into John Woodcock of The Times. "And to think of all those Test runs that will go abegging," complained the batsman.

There were some runs still to be made, and some against India too. In the three Tests of the 1967 series against the Nawab of Pataudi's side Barrington scored 324 runs in five innings. The following year he retired from the game, after the doctor adjudged him to have a weak heart. Barrington later returned to the game in an advisory capacity. For a brief while he was the much loved coach of the England Test team. While in that job in the Caribbean he had a massive heart attack, and died. His wards, Ian Botham, Graham Gooch, Bob Taylor and the rest, were devastated. Their sorrow as well as the personality of its object is well described by Frank Keating in his book. Another Bloody Day In Paradise. Some would date the decline of English cricket to that untimely death.

Ken Barrington is remembered in India long after he last played here. A couple of years ago, the great googly bowler B. S. Chandrasekhar said that of all the batsmen he bowled to, Barrington was the most difficult. (To underline the compliment, consider the competition - Chandrasekhar bowled to Sobers, Lloyd, Richards, Greenidge, Lawry, O'Neill, Cowdrey, Boycott, and Gavaskar too). One did not, however, have to bowl to the Englishman to admire him. It was enough to watch Barrington bat, or in the field. One of Chandrasekhar's fellow townsmen, an enthusiastically modest cricketer himself, even named his son after him. That was 19 years ago: this current cricket season the boy made his first-class debut for Karnataka, and hit a hundred. His name is Barrington Rowland.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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