Bishan Singh Bedi: The Most Incurable Cricket Romantic

(Note: Today is the legend Bishan Singh Bedi’s 78th birth anniversary. Sharing a piece on him that I wrote for a commemorative volume that was published around his 75th birthday in 2021)

Bishan Singh Bedi has always loved to pose anyone a challenge or two. You just have to access some videos on YouTube to see how he did that in the days when he unfurled his art with left-arm spin bowling. Indeed, it is easy to visualise how much he enjoyed that and the questions he asked of batsmen at the other end of the pitch all those years ago.

Mention Bedi and many images and words caress our minds like waves would a beach. Poetry in Motion. The economy of action. Sardar of Spin. The sight of reputed batsmen being beaten in the air and off the pitch. Passionate custodian of the Art. The hustling pace of the armer delivered with no visible change in bowling action. Leader of Men. Outspoken thinker.

Now, as he turns 75, it is just as hard to think of anything new to all the wonderful things that have been said and written about Bishan Singh Bedi – or Paaji, as the younger generation calls him – in his playing days and long after. But then, he has always encouraged us to pick the gauntlet up, take the learnings, assimilate them and share them.

The only Test in which I watched him bowl was a rained-off but dramatic draw against New Zealand in Hyderabad way back in 1969. To be honest, the strongest memories from that game are the pair that my