I definitely fancy myself on the spinners wicket and the flat wicket. The seamers pitch, I am confident I can bag a draw as it would be a close game and if I needed to bat it out, I am confident I can do that. Here is a piece on Amaranth for anyone that is interested:
One almost lost count of the number of times he got hit, frequently on the head and with near fatal consequences. Yet, down the line he was hailed as the best player of fast bowling. He fearlessly hooked the fastest West Indian bowlers in their backyard, scoring nearly 600 runs in five Caribbean Tests at 66.44. During that phase,
Sunil Gavaskar even proclaimed him as the best batsman of the world. And within a year he came back to India to score one solitary run against the same set of bowlers in six innings, averaging 0.16. He rose like again like a phoenix, as he had done throughout his career, almost recapturing his full glory. And yet again, in his final series in 1987-88, against the same old West Indian foes, he was little more than an abject embarrassment to himself and his fans.
Amarnath is almost synonymous in Indian cricket with guts and grit, spirit and spunk. He is also the face that appears with
Kapil Dev, holding aloft the Prudential Cup — the tournament that changed Indian cricket forever. And he played a pivotal part in that triumph, with Man of the Match awards in both the semi-final and the final.
In those days, when television had just started to beam live pictures of Test matches in Pakistan and the World Cup in England, Amarnath captured the imagination of the country when he frequently ended up as the last man standing. The nation watched spellbound as he held firm in Pakistan against a rampaging Imran Khan. They revelled and rejoiced as he carried India to the epochal victory in the World Cup final. In between filtered in the news of his heroic exploits on the fiery wickets of West Indies against four fearsome bowlers. It was rumoured that he got hit, washed blood from his shirt and resumed his innings. Some said he hit the first ball that he faced after resumption for six. The legend grew.
However, the Amarnath Indians saw at home after that was often infuriatingly unsuccessful — often mystifyingly so. He never quite carried the glamour of his 1982-83 period to the later days — and by then the focus of the nation had once again shifted to the saga of Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev.
Ups and downs and comebacks
Even now, if one is asked to recall Amarnath’s career, those two series in Pakistan and West Indies stand out — along with the
tour de force in the World Cup. The memories of a 19-year career often bafflingly get restricted to one golden season and a half. And of course, he is also remembered as the Frank Sinatra of cricket — the master of comebacks. Every time he was ousted from the team, he came back to prove himself at the top level over and over again. That added to his aura, his lore.
In popular Indian methods of analysis, bravado followed by frequent axing in turn followed by triumphant returns hint at serial victimisation. This perception is enhanced by the family heirloom of controversy, where the sins against his father, the great Lala Amarnath, are well remembered. Did the son also suffer due to the conflicts endured and enhanced by the father? It is easy enough to fall prey to this belief. And then, of course, there was the parting shot fired by Mohinder Amarnath himself, when in a hasty statement he branded the selectors a “bunch of jokers”. In those pre-internet days, few would check to see that he had scored 56 runs at 11.20 in his last series against the West Indies, and had one 50 and an average of 23 in the last 14 innings encompassing nine Tests.
Whether he was victimised or not may not be that easy to answer. In the serpentine paths of Indian cricket, there are too many blind alleys. But as we trace his career we may be able to see that the unique twists and turns of Amarnath’s career were dictated much by his own sinusoidal periods of near-greatness and weird capitulations than by whims of the wise men on the panel.
It was more as a seamer who could bat that he travelled to the most ridiculously planned ‘twin-tour’ covering two extremities of the world. Brother Surinder scored a century on debut at Auckland. Amarnath batted decently down the order, starting with a valiant 64. He was handy with the ball too. At Christchurch in the second Test, he finished with career-best figures of 4 for 63, while Madan Lal accounted for five more batsmen — pace bowlers picking up nine of the 10 wickets was rare in those pre-Kapil Dev days.
However, by this time, he was quickly discovering that batting was his forte. His bowling, military medium at best, would become gentler and gentler till turning almost apologetic by the 80s.
It was the West Indian leg of the tour that witnessed the first chapter of Amaranth’s bravura. Pushed up the order to No 3, he hit a nonchalant 85 in the historic triumph at Port of Spain when India chased down over 400 runs in the fourth innings. And then he counter-attacked with fearless daring against the
near bodyline bowling of Michael Holding and Wayne Daniel at Jamaica, hitting three sixes in his 60 as India called off their innings at 97 in the midst of a bloodbath.
After a disappointing series against England in 1976-77 at home, he went to Australia the following season to earn a name as India’s best bat after Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath. He amassed 445 runs in five Tests, including 90 and 100 on a pacy Perth rectangle against an attack spearheaded by Jeff Thomson. During his Perth knocks, he hooked with gay abandon, and was hit so painfully on the jaw by Thomson and Sam Gannon that he could eat only ice-cream during lunch.
He ended the series with a valiant 86 at Adelaide as India tried to chase down 493 and lost by 47 runs to be defeated 3-2 in the series. True, most of the Australian stars were away in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, but the Indian performance was heart-warming. Amarnath stood out as the most promising batsman of the new generation.
And then he started getting hit.
Imran Khan struck him in Pakistan, knocking him unconscious with a furious bouncer that had Mushtaq Mohammad rushing up with morbid concern. When Kim Hughes’s Australians visited India in late 1979, Amarnath walked out to bat in Bombay wearing Sola topee to counter the pacemen. It was as if the shadow of Lala Amarnath had emerged yet again, under the same headgear worn a generation back. Amarnath’s obstinacy in refusing to wear the helmet in spite of this alarming succession of head blows was unfathomable, and can perhaps be linked to the censure of his father that followed each injury. In Bombay, he played the hook off Rodney Hogg, missed and fell in a heap on the stumps. This time, it looked curtains for him.
It was discovered that the blow by Hadlee had affected his eye-sight, and for a temporary period he had to wear eye-glasses. But, the dismal results against England and Australia meant that it would be a while before the Indian selectors would consider him again. By the end of the 1979-80 season, Dilip Vengsarkar had settled down at one drop, Sandeep Patil and Yashpal Sharma had made their respective debuts. Amarnath was left in the wilderness. He did not make it to the team for Australia and New Zealand in 1980-81, and missed the Tests against England at home in 1981-82 and during India’s return tour in the summer of 1982.
That same season, Amarnath was playing in the Lancashire League for Crompton after four seasons with Lowerhouse. All the while, he was busy working on a new stance, chest open, two-eyed, crouching, in line with Ken Barrington. Just before going to England he had scored 185 against Karnataka, helping Delhi overcome the mammoth 705 run first innings total set by the southern state. When the next season started he took North Zone to the Duleep Trophy title scoring 207 against East Zone and following it up with 80 and 67 not out against West Zone in the final. By the time he scored 127 in the Irani Trophy, his claims could not be ignored any longer. He was recalled when India toured Pakistan in late 1982.
