Consider this fact: the Indian Spin Quartet of Bishan Singh Bedi, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna, and Srinivas Venkataraghvan captured 853 Test wickets in the decade and a bit that they played together, from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. This compares with the 835 Test wickets that the West Indian Pace Quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft took in the decade and a bit that they played together from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. In other words the Spin Quartet was every bit as lethal, in terms of danger to batsmen’s wickets, if not to limbs, as the Pace Quartet.
The Spin Quartet was a feared force that mowed down opposition both at home and abroad. It didn't matter if the wicket was spin friendly or flat, a green top or a dust bowl. Nor did it matter whether India were bowling first or last. They always believed, and there was plenty of evidence to back up that belief, that they could bowl out any team or defend any reasonable total on any surface.
Each member of the Spin Quartet was very different, yet they worked extremely well as a team to torment the opposition. As Bishan Bedi once said in a TV interview “We all, that is Pras, Chandra, Venky and myself, discussed our mutual problems and helped each other. We took great pride in each others’ triumphs.” This spirit of camaraderie was evident after every dismissal as the successful bowler ran first not to the wicket keeper or the captain, or even the fielder who may have taken the catch, but to his fellow spinners to celebrate a well plotted wicket.
The seniormost member of the Spin Quartet was Erapalli Prasanna, who played his first Test match in 1960-61 against the West Indies as a callow 19 year old. He then spent four years out of cricket completing his engineering degree, at the insistence of his father. It is difficult to return to competitive cricket, let alone Test cricket, after such a long layoff, but in those days before cricketers could earn much money from the game, his father’s advice was sound.
Following his return, Prasanna soon got into his groove and was India’s most successful bowler in an 8-Test tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1967-68, where he took 49 wickets scalping 24 Australians and then 25 New Zealanders in 4 Tests to help Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi lead India to her first overseas series win: a 3-1 defeat of New Zealand. He continued his strong showing against these same teams at home in their return tours in 1969, bamboozling players of spin of the caliber of Ian Chappell and Doug Walters, earning high praise from them when they rated him ahead of West Indian Lance Gibbs as an off-spinner. Prasanna became the quickest Indian to take 100 Test wickets, reaching the milestone in just twenty Tests. He holds the record to this day.
Prasanna next returned to the West Indies in 1970-71 under Ajit Wadekar, but injured himself in a freak accident, when the non-striker stepped on his palm in his haste to get back to his crease as Prasanna bent to pick up the ball on his follow through. This paved the way for Venkataraghavan to come into the team and the rest, as they say, is history. Venkat had a dream run in the West Indies, and then in England in 1971, and was appointed vice-captain as well. Thus Prasanna now had to struggle for a place in the side, because for some reason the Indian selectors never wanted to consistently play the two together, even though their styles were as different as could be.
Prasanna was of shortish height and rotund build. He thus had to rely more on tossing the ball up and was a natural flighter of the ball. His bustling run up after a thoughtful walk back during which, according to Gavaskar, you could almost hear his brain humming with plans to lead batsmen to their doom, led up to a classical side-on action with a full pivot around a firmly planted left foot, imparting vicious spin to the ball. The ball traveled from his hand in a natural loop, and often drifted in the opposite direction to which it would turn upon biting into the turf. He did not bowl the away-goer, or what's called the "doosra" as perfected later by Saqlain Mushtaq and others, but did bowl a drifter that did not turn much.
Prasanna’s greatest joy was to bowl the batsman between bat and pad, or get him caught at mid off, or even caught and bowled, mistiming a drive after being tempted to do so. These classic off-spinner’s dismissals brought him immense satisfaction and his battles with nimble footed batsmen such as Rohan Kanhai, Ian Chappell and Alvin Kallicharan, who danced down the wicket to get at the pitch of the ball, made enthralling watching and provided value for money. A different indication of how much value for money Prasanna and company provided can be seen from old scorecards. It was not unusual to see Indian bowlers bowling 100, sometimes nearly 120, overs in a day’s play. Compared to today's ICC-mandated minimum of 90 overs a day which has also become the de facto maximum, they packed nearly 33% more cricket into a day!
Prasanna achieved his best bowling figures against New Zealand in a return tour in 1976, where despite bowling on green tops so lush, that it was difficult to separate the pitch from the rest of the square, he scuttled the New Zealanders with figures of 8 for 76, leading to Gavaskar’s maiden Test victory as captain when he filled in for an injured Bishan Bedi.
