A devil before Kapil

I WROTE last time of foreign Test cricketers who were called to their Maker in their prime. I know of a single Indian Test cricketer who died in his active playing days. But he was one of the immortals.

L. Amar Singh was born in Rajkot in 1910. He studied in King Alfred's School, the alma mater also of a certain M.K. Gandhi.

Like the Mahatma, Amar was an indifferent student. But, unlike him, a decent sportsman. It ran in the family, for his elder brother, Ramji, was a celebrated fast bowler for the Hindus in the Bombay Quadrangular. A tall man, and heavy too, he sported a red vermillion tilak on his forehead. As he ran up to bowl, his fans would shout: "Bajrang Bali ki jai."

Amar Singh himself chose the path of swing and seam rather than speed. And unlike his brother, who was one of Nature's number elevens, he was a gifted attacking batsman with a keen eye. One who recognised his talents early was none other than Ranjitsinhji. In a trial match for the 1932 tour of England, the Rajkot man impressed the Jam Saheb with both bat and ball. (In this trial, played at the Roshanara Club in Delhi, Amar Singh struck a six out of the ground that landed on the head of an unsuspecting tongawallah.)

In India's first official Test, played at Lord's in June 1932, Amar Singh took four wickets, one of these the great Wally Hammond, clean bowled. (Hammond remarked that "he comes off the pitch like the crack of doom".) Later, as India plunged to defeat, he hit 51 in less than even time. On India's next four years later, Amar Singh took six for 35 in the Lord's Test, prompting a heartfelt tribute by world's great bowlers "... He swung the ball now inwards, now outwards. His pace from the ground was vivid. He seldom pitched a loose length. A short run, a sudden rush of energy from a loose wheeling arm and the ball flashed down the wicket like a javelin".

In the next Test, at Old Trafford, Amar Singh hit India out of a hole, helping his side salvage a draw. "His batsmanship," wrote Cardus, "had a beauty which had its own mysterious axis and balance. His off-side strokes were like shooting stars - all wrong in our English astronomy, but all right and splendid in some other dazzling solar system. Most cricketers in the same situation would have gone into protective sheaths."

From what one has heard and read, Amar Singh was perhaps as variously gifted a cricketer as Kapil Dev. For his talents were not restricted to batting and bowling; in the words of the English critic E.H.D. Sewell, he was "such a grand fielder. A real Constantine type, as supple as elastic, and as slick as a panther." It comes scarcely a surprise that he was the first Indian to play as a professional in the Lancashire Leagues, in whose one-day, one-innings matches his all-round skills found ample expression.

One who wrote often and lovingly about Amar Singh was the veteran cricket correspondent of The Hindu, S.K. Gurunathan. In February 1933, on the first day of the first Test match ever played at Chepauk, Amar took seven wickets on a perfect pitch. Years later, in an essay in Sport and Pastime, Gurunathan remembered that achievement wicket by wicket. He singled out the ball that bowled the dour left-hander L.F. Townsend, which "swinging in late, went past his hip and just carried the leg bail".

That essay of "Guru" I was long familiar with but, in a pile of old papers, I recently picked up another appreciation by him of Amar Singh. This related to an unofficial Test played at Chepauk in 1935 against a visiting Australian side captained by Jack Ryder. When India batted, Amar was promoted to two down. He came in briskly, did not even take guard, and laid into the bowling. Facing the leg-spinner Mair, he hit his first ball straight "like a bullet, and the young bowler was almost frightened to death". In Mair's next over, the batsman pulled a short one away over square leg. "It was lost in the clouds so high it went, sailed over the press stand and fell on the far away boundary wall". Gurunathan laconically adds: "It was a mishit". Later, Amar "again sent the ball over the boundary and drove it furiously past mid-off". He was out for 45, made in 43 minutes; but while it lasted it had "been regular fireworks; there was all the splitting noise without, however, the sparks".

To these appreciations by critics, one must add the compliments offered to Amar Singh by his fellow cricketers. When Gurunathan met Jack Ryder in Melbourne in 1955, the Australian insisted that "Amar Singh was a champion". His colleague Lala Amarnath said of the all-rounder that "wo tha dil ka cricketer" - he was a cricketer who played with his heart, a cricketer after one's own heart. Then there was Vijay Merchant, who came from the other end of the social spectrum, but who was nonetheless Amar's closest friend in cricket, even naming his son after him.

Amar Singh died in May 1940, six months short of his 30th birthday. (He was consumed by a mysterious fever: indeed, a month before he passed away he had been playing cricket). Even while he lived, however, he was obsessed with the idea of death. One who knew of this obsession was the great all-rounder, Learie Constantine, his colleague and rival in the Lancashire League. When Learie's club, Nelson, played Amar Singh's team, Colne, the West Indian would come to the ground dressed in black. Naturally the Indian would ask what had happened, and Constantine would answer that he had just attended the funeral of a friend. This ruse was intended to put his opponent off his game, to so disturb him psychologically that he might not give of his best. Perhaps of all the tributes that ever came Amar Singh's way this was the most remarkable; that Constantine, a supremely gifted all-rounder himself, could not trust solely to his cricketing skills when playing against him.

RAMACHANDRA GUHA

The writer is the editor of The Picador Book of Cricket.

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