He continues to spin in the flight of our imagination

WHERE ANIL Kumble bowls like a miser, Subhash Gupte flighted like a millionaire. Two lakhs of rupees going with the 2000 A.D. C.K. Nayudu Award, belatedly bestowed upon Subhash Gupte, is a sum welcome only because, as the 'Trinidaddy' of Spin, the man is lying disturbingly ill in the West Indies. 'Fergie' Gupte came to be so styled after Wilf Ferguson, the number one (wrist) spinner in John Goddard's West Indies team touring India in 1948-49. Where Ferguson faded away soon, Gupte crafted wrist spin into an art form. Subhash Gupte was as near being the best of his type as made no difference when he ran the gauntlet of Neil Harvey in the October 1956 Brabourne Stadium Test between Ray Lindwall's Australia and Polly Umrigar's India. ''If you have a world reputation, so do I!'' observed Harvey to Gupte. And that wristy left hander proceeded to knock the daylights out of this elfin wrist spinner in his stroke laden knock of 140.

Gupte lost the battle, but not heart. His ability to keep coming back at the batsman is what made Subhash Gupte the quintessential leg spinner. If Anil Kumble spun a website his very own to claim all 10 wickets in the second innings of a Test match, Subhash Gupte, in the very first innings on the very first day of a match, very nearly accomplished the feat a full 40 years earlier. Over to the Friday of December 12,1959, a day seeing Subhash Gupte Green Park himself as India's star 'turn' in bowling out the West Indies for 222, five minutes before close of play. Gupte's figures (that milestone day) of 34.3-11-109-9 rank as the 9th Best 'Analyses Of All Time' by an Indian, but 66th in the WISDEN 100.

How close Gupte came to challeng-ing Kumble, for the No.2 world Wisden spot, on that first day of play could be gauged from the fact that 'Fergie' took the first seven West Indies wickets in a riveting row, including the scalps of Holt (31), Hunte (29), Kanhai (0), So-bers (4), Butcher (2) and Collie Smith (20). Gupte thus was licking his spin-ning fingers (in an effort to gobble up the four wickets remaining for the All 10 High) when Ghulam Ahmed - looking none too fit for the fray as captain-perplexingly took over from Subhash to bowl some raggedly expensive off spin.

Indeed Ghulam Ahmed (after 10-3-29-0) had to turn to Gupte, afresh, to dismiss Joe Solomon (45). And, later,Gerry Alexander (70). But the spell and sequence alike had been fatally broken,as No. 9 Lance Gibbs (0) came to be bowled by Vasant Ranjane. If Jim Laker captured 10 wickets in an innings for Surrey and England alike, Subhash Gupte, that Friday, looked all set to duplicate the feat , having already registered 'The Perfect Ten' for Bombay vs the touring Pakistan Services & Bahawalpur C.C.

The tour of England in 1952 (out of which he was inexplicably kept) crucially delayed, in my view, Subhash Gupte's emergence as an all time great leg-spinner. The English, having had the opportunity to savour the flavour of ''Fergie's'' vintage spin on their 1951-52 tour of India, were astonished that Sadashiv Ganpatrao Shinde got to be preferred to Subhash Pandharinath Gupte. No doubt Shinde, on the open-ing Kotla day (November 2, 1951) of that home series, had shown himself to be a quality leg- spinner in bowling out Nigel Howard's England for 203 with a return of 35.3-9-91-6. But Shinde had done little, after that, so numbingly to tour- edge out a performer of Subhash Gupte's pedigree. Upon ''Fergie's'' get-ting a look-in for the third Test at Eden Gardens, singularly unimaginative handling by skipper Vijay Hazare had seen Gupte debut disastrously, for India, with 13-0-43-0 and 5-0-14-0.

That cost Gupte the all-determinant 1952 tour of England. But even Vijay Hazare, if still not able to say boo to a goose, could not overlook Gupte's intrinsic calibre on India's early-1953 visit to the West Indies. This was the tour on which Subhash Gupte, displaying amazing flexibility of wrist and disguise of intent, left his perennial imprint, in the Caribbean, with a series haul of 27 wickets at 29.22 each from 5 Tests. The West Indies (as a team flaunting Allan Rae and Jeff Stollmeyer, Frank Worrell and Everton Weekes, not to speak of Clyde Walcott backed up by Gerry Gomez) did get after Gupte. But discovered that they could not, indefinitely, sustain the attack against the range of leg-spinning ammunition at this gnome's command.