Prasanna’s last hurrah was the visit by the Tony Grieg-led England team to India in 1976-77. He took 18 wickets in four matches at about 21 runs each. Thereafter, Prasanna’s lack of physical conditioning and advancing years meant that he was no longer the bowler he once was and he was flayed mercilessly by the Pakistani batsmen, Zaheer Abbas in particular, on flat pitches during his first visit to Pakistan, which was also to be his last Test series. That he ended up with 189 Test wickets in only 49 matches, despite being in and out of the team and constantly under pressure for his place by fellow off-spinner Srinivas Venkatraghavan, speaks volumes for his ability to persevere in face of adversity and uncertainty. Prasanna has now emerged as an erudite and articulate columnist, and has also been recently drafted along with the rest of the Spin Quartet by the BCCI to brain storm on reviving the art of spin in the land where some of its greatest exponents flourished. One is confident that with a man known affectionately as the “wiley old fox” involved, youngsters can only benefit.
The other off spinner in the Quartet was the tall and lanky Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, or Venkat as he was popularly called. Venkat was the antithesis of Prasanna as a spinner. He was about six feet of wiry build, and did not flight the ball much. Instead, he relied on a flattish trajectory coupled with pinpoint accuracy to tie batsmen down and frustrate them into mistakes. In fact, he had adopted this style in response to competition from Prasanna. As a youngster, Venkat too had excellent loop and flight, but he realized his chances of playing consistently for India depended on him being a different type of bowler than Prasanna, and he adapted to this situation without a public fuss. Another strong point was his excellent fitness which meant that he could bowl unflaggingly for long spells. He also made his presence felt as one of India’s superb close-in catching cordon which gave a cutting edge to its spin attack. Led by Eknath Solkar, this group of catching specialists including Ajit Wadekar, Abid Ali, wicket keeper Farokh Engineer and Venkat himself, surrounded the batsmen like a steel trap. One false move and the trap snapped shut, claiming another victim.
Soon after his exploits against New Zealand, Venkat was selected to tour England in 1967. In a miserable summer for Venkat and for Indian cricket, they lost all three matches tamely to the powerful English team. The one brief glimmer of pride was the heroics of Tiger Pataudi at Headingley. After that, Venkat lost his place in the side to Prasanna when India toured Australia and New Zealand under Pataudi. Though he returned to the team against these same two teams when they toured in 1969, Venkat had to be content to play third spinner to Prasanna and Bedi, managing nonetheless to take 23 wickets in 7 Test matches.
And yet, Venkat was named vice-captain to Wadekar when India toured West Indies in 1970-71. Whether it was this added responsibility, or the security of his position, or just the West Indian conditions, he was India’s most successful bowler when India won a series for the first time in the Caribbean, taking 22 wickets in five matches. He continued as vice-captain when India followed its Caribbean triumph with its first ever series victory in England, where once again Venkat topped the bowling averages with 13 wickets at 26 runs each, even if Chandrasekhar stole the show with his deadly spell at the Oval. But even after these triumphs, Venkat could not secure his place in the side. A poor series against England at home, in 1972-73, saw him being dropped in place of Prasanna, after which he constantly struggled to find a permanent place in the side. Venkat’s last major success, like his first, came against the West Indies, but this time at home. By the time the West Indies led by Alvin Kallicharran, arrived in India in 1978-79, Prasanna had retired, and Venkat was again the main off-spinner. He grabbed 20 wickets for 25 runs each and provided superb support to a new look Indian attack which was now led by pacemen Kapil Dev and Karsan Ghavri. Following this, Venkat finally fulfilled his ambition to lead India when India played in the 1979 World Cup and then in four Tests in England. Venkat was not very successful there, and India suffered the humiliation of a loss to Sri Lanka in the World Cup, then not yet a Test nation. He also lost the series to England, although India nearly made a comeback to get within a few runs of overhauling the 438 run victory target in the final Test at the Oval, before settling for a draw at 429 for 8 as wickets collapsed towards the end.
