A tiger in the cricketing field
Pallab Bhattacharya recommends a work on Pataudi
Mansur Ali Khan to millions of cricket fans. Or 'Tiger Pataudi' to his close friends. The very name had conjured up a legend on the cricket field in the 1950s and 1960s and the image of a stylish cricketer who was a man of few words letting his batting and electrifying fielding do the talking. Pataudi was India's youngest cricket captain catapulted to the post somewhat by circumstances (serious head injury to the then captain Nari Contractor during a tour of the West Indies), married actress Sharmila Tagore and fathered three children, two of whom rose to become Bollywood starsSaif Ali Khan and Soha Ali Khan. While many cricketers have written about their own lives and playing careers, Pataudi did not choose to do so. And the reason for not doing so, according to his daughter Soha Ali Khan, is somewhat enigmatic. According to Soha, she would often ask her father if he was going to write his autobiography and the mysterious answer from him would be, “The truth can never be told and I will not lie.†Given that fact, Harper Collins rightly decided to bring out the book, Pataudi: The Nawab of Cricket, a 186-page book containing articles on the late cricketer by cricketers like Farokh Engineer, Sunil Gavaskar, Abbas Ali Baig, Bishan Singh Bedi, Rahul Dravid, Ian Chappell, Ted Dexter and Mike Brearley, cricket writers like Robin Marlar, John Woodcock, N Ram and Suresh Menon and film personalities like Naseeruddin Shah, Sharmila Tagore (in her Foreword), Soha Ali Khan and her sister Saba. Apart from analysing Pataudi's cricketing skills, the book also gives us glimpses into some aspects of his personal life, like his fear of travelling in a plane, love for music and dance, indulging in pranks with team members, frugality and, as Sharmila Tagore tells us in the Foreword, the only Bengali sentence Pataudi learnt to say is “tumi jodi poneroh minute-er moddhey toiri naa howe, taholey kintu ami chole jaboâ€, reflecting his virtue of punctuality. The articles by Pataudi's contemporary cricketers and cricket writers tell us about his positive approach to the game, his aggressive captaincy which gave the Indian team for the first time the faith that they could be world-beaters, his extraordinary fielding in the cover, his audacious lofted strokes over the infield that had raised the eyebrows of technique puritans and his attacking batting. Suresh Menon, for instance, writes that an English cricketer-commentator-writer had once told him that “If Tiger had not lost his eye (in a car accident in England), he would have been in the Bradman classâ€. Tony Lewis, the former England captain, says, “In a way, Tiger was the Denis Compton of Indian cricketthe first cricketing superstar in India whose appeal involved so heady a mix of brilliance, charm and charisma.†Dwelling on Pataudi as a man, Sunil Gavaskar gives us some interesting nuggets about Pataudi the man who was scared of flying and Bedi who says Pataudi was a “practical joker who prepared his pranks elaboratelyâ€, Bedi also says that Pataudi acknowledged that “the two people who influenced him were Sir Frank Worrell (of West Indies) and Richie Benaud (of Australia).†The book will particularly help present-day cricketers and cricket enthusiasts in knowing about Pataudi who, according to Bedi, “was the rarest of rare phenomena in Indian cricket with few, if any, equals in world cricketâ€. Pallab Bhattacharya, a senior journalist based in New Delhi, writes for The Daily Star.
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