Looking at the tremendous way the ICC World team have gelled and are having a great time in the few days that they have been together, brings back memories of my tour to Australia as a member of the Rest of the World side in 1971-72.
It was the happiest of my tours, for inspite of it being my first year in international cricket and the presence of some really big names in the game then, like the captain Garry Sobers and Rohan Kanhai, to name just two, it was a trip full of great fun.
The Sunday Club, which I then tried to make a part of an Indian team when I became captain, was first seen on the Rest of the World trip in 1971. It was the brainchild of Norman Gifford and it became an evening where players let their hair down — in those days most had plenty of hair — and it helped not only to bring the players together but also removed any barriers there may have been between seniors and juniors in the team. There were apart from Gifford some other really funny guys on the team like Richard Hutton, son of the famous Len Hutton and with him going on in his typical British dry humor a quip was never too far away.
It was also the time when India and Pakistan went to war and yet there was hardly any tension between the Indian players and Pakistani players. If anything, the one abiding memory is that of the team vice captain Intikhab Alam making sure that any chits passed on to him by the owner of a Pakistani restaurant, which we used to frequent, being torn off unopened. Those chits contained notes on what was happening in the war from whatever the restaurant owner was gleaning from the radio, which we weren’t able to access at all. That mate-ship and camaraderie are still there and it’s always a pleasure to meet up with any of that team even after all these years. It was the only opportunity for someone like Hylton Ackerman and the Pollock brothers to show their talent to the world, for South Africa were ostracized by the sporting world by then, for their reprehensive apartheid policy.
The other memorable tours that I have been a part of were the 1977-78 Indian tour of Australia under Bishen Singh Bedi. The captain himself was always game for a laugh and so it was easy to have the guys coming up with a joke a day. The funny guys in that team were Ashok Mankad, Madan Lal and of course G.R. Vishwanath who would quietly say something that would bring the house down. The manager of the team, Polly Umrigar, had a hard time to get the guys to be serious, though of course when the game was on, everybody was dead serious playing for India. The 1980-81 tour to Australia was also great fun with the Sunday Club being introduced again after a gap and Sandeep Patil with his henchman, Karsan Ghavri and with permanent bartender, Bharath Reddy, the club meetings were sometimes rowdy but almost always sidesplitting. With more media presence beginning in the early 80s, these Sunday clubs stopped altogether and I believe that it has taken away a great part of team bonding that is so essential when one is away from one’s country. It also, in the Indian team’s context, helps to break down barriers between the seniors and the juniors and puts the newcomers at ease a lot faster than otherwise. Then the 1987 world team that played in the MCC bicentenary game also was an enjoyable tour though it was only for three weeks or so. By that time, there was a bit of sledging in cricket and so guys who had slagged off each other were a bit wary of each other but by the end of the tour were friends and realized that not all the sledgers were bad after all.
In this present team, there is Muralitharan and Chris Gayle who are naturally funny and with Makhaya Ntini coming up with his own brand of humor, there’s plenty of laughter around. Flintoff brings the British humor, which is understated and there’s hardly any hang-ups in the team, which is full of some of the biggest names in world cricket today. The bonding has been terrific and credit must go to the Manger, Goolam Rajah as well as the coach and the skipper Shaun Pollock who has a mischievous streak in him too. Obviously winning makes a big difference and if the world team manage to come back and win the One-Day series then it will mean more jokes and more laughs in the dressing room and team meetings. As of press time, the world team are one down with two to go and the players playing in the Super Test will be joining the team for the second One-dayer, so there could be some more funny men there too.
The World team concept is a good one, for there’s no doubt it makes for better understanding of different temperaments and different cricketing cultures and when these players go back to play for their countries, they will tell their teammates that some of the players that they had misgivings about are in fact quite nice guys and so they should not get upset. This understanding will not make cricket any less intense but will definitely help take away some of the acrimony that is there in world cricket and make it a game that can be played very hard and fair and with a smile or two too.