With 156 Test wickets in 57 Test matches, Venkat retired shortly after that series. Since then, his undying love of the game and extraordinary passion to remain involved has seen him serve cricket in more dimensions than any other person: as player, captain, manager, administrator, selector, columnist, expert television commentator, match referee and umpire. He later joined the ICC’s elite panel of umpires and continues to serve as one of its more accomplished members in matches around the world. In this capacity, Venkat has stood in nearly 70 Tests to date. If there is one person who has spent the most time “out in the middle” in Test matches, watching them evolve first hand over nearly four decades from the mid-1960s to the present, it is the remarkable Srinivas Venkataraghvan.
The fulcrum of the Spin Quartet was undoubtedly the colorfully turbaned Sikh, Bishan Singh Bedi. He was an extrovert, an outgoing personality who naturally emerged as the leader of the Quartet. He also led the India team in 22 Tests as captain.
Making his debut in 1966 against the West Indies at Eden Gardens in Calcutta Bedi soon established himself in the Indian side as a permanent fixture. His simple flowing action that consisted of about four or five paces on tip-toes and a very high orthodox arm action, was so smooth that the famous boast by boxer Muhammad Ali could easily be adapted for him: “I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, what do they call me?... Bedi!” He was of medium height, and was not the swiftest of movers, but what he lacked in natural quickness he made up for with hard work and stamina. He ran several miles each day when not playing, to keep himself fit.
In 1969, three days before the Calcutta Test against the Australians, Bishan Bedi married his Australian born wife Glenith whom he had met on India’s earlier tour to Australia in 1967-68. He then presented his wife a nice wedding gift, scalping a career-best 7-98 with the skill and charm of a true magician. The only resistance came from Ian Chappell, who scored a masterful 99 on a spinning wicket.
Bedi next played a key part in holding the West Indians in check while Venkat ran through them in 1970-71. He followed that performance with a similar role, this time as foil to the mercurial Chandrasekhar and the economical Venkataraghavan as India triumphed in England in 1971. In between this triumph and the home 2-1 victory against England in 1972-73, Bedi along with Farokh Engineer and Sunil Gavaskar, was invited to be part of a World XI to play Australia.
The Australians had been scheduled to go to South Africa, but public opinion in Australia finally caught up with the worldwide revulsion of the Apartheid policies of the South African regime and the tour was cancelled. The world XI was led by Sir Garfield Sobers and apart from the above included fellow West Indian Rohan Kanhai, South African Greame Pollock, Pakistanis Zaheer Abbas and Intikhab Alam, and Englishmen Tony Grieg and Alan Knott. They took on the Australians led by Ian Chappell. It was during this series of matches that Bedi provided a moment of sheer magic in the Sydney “Test”. He dismissed the Chappell brothers off consecutive balls, both bowled. He first lured Ian down the pitch with his teasing length, but beat him in flight to have him bowled. The very next ball to Greg, he bamboozled him with one that Greg played all around and watched in dismay as it spun in and knocked his bails off.
In 1974, during a wet and miserable summer, England got her revenge for the 1971 defeat by India, and humiliated India 3-0, including bowling India out for its all time record low score of 42 at Lords. The misery on the field was compounded by acrimony and controversy off it. First Bedi and skipper Ajit Wadekar had a very ugly and public spat, that soured the mood of the tourists, then the Sudhir Naik, alleged “shoplifting” incident took place, further embarrassing the team, then the Lords debacle occurred, followed by a row at the Indian High Commissioner’s where the Indian team was rudely shown the door after being unavoidably late to a function due to London traffic. Wadekar apologized straight up as he walked in, but the Commissioner perceiving some imagined slight told him and the team to leave. The High Commissioner later relented, and the team was invited back, but the media made light of the incident and quoted Bedi as having said uncharitable things about the High Commissioner. According to Gavaskar, who was a wide-eyed youngster at the time, all he heard Bedi say was “If we had won, even if we came late it would have been no problem, but because we lost, we’ve gotten the stick.” Finally at the end of the tour Bedi was banned by BCCI from the first Test in the next series against the West Indies at home for giving an “unauthorized” interview on British TV after the rest of the Indian team had returned to India.
One would have thought this would have been the ideal moment for one of Bedi’s left arm spinning rivals, Padmakar Shivalkar of Bombay, or Rajinder Goel of Haryana to make their Test debut, but the selectors preferred to bring back Venkataraghavan instead. Bedi returned with a bang in the very next match, and neither of his talented rivals ever got another chance to play a Test match.
