Cricket in College
by Abimanyu Singh

During the fifties, sixties and seventies cricket and College were more or less, rather more than less, I suspect, synonymous. Even mediocre cricketers like me, who secured a permanent place in the exalted college team only in my third year, strutted about the corridors with a distinct air of superiority and an unmistakble swagger. Mr. Pierson, an English tutor who wore a white floppy hat, often sat on the side on his umpiring chair and muttered advice which was mostly inaudible and laced with limericks which had little to do with the technique of cricket. Dr. Sudhir Kumar Bose, the philosophy don who was incharge of cricket and knew all the College greats since the fifties, was too aloof to be consulted about our trivial concerns about bat and ball! The only words of encouragement I received from him were in my fifth year of College after scoring a breezy fifty against Roshanara Club. He told me that at last I appeared to be getting my timing right!

We had an interesting experience with the College grounds during our stay. For years the grounds were located near Kashmiri Gate. Unlike lesser Colleges, St. Stephen's did not deem it fit to provide grounds in its campus on the premise that those students who were genuinely interested in sports would go to the grounds wherever they were situated. It is a tribute to the determination and talent of our cricketers that they made the transition from the matting pitch of the practice ground to the turf wickets of the University ground, where the Inter-College tournaments were played, and yet beat the best teams with regularity. The authorities had not visualized that the hallowed grounds would be acquired by the Delhi Administration for expansion of the Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT) in the late sixties. And so it was in our second year that the bulldozers arrived and we had to say good bye to the ground that had produced so many champions. For the next two years or so we practiced at the Ferozshah Kotla grounds by when the new grounds at Mori Gate were ready. Though reaching the grounds daily became quite an ordeal, there were other compensations. The most treasured being the opportunity to watch the great Bishen Singh Bedi bowl at the nets after his successful Test debut against Australia and practicing with the Indian Captain Nawab of Pataudi after a series against South Africa was cancelled.

It may surprise many who have grown up on a diet of one day cricket that upto 1969 the inter-College finals were played over several days under the play-to-finish format. In my first year the finals concluded around lunchtime on the seventh day with St. Stephen's scoring 360 runs to win by one wicket. Thousands of spectators thronged to the University ground on all seven days. (One of the most avid watchers those days was Marsh Neil Malhotra who later happened to marry a gentleman called Sunil Gavaskar).

Another memorable match for me personally, was the tense and decisive final against Hindu in 1971-72. Their ace batsman Arvind Prasad was negotiating a tight spell of bowling as their team struggled to match our first innings total. He was declared out - bowled as the ball missed his off stump by a whisker and ricocheted on to the stumps off my wicket keeping pads. I immediately pointed this out to the umpire and the non-striker confirmed my version. The umpire reversed his decision and recalled the batsman just before he disappeared into the pavilion. Meanwhile the captain and a few other close-in fielders realised what was happening and were extremely upset at my arbitrary decision that could cost us the match. At tea, I was surrounded and thoroughly upbraided for my foolishness. The crowd concluded that I had been upto some mischief which was detected and rectified by an alert umpire, and booed and hooted me roundly. The hostile atmosphere reduced me to tears. I compounded my misery by dropping the other batsman, another star performer, in the over after tea. There was pindrop silence from the team: a traitor who had betrayed the cause!

As luck would have it the batsman in question went on to score a hundred and yet we managed to win the match in another nailbiting finish. It was only after a former college captain writing for the Times of India lauded my action that a few people began empathising with me. Ironically 29 years after it occurred, it is this single action of recalling the Hindu batsman that most people remember me by. I cannot remember the number of times I have been accosted in the College corridors by Hala Sahib, Amin Sahib and Mr. Ranjit Bhatia when I happened to be visiting and introduced to students as the man who displayed exemplary sportsmanship on the cricket field. All the chances I had missed behind the stumps were forgiven and the runs not scored forgotten! Though occasionally I can't help wondering if it would be the same had we lost that match!

Abhimanyu Singh was Wicket-keeper for the College side in the early 70s and is now in the civil service and an educationist.