It was from this point Subhash Gupte's parabolic slows touched the nuances of world imagination. From a run-up as brief as Esther Williams' suit, Gupte unfurled spin that made the eyes swim. Flirting with his flight was fun only while it lasted. There was such a whirr to the air that Gupte gave the ball that the finest of batsmen discovered that he was 'just not there' - as the little red object curved and dipped, ever so suddenly. Such was Subhash's sleight-of-hand that his brother Baloo had no end of problems inheriting the leg-spinning mantle from him. Caught in between Subhash and Baloo was one V.V. Kumar! This Madras ace (always looking the fittest to take up from where 'Fergie' left off) just did not know with which one of the two Guptes he was competing. For, just when written off, Subhash would reinvent himself. Verily was Subhash Gupte the Prince of Leg-Spin as the one forming India's original-turn trio with Vinoo Mankad and Ghulam Ahmed. Gupte's 'wristy' longevity is to be viewed in his still spinning in the flight of our imagination. With better close catching support, Subhash Gupte would have finished with many more Test wickets than the 149 at 29.55 each that he did.

Subhash's virtuosity lay in the fact that, to the end, he did not drop his arm. The swordarm of Bombay's spin he was from the word go. Should Subhash Gupte, then, not have achieved even more on the international front? We must remember that Gupte bowled genuine wrist spin in the era of true batting greats, when the norm was for such classic practitioners to 'buy' their wickets. Subhash was no state-of-the-art spinner like Anil. Yet he wove an aura all his own. In the hollow of his hand you discerned wrist spin to be in its high meridian. Gupte's mastery was to be felt in his consistently beating international-level batsmen in the air. Superbly balanced in his delivery stride, Gupte came up with variations that were as multiple as they were subtle.

For all his wizardry, how come Subhash Gupte could eye his most produc-tive series as but one against lowly New Zealand (in India during the five Tests of 1955-56): 34 wickets at 19.67 each? Why was 'Rumpelstiltskin' not truly penetrative during India's 0-5 crash 1959 tour of England? It is a fact that the cognoscenti in England were disappointed with what, astonishingly, was their first viewing of a leg-spinner about whom they had heard so much from so many. Gupte's 17 wickets from those 5 Tests in England came at 34.64 each.

That 1959 tour, in truth, marked the beginning of Gupte's sad end as a world-class spinner. Gupte's strong suit had been his ability to take a lashing. Gary Sobers rated Gupte so highly only because he knew that he could hit this little fellow for five sixes in an over, yet the sixth ball would remain as sensuously flighted as the ones that had gone before.

Much as I admire Subhash Gupte in this hour of his being honoured as the Highpriest of Spin, objectivity compels me to record that the year 1959 saw 'Fergie' lose caste as a leg-spinner in England. Yet Gupte had done enough, before that, to 'turn' leg- spin into his signature tune. He was a tweaker of his times.

He was no quick-fix artist. Gupte believed in giving the batsman time and space. He let the striker take a few runs, off his tantalisingly tossed-up spin, in the foreknowledge that the man's head, ultimately, was his to devour. Subhash Gupte began losing gilt from the moment 'all-rounder' Chandu Borde came to be perceived as a leg-spinning rival to him in the Indian team.

For all that, the C.K. Nayudu Award sits pat on this dapper performer. If CK as a batsman attacked all the time, he expected the bowler, too, to do the same. And Subhash Gupte, a dissembler with a googly that had to be viewed to be believed, baited the batsman all the way. Gupte knew no way other than attacking the batsman to get wickets. Remember, Subhash Gupte won notice as India's best wrist spinner in an era when leg- breaks were the bowled thing. You had to be tempestuously tempting to carve out a niche all your own in this specialist slot. Subhash Gupte's art lay in concealing art. The go-go thing with the come-hither look was the juicy cherry in his resilient hand. Gupte was deceptive even while looking receptive.

Of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi (C.K. Nayudu-awardee alongside Subhash Gupte), Vijay Merchant noted that Tiger changed the face of Indian cricket at a time when our batsmen (watching the three Vijays in meticulous action) had begun to make a fetish of keeping the ball on the ground. Merchant added that, though he himself scrupulously observed this MCC coaching-book batting maxim, it was a negation of the true Oriental art. The Occidental junior Nawab of Pataudi certainly revived the Oriental art of lifting the ball over the infield - a hitback to the days of C.K. Nayudu. Yet, as a C. K. Nayudu award-winner himself, I would have loved to see, mythically, Tiger Pataudi face `Fergie' Gupte in his prime. Subhash Gupte would have run rings around Tiger Pataudi, never the best player of leg-spin! And, in so doing, have kept the C.K. Nayudu award all to himself! Gupte's wrist wrested wickets in a style resourceful enough to put the stamp on him as the aristocrat of spin. Thus Subhash Gupte is to spin what Lata Mangeshkar is to song.

RAJU BHARATAN

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