A very good batsman, but ...

SOME years ago, Tim Rice was awarded an Oscar for the songs he wrote for the Disney film "The Lion King". In his acceptance speech, the British songwriter told the audience in Hollywood that "I'd also like to thank Denis Compton, a boyhood hero of mine". Rice's hosts, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences were baffled. Later, they were constrained to issue this official disclaimer: "We do not know who Denis Compton is. He does not appear to be at Disney Studios or have anything to do with 'The Lion King'."

A previous Oscar awardee, Satyajit Ray, might have helped answer the question for the Academy. In the monsoon of 1944, when Ray was watching Hollywood films in the Minerva Theatre, off Calcutta's Chowringhee Avenue, his more sport-minded friends and relatives were across Chowringhee at the Maidan, watching Compton play on the left wing for the Royal Fusiliers against Mohun Bagan. For football was the Englishman's first game, and fittingly the one he first played in India. However, after the rains stopped Compton was posted to Mhow, deep in the interior. Now Mhow is an army encampment which is but 14 miles from Indore, then capital of Holkar State. Then also capital of Indian cricket, the home of Colonel C. K. Nayudu and Mushtaq Ali. The Arsenal and England footballer thus reverted to being the Middlesex and England cricketer. That year's Ranji Trophy had commenced, and Holkar hoped to recruit him into their team. Their Colonel talked to Compton's commanding General, who said he would release him from his duties for 10 days in all.

Mindful of this limit, Nayudu did not call upon the Englishman in the early matches. He did, however, play against Madras in the semi-final, topscoring with 81 as Holkar won by 10 wickets (Compton also took a wicket, bowling chinamen). The final was played at the Brabourne Stadium, against Bombay. In the fashion of the day, it was to be played to a finish, regardless of how long that took. The match was played in scorching heat, and on the most perfect of pitches it hinged crucially on the toss. Vijay Merchant won it, and his side batted for a day-and-a-half, ending with 462 all out. Holkar replied with 360, including 109 by Syed Mushtaq Ali. When Bombay batted again, the match had already been in progress for close to four days. Holkar went into the field for a second time under a disadvantage such as no cricket team had faced before (or since). This was C. K. Nayudu's strange insistence that none of his players were to drink water or other refreshments during play, even during the intervals allowed for the purpose. Holkar's Hitler granted an exception for the White man, but this was no use, for Compton was not one of the main bowlers. Those poor fellows toiled in the sun as the Bombay batsmen made merry. Merchant scored a double 100, the talented Parsi pair of Rusi Mody and Rusi Cooper a century apiece. The innings closed at 764, leaving Holkar 869 to win. Time, in this case, was not of the essence: they could bat on till the millennium, if they had the will to.

Holkar lost three wickets for a hundred odd, but then Mushtaq and Compton (who had failed the first time around) got stuck into the Bombay bowling. Mushtaq played his usual game, straight in defence one moment, crooked in attack the next. Between overs Compton would tell him to cool it. When he reached his second century of the match, the Englishman told him that if he played carefully, victory was within the bounds of possibility. Soon afterwards the carefree Indian was caught on the boundary, but Compton went, on, and on. When the ninth wicket fell there were nearly 500 runs to get. The last pair got 109 of them, number eleven's share being 11 runs. Compton finished with a heroic 249 not out.

Compton was to later write of that innings that he felt cheated not because his team-mates had let him down, but because a wealthy Indore merchant had not paid up as promised. He claimed that at lunch on the seventh or eight day, when he was about 80 not out, this man, Seth Hiralal, promised him Rs. 50 for every additional run he would score after his 100. When the match ended, Compton went to the Holkar dressing room expecting to find a packet with Rs. 7,450 waiting for him. He was instead delivered a handwritten note which read: "Urgent illness in family. Have to return to Indore immediately". He was never to see the man again.

In his own memoirs, written long after his partner's, Mushtaq Ali was emphatic that Compton had no reason for complaint, for the merchant's offer was for the first innings only. In that knock Mushtaq was out for 109 collecting Rs. 450, but as he noted, "That day, if I had consciously played for money, I could have made a fortune. Instead I played aggressively as I have done throughout my career". Of their famous second-innings partnership Mushtaq recalled how they "stole many impossible singles from gaps in the field. It was surprising how Denis and myself could get that understanding between us, so as to produce perfect running between the wickets". Now if this were true it would be more noteworthy by far than the case of the (possibly) dishonourable merchant. For Compton was a dreadful judge of a run, someone who had sent to their doom at least a thousand other batsmen. One of his victims, Frank Tyson, said of Denis' running between the wickets that to the three standard calls, "Yes", "No", and "Wait", he added a fourth: "Bugger It", this uttered when it became clear that his partner would be run out.

Compton's last appearance on an Indian cricket field came late in 1945, when he was picked to play at the Eden Gardens for East Zone against the visiting Australian Service team. He was batting on 98 when there was an invasion of the pitch by a section of the crowd. Members of a leftwing students union were protesting the arrest the previous day of some prominent nationalists ... The leader of the students now walked up to the Englishman and said: "Mr. Compton, you are a very good batsman, but you must go." After a brief pause Compton carried on to score his 100, but the radical's words were to be remembered always by first slip. For years afterwards, whenever he came to bat in an Ashes Test, Keith Miller would greet him thus: "Mr. Compton, you are a very good batsman, but you must go".

The next summer, Compton played three Tests for his home country against the visiting Indian side. In the second Test, played at Old Trafford, he scored 51 and 71 not out. In the final Test, played at the Oval, Compton made 24 not out in his only time at bat and, while in the field, ran out Vijay Merchant with a deft kick from short mid on. However, in the first Test, played at his home ground, Lord's, he made a duck. When another Indian Test side played at the Home of Cricket 40 years later, Compton sought out one of its members, Mohinder Amarnath. "Did you know," said Denis to him, "that in 1946 I played here against your father, and he bowled me first ball."

"Yes, sir," answered Mohinder, "I have often heard about it." A lovely exchange that tells us what we must remember about all three men - the son's devotion, the father's pride, and the Englishman's generosity.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

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