In fact, after the exciting series against Clive Lloyd’s West Indians Pataudi quit, and the reigns of captaincy fell into Bedi’s hands. He then led India in 22 Test matches with moderate success both overseas and at home, winning 6 out of the 22. The matches he won, included the famous 4th innings run chase at Port of Spain in Trinidad, as well as two excellent come from behind wins against a Packer depleted Australia, led by Bobby Simpson in 1976-77. In that series, Bedi and Simpson, were charged with upholding the traditional game against the upstart media magnate, Kerry Packer, who had “hijacked” the entire Australian first team, except Jeff Thomson. Thomson, who because of other commercial agreements was barred from joining his partner Lillee, the Chappell brothers, Walters, Marsh, and others in playing for Mr. Packer, was Simpson’s only real strike bowler, though Wayne Clark did provide good seam support. Each match in the series produced a result and all were keenly contested, with Australia emerging in front 3-2 after winning the fifth Test.
Bedi and Chandra bowled superbly in this series and none of the Australians could have ever before encountered anything quite like the guile and skill of the Indian spinners. They tumbled like tenpins, although Peter Toohey showed enough class for first team material, while a young Kim Hughes played some superb shots but kept falling hook, line and sinker to traps laid for him by Bedi. Also in this series, Bedi himself played a couple of good knocks at number 10, nearly taking India to victory while facing down Jeff Thomson in full flight, even cover driving him with lazy elegance. Bedi showed that he was definitely a better batsman than his record indicates, but probably didn’t take it as seriously as his bowling.
Despite this good showing, Bedi’s Waterloo as Captain was fast approaching. He led India on its first tour of Pakistan in nearly two decades in 1978-79. On this tour, the Indian spin trio (Venkat was not chosen) which was beginning to show signs of aging came up against a formidable Pakistani batting line up, including Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal and Javed Miandad, as well as the Mohammad brothers Mushtaq and Sadiq, on flat dusty tracks. The series also saw the emergence of Kapil Dev, with bat and especially with the ball. Bedi compounded the team’s misery in the last Test at Karachi when Pakistan chased 160-odd for victory in only about 25 overs or so. He failed to learn the lesson of the previous Test when Pakistan had successfully chased 128 in about 20 overs in Lahore, and tried to “buy” wickets when all that was needed was economical bowling. He brought himself on when the required run rate was creeping up around 9 runs an over and promptly gave away 17 runs in one over to Imran Khan and Asif Iqbal, sealing India’s fate.
After this debacle, he was sacked as captain and soon retired from the game, with 266 wickets from 67 Tests to his name, the highest wicket taker for India until Kapil Dev broke that record nearly a decade later.
Well read, Bedi has even in retirement not hesitated to express strong opinions on almost any topic related to cricket. With his penchant for shooting from the lip, so unlike his bowling which was all subtlety and guile, he is a journalist’s delight, providing catchy sound bites and throwaway lines that keep the audience titillated though often raising unnecessary controversy and causing needless distraction.
The fourth member of the Spin Quartet was Bhagwat Chandrasekhar. Chandra, as he was affectionately called, was nominally a leg-spinner but in reality was a match winning phenomenon quite literally beyond words. Chandra bowled using his polio weakened right arm, which was really good for little else. He threw, wrote, and did most things left handed. Yet that very right arm paralyzed the world’s best batsmen on many an occasion.
So when Chandra was picked by the Chairman of Selectors, Vijay Merchant, and with the backing of his captain, Ajit Wadekar, for the Indian side to tour England in 1971, it was a bit controversial, as he had not played a Test match for more than three years. But it proved to be a masterstroke. Chandra’s amazing spell of 6-38 at the Oval to bundle out the overconfident Englishmen for 101, setting up India’s maiden victory in England shall remain one of the great days in the history of Indian Test cricket. Chandra seemed to have a special affinity for English batsmen, and he ended up bagging 95 Englishmen, still the record by an Indian against that country. Of those 95 wickets, 35 came in one five match series against Tony Lewis’ team in 1972-73. This is still the record for most wickets taken by any Indian bowler in any Test series.
