The unpretentious precursor of T20

Camera? Cigarettes?” The volunteer was terse and rude while barking those questions at me. He then proceeded to frisk me as if convinced I was a security threat. Disappointed, he waved me on with apparent contempt. This was the scene before I entered the hospitality box area in the MAC Stadium to watch the CSK versus RCB match last week. Once inside, I was treated like royalty, starting with the affixing of the magic bracelet that would entitle me to unlimited gourmet delights all evening. My boxmates — all strangers to me expect the friend who accompanied me — were obviously having a party and the cricket was incidental.

Smartly attired servitors kept thrusting all manner of goodies at you, from cocktail idlis to chicken tikka. The ground below was bathed in a bright golden light, the noise level astronomically high, and the players resembled demigods handcrafted by the supergods of IPL to look — and act — like a million bucks. The match itself fluctuated between one possible result and the opposite, and with a thrilling last ball finish, it gave us at least a fraction of our money’s worth — in my case a fraction of the Rs6000 my friend had paid for each ticket.

This Chepauk that looked like a brilliantly lit, manicured paradise on earth, so completely divorced from the dust and heat and power cuts of life outside, is the most recent of its numerous avatars in my own lifetime. I caught my first glimpse of it as a spectator in January 1967, when Test cricket returned to its hallowed turf a day after matinee idol MG Ramachandran was shot by screen villain MR Radha.

(He was hovering between life and death, and the match was in danger of being called off, but the future chief minister survived his gunshot wounds). And what a return it turned out to be! The temporary stands (the stadium was not yet even a glimmer in MA Chidambaram’s eye) were packed to the rafters when Farrokh Engineer nearly pulled off the incredible feat of a hundred before lunch on the first morning.

A new spin trio — Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrasekhar — was launched, and we saw Sir Garfield Sobers in his pomp, playing two great knocks, one swashbuckling and another dourly match-saving. We witnessed the unveiling of ‘Super Cat’ Clive Lloyd, wielding a bludgeon for a bat and prowling in the covers with feline menace. We watched incredulously as desperate fireworks erupted from two borderline candidates for the England tour — Ajit Wadekar and V Subramanyam, the first all  finesse and the other sheer brute power. It was one of the most exciting Test matches to end in a draw!

As a player, I was already familiar with Chepauk. I had played a few local games there when the ground was a green oasis in the heart of sun-scorched Madras, surrounded by trees more than a century old, the pitches were sporting wickets, and the outfield was a dream for fielders who had never before dared to dive on the gravelly, unkempt grounds it was their lot to play their cricket on elsewhere. The old pavilion with its tiled roof and red brick walls was as English as the members of the Madras Cricket Club that housed it—their colonial hangover ensured that they remained staunchly so in their behaviour though no English blood ran in their veins. 

The crowd that came to watch cricket at Chepauk then was a far cry from today’s westernized, sophisticated audience that knows its strike rates and economy rates, net run rates and impact indexes, wears its heart on its sleeves and its loyalties on its T-shirts. Most of the spectators packed their puliyodarai and tayir sadam for lunch, tucked up their veshtis knee-high and marched from bus stop to ground, umbrella in hand, to loll under the trees all day long.

In domestic cricket, the fastest bowler they got to see was often BS Chandrasekhar, the leg spinner, while sixers were as rare as miniskirts and Rolls Royces. Not only was the reverse sweep still in the distant future, even the orthodox sweep was welcomed with glee by the spinners of the day, who knew they would get their man sooner or later if he persisted with playing that ugly shot!

But Madras had its own brand of instant cricket — the Sport and Pastime Trophy — a 30-over slam-bang affair between business houses that drew huge crowds. With no fielding circles and no restriction on the number of overs per bowler (these were introduced later), the format encouraged teams to pick specialist bowlers who could restrict and specialist batsmen who could indulge in spectacular counter-attack. If ever there was a defining moment when batting changed course from its proper old terrestrial traffic to the aerial route, it was when this unpretentious precursor of T20 was making local waves.

The final of that tournament was often played at the nearby Marina ground whose low compound wall made the hottest day literally a breeze for both the players and the spectators thronging the ground in their thousands, spilling over to the pedestrian sidewalk of the Beach Road. There were no floodlights, no bugles, no cheerleaders, and no match referees, but the joy and intoxication of a good run chase were as palpable as the best of today’s high profile events.

Of banter and wisecracks there was no shortage, with some rare characters providing comic relief in the tensest of moments. One of them was the idiosyncratic Test leg spinner VV Kumar, who once caught an umpire literally napping, waking him up with a loud appeal for leg before. “Told you not to stuff yourself at lunch,” he snapped at the hapless umpire. Two balls later, he casually queried, “What about this one?”, with the ball clearly missing the leg stump. The chastened umpire had no hesitation in lifting his finger this time.

The author, a prominent off-spinner in the 1970s, now writes on cricket and music besides editing Sruti, a leading monthly magazine from Chennai devoted to the performing arts.