Sport
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Cricket
Venkatraghavan's extraordinary achievement
By Nirmal Shekar
Venkat, one of the shrewdest observers of the game. - Photo: N. Balaji
Amidst all the din and bustle of sport over the last few days, with Steve Waugh's Australian team re-asserting its superiority, Muthiah Muralitharan becoming the first bowler to pick up 10 wickets in a Test 10 times and the world beating Indian pair of Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes reinventing themselves as popular champions in Chennai at the Tata Open, a significant sporting milestone almost went unnoticed.
At Kandy, in the second Test between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, one man out there in the middle brought up a record that is unlikely to be matched.
S.Venkatraghavan, the former India cricket captain, officiated in his 50th Test match and became the only man in the game's history to have played over 50 Tests and to have umpired in 50 Tests. By any standards, this is an extraordinary achievement, something that even a multi-faceted like man like Vekat, one who has constantly sought newer and newer challenges, must be proud of.
It was on a whim that Venkat made his foray into the world of umpiring after having tried his hand as an administrator in the game for some time. And it has taken him much less time to reach the 50-mark as a Test umpire than it did for him to play in that many Tests as an off-spinner.
Venkat made his debut as an umpire in Test cricket at the Eden Gardens in what was then Calcutta, in February 1993 against Graham Gooch's Englishmen. Since then, he has officiated in Test match cricket in every Test playing nation barring Bangladesh - where he has stood in limited overs matches.
It did not take long for Venkat to establish himself as one of the finest umpires in the sport. After all, few men have gone into the profession with such a wealth of experience, as a player, as a captain, as an administrator and, most of all, as one of the shrewdest observers of the game.
From Lord's to the MCG to Bridgetown and Kolkata, the men who matter in the sport quickly realised that while all men in the middle are fallible in this era of all-seeing TV cameras, some are less fallible than the others. And Venkat was one of them.
Along with Dickie Bird - before his retirement - Steve Bucknor and David Shepherd, Venkat came to be recognised as one of the best in the business and this meant his wife Ranjini was forced to say goodbye to him at the Chennai airport as many times as she might have in his playing days!
In recent times, there have been a few comments on the sidelines, so to say, about Venkat possibly having made an error of judgement here or there. And when these come from men who have the benefit of replays from 18 different angles while sitting in air conditioned comfort, your heart goes out to a man who after having achieved so much in the sport as a player - and who is now on the wrong side of the 50s - still has the guts and determination to do what he is doing.
How many experienced Test players can say from the bottom of their hearts that they would travel as much as Venkat does, stand out in the middle in difficult conditions all day long, and distinguish themselves even better than Venkat after 50 Tests as an umpire?
To be sure, it takes a lot of courage to accept the job of an umpire these days. Greater demands are made on the men in the middle now than ever before and this means there is a lot more pressure than at any time in the past. And when you have had a distinguished Test career as a player - as has Venkat - it is always a bigger risk.
For, few men - if any - of Venkat's stature would want to run the risk of making a few mistakes out in the middle as an official and allowing this to overshadow their achievements as a player. If Venkat has done this, and come out on top, it is precisely because he has never been a man who has fallen short when it comes to courage in the face of adversity.
Whether it was during his roller-coaster career as a Test cricketer - spanning two decades and 52 eventful matches - or as a team manager or administrator, and finally as an umpire of substance, Venkat has always been hard on himself.
This is precisely the reason why the man has often been pilloried for his attitudes towards his peers. As hard as he was on himself, Venkat tended to judge others by his standards. He expected everybody to be as physically agile, mentally sharp and, not the least, as hard working as he was.
In an unequal world, this was surely a mistake. But, when you are driven by a rage for perfection and are engaged in the heat of the battle, it is something that is excusable. And it would hardly take away from what this solitary man with a remarkable single-mindedness of purpose has accomplished in a variety of roles.
Sport is such a one-dimensional business that you are hardly surprised, these days, about how impoverished sportsmen are in terms of their knowledge of life, in terms of how much they know about anything outside their profession.
In this, Venkat has always been an exception. Whether it is mathematics or history or contemporary politics and science, he is right up there where few sportsmen, leave alone cricketers, would ever attempt to be.
An admirer of excellence in every field of human activity, Venkat has always had good things to say about Sivaji Ganesan, the late Tamil film legend. As a cricketing person, Venkat himself has been quite as versatile as the great actor in the number of roles he has tried out in the sport.
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