In the first match at the Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi in 1972, Chandra bamboozled almost the entire English side and ended up with 8 for 79, his best figures, though India still contrived to lose the match. However in the next two matches at Calcutta and Madras he snared another 15 wickets and bowled India to victory in consecutive Tests, giving India the series 2-1, as the last two Tests were drawn. Of the 24 wickets Chandra took in the first three Tests no less than seven were to catches by Eknath Solkar. Surely a significant percentage of these victims were the result of batsmen being unnerved by the entire stadium, which in the case of Eden Gardens Calcutta was 100,000 strong, joining in a deafening chorus of “Booooowwwlleed” each time Chandra came into bowl.
But Chandra did not need the advantage of home crowds or home wickets to be effective. In 1975-76 he snared 21 West Indian wickets, including the great Vivian Richards on more than one occasion, as well as Clive Lloyd and Alvin Kallicharran in the Port of Spain thriller where India scored 406 in the 4th innings to win from behind. He followed this up with 29 wickets against Bobby Simpson’s Australians in Australia, and was the only relatively successful Indian spinner against the Pakistani batting assault in 1978-79. With eight five wicket in an innings hauls each in India and abroad, Chandra was truly a spinner for all occasions and locations.
The secret of his success, Chandra once confessed, was that even he himself didn’t often know what he was going to bowl, so how could the batsman? And the batsman had to contend with not two, or three, but at least six completely different types of balls, with each having many variations. Off a smoothly accelerating run up of about a dozen paces, Chandra whirled his right arm around with a high action that saw his shirt sleeves regularly brush his right ear. Chandra sent down mostly medium-fast googlies that often turned prodigiously, well disguised top-spinners and flippers occasionally, a regular leg break once in a while, and a fast in-swinging yorker sparingly. He had one more delivery in his bag of tricks that he used very, very infrequently, as a surprise weapon: a genuine bouncer, bowled at a pace that would do a fast bowler proud! In fact it was Vivian Richards, his “bunny" (and very few bowlers could claim Richards as their “bunny”) who once remarked about Chandra, “Maaan, his fast one is faster than Thommo’s!!!”
Chandra’s batting however, was purely in the rabbit category. He is one of those rare bowlers who have taken more wickets (242) than scored runs (167) in a Test career, and he also held the record for most ducks scored, for a long time, until Courtney Walsh who played about double Chandra’s 58 Tests, managed to edge him out. And yet Chandra took his batting seriously, especially when the team needed him. For example in the Test at Madras in 1975 when Andy Roberts was demolishing the Indian batting line up while Gundappa Viswanath stood tall with his magnificent 97 not out, Chandra gave him company for several overs, as Vishy got closer and closer to the three figure mark. Finally Roberts got one fast and straight and all Chandra could do was get his bat in the way to prevent it from crashing into his stumps. However the ball flew to Lloyd in the slips and he made no mistake. As the players walked in Chandra was nearly in tears, while Vishy was smiling. That is how much of a team man Chandra was. Even when discussing his personal pinnacle, his magical 6-38 at the Oval, with Sunil Gavaskar on Sunny’s TV show, this trait was evident, as he has said to Sunny that while he was pleased with his personal performance, what really mattered and what he was most bothered about was whether the Indian batsmen would get the 170 odd they needed for victory. When they did, Chandra’s joy knew no bounds, and he revealed with enthusiasm, “I have the ball from that match, and a stump also.”
Because of his simplicity and modesty, Chandra was universally liked by teammates and opponents alike. In 1977-78 the Australian team presented him a bat with a hole in the blade to recognize his prowess with the bat. He was amused, and accepted it in the right spirit. Chandra was never bothered with what others did, said or thought, he was only concerned about his team doing well and personally playing the game in the right spirit. So once he retired Chandra did not take to commentary, umpiring, or coaching like others, but instead retired to domesticity and family. It was indeed a pity that in retirement he suffered another unfortunate motor accident and lost the use of his legs. The spontaneous public appeal to fund his medical expenses that Tony Greig implemented, when he heard of Chandra’s financial hardships, speaks volumes of the affection fellow players, teammates, opponents, and fans everywhere have for him.
Gaurang
© Indian Cricket Fever
Prasanna: Making the ball talk
Cricinfo database on Erapalli Prasanna
Cricinfo database on Srinivas Venkataraghavan
Cricinfo database on Bishan Singh Bedi
Cricinfo database on Bhagwat Chandrasekhar
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