India will be privileged to have the one and only Sir Garfield Sobers coming down especially to invite Indian cricket lovers to visit Barbados for the World Cup 2007. India will play a few matches of the Super-8 round in Barbados and of course, the finals is in Barbados where too hopefully, India will be there to bring the cup back home.
The island of Barbados has a population of around 3,00,000 only and this island has produced some of the finest cricketers the world has seen. Sir Garfield Sobers stands tallest of them all and not just in Barbados but in world cricket. There simply hasn’t been a cricketer like Sir Garfield and by the looks of it there’s nobody born yet who will be able to come anywhere near Sir Garfield. Just to be able to breathe the same air, to stand next to him is a privilege. For all his wonderful achievements, Sir Garfield is an extremely down to earth personality, who rarely talks about his performances or his days and seldom if ever bad mouths the current generation, as most ex-players tend to do. Mind you when the current players become former players most of them will do the same. It’s just the nature of the job if one is in the media and there is hardly any thing personal in it. One calls it as one sees it and doing otherwise would not be being true to the job. But back to Sir Garfield. My career owes everything to him, for of all the people, he dropped me when I was 12 in my debut Test innings and it was a regulation catch at second slip. This is where luck plays such an important role in life.
In the previous Test match where Kenia Jayantilal opened the Indian batting, Sir Garfield took an astonishing catch diving to his right and catching the ball inches from the turf. Then in the next Test where I replaced Jayantilal and made my debut, Sir Garfield drops a sitter and lets me get to a half century. Jayantilal never played another Test for India though he was part of the tour squad to England following that tour to the West Indies. Sir Garfield dropped me a couple of times in the next Test too enabling me to get my first Test century. He himself was going through a bad patch and was under tremendous pressure for having gone a couple of months earlier to participate in a cricket event in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) which was then taboo for non-white cricketers. Having dropped me three times, Sir Garfield jokingly came into our dressing room on the fourth day of the Guyana Test and said, “Let me touch you and get some of your luck.” Lo and behold he got a magnificent century. In the next Test he did the same thing and got 170 plus runs and again the last Test he got 100 in the first innings. So much so, that on the crucial last day of the last Test match Ajit Wadekar locked me up in the toilet when Sir Garfield came over to make his customary greeting to the Indian team. And guess what Sir Garfield was out first ball for a duck.
Not for a moment am I suggesting that touching me on the shoulder was the reason why Sir Garfield got those runs but Wadekar being the superstitious kind was having none of it. A few years later Wadekar as captain forced me to continue batting with torn trousers which I wanted to change at the lunch interval. Yes, I went on to get my first century in 3 years.
Sir Garfield was the one who picked me for the Rest of the World team that toured Australia when the Australian government withdrew the invitation to South Africa. During our stay in Melbourne, he took me to the biggest racing event in Australia The Melbourne Cup and then later on that Rest of the World tour introduced me to golf as his regular partners Hylton Ackerman and Tony Greig were otherwise occupied! Traveling has its plusses and minuses and this time its going to be a minus as I will be away when Sir Garfield is in India and will thus miss the chance to catch up with him, shake his hand, admire that gait and respond to that big hearty ‘laugh’ of his. I hope you enjoy your visit to India Sir Garfield, and hope you can keep blessing us with regular visits to this cricket mad country.
The Indian team also travels at the end of the month to the West Indies with not just their cricketing kit but the hopes of millions of cricket lovers. Prayer does play a big role in life and one is confident that the prayers of so many followers will help the Indian team in tight situations. The only captain to win the World Cup for India Kapil Dev is born in January, so is Rahul Dravid so that’s a nice coincidence. It would be terrific if the BCCI invite Kapil Dev and his deputy on that campaign, Mohinder Amarnath to address the boys before they depart and give them the tips that enabled India to win the 1983 World Cup. The President Sharad Pawar is meeting with the team prior to its departure and he needs to take the initiative to invite Kapil and Jimmy to meet with the team. Mohinder was the Man of the Match in the semifinals as well as the finals and Kapil played that extraordinary knock against Zimbabwe to pull India out of trouble. So there’s lots to inspire and encourage the current team who are immensely talented and eminently capable of bringing the cup to the country which is the most passionate one about the game in the world.
All the best Rahul & boys. Go get it!
