Ajit Wadekar: ‘One of the finest’ Cricketer, Captain and a gentleman

During India's finest hour in England in the summer of 1971, when Ajit Wadekar's boys were carrying out the task of chasing 173-run target, and successfully accomplishing it to create history, the captain had fallen asleep at The Oval dressing room.

He had to be woken up by the England cricket manager, the legendary Ken Barrington with the words, “It's all over. The match is yours. They'll want you up there on the balcony.”

The champagne flowed endlessly and Wadekar became the first Indian captain with two back-to-back overseas Test series win, having led India to a 1-0 win the five-match series in the West Indies earlier that year, a series in which Sunil Gavaskar made his international debut with a record 774 runs.

In as much as the 1971 England tour was India's and Wadekar's, high, the country's next overseas series, a three-match series, also in the Old Blighty three years later saw the stylish left-hander hit a low. As a captain he saw India suffer 0-3 loss in the three-Test series, bringing an end to a glorious 37-Test career that saw him score 2,113 runs and average 31.07 with only one century and 14 half-centuries.
Wadekar was also one of the finest slip catchers.

Wadekar will, forever be remembered for leading the country to its first overseas wins in the West Indies and England, and has often overshadowed the 3-1 Test series win under Tiger Pataudi in New Zealand, the nation's first rubber triumph outside.
Wadekar, who succeeded Pataudi as captain and later passed the baton back to him, had a solid hand in India's first overseas triumph, in Dunedin when he top-scored in both the innings with 80 and 71 as India won by 5 wickets, ending India's 17 straight overseas Test defeats.

It was in that series that Wadekar scored his lone Test century – 143 in Wellington, the only three-figure score in the match that India won by 8 wickets.
For the kind of grooming Wadekar had in his cricketing career, right from his college (Elphinstone College and later Ruia College) days — scoring big tons and continuing that into the Ranji Trophy scene, it came as a shock that out of Wadekar's 36 first-class centuries, only one has come in Tests.

Wadekar was loved by one and all. The youngsters in his team looked up to him for inspiration and encouragement, the biggest beneficiary of them being Sunil Gavaskar.
It is well-known that Wadekar knew of his appointment as India captain while returning from shopping for his new flat on a wintry December evening when a handful of journalists and well-wishers gave him the news. Wadekar did not have the support of all the selectors, and was elected captain with the chairman Vijay Merchant's casting vote.

In the foreword to the book 'Ajit Wadekar, My Cricketing Years', published in 1973, Merchant wrote: “When he was further informed that it was by the Chairman's casting vote that he was appointed captain, it made him feel very sad because as a new captain taking an Indian team on tour for the first time, he would have liked to have 100 per cent support of the selectors – not merely 50 per cent.”
Wadekar used his captain's powers to include some of the players from Bombay whom he trusted on for support and performance. He received enormous support from a senior in Dilip Sardesai, who also revived his career in the West Indies, and came to be known as the Renaissance Man of Indian cricket.

One of Wadekar's popular anecdotes from that West Indies trip is locking Gavaskar in the toilet so as to keep him away from the rival captain Garry Sobers.
Wadekar said at one of the Cricket Club of India's Legends Club meeting in his typical story-telling fashion, captivating the audience: “Every morning of the Tests, Sobers would come to our dressing room, say hello to the team and touched Sunil for luck as he was going through a lean patch. He would say, 'let me touch Sunny for luck, maan' and would go on to score a century.

“In the fifth Test in Trinidad, Sobers came to our dressing room and talked to us. By then, I had locked Sunil, who had to pad up to resume his innings, in the toilet. Sobers came, spoke for a couple of minutes and went back without touching Sunil. Sunil told me, 'so what if he did not touch me in the dressing room, he could touch me on the ground before batting'. My reply to him was, 'No, no, he gets lucky by touching you in the dressing room'. Sobers, that day, was bowled for a first ball duck by Abid Ali!”
Sobers, in his autobiography 'Sobers – Twenty Years at the Top' rated Wadekar as the “sharpest” among rival captains.

Wadekar may have been India's first captain to win overseas Tests in the West Indies and England, but he was a skipper who adopted safety-first approach. His players have said at different platforms that Wadekar first played with the mindset of drawing the Test, and if the opportunities to win arose, he went for the kill.
He played to the team's strengths, which was spin, and was well served by the spin quartet of BS Chandrasekhar, EAS Prasanna, Bishan Singh Bedi and Srinivas Venkataraghavan.

In his second stint with the Indian team, as a coach, Wadekar forged a successful partnership with captain Mohammad Azharuddin, played Tests with spinners at home and emerged victorious.
Wadekar gave his all for the welfare of Indian cricket, and particularly Mumbai cricket. Until his last breath, he was serving the Mumbai Cricket Association as chairman of its Cricket Improvement Committee, though health did not permit him to attend some of the last few meetings.

Such has been Wadekar's persona that he did not let others know more about his illness in the recent times, and still attended some social gatherings, though he could not hide the fact that he was becoming weak.
Wadekar brilliant at academics and had an engineering career awaiting him, took to cricket late in his life and made the most of the opportunities, chalking out some historic wins along the way as a captain. He climbed high in his banking career after his playing days, inspiring a whole lot of younger generation.

During his stint at India's cricket manager (as the coach was called in those days) in the early 1990s and then as chairman of selectors, Wadekar was an institution by himself. Not just in Mumbai, but in Indian cricket.
Contrary to many reports that Wadekar succumbed to cancer, his brother Ashok confirmed to DNA that his 77-year-old sibling went to sleep for one final time on Wednesday night due to heart attack, never to wake up again.

And, there was no Barrington this time to whisper “It's all over” in his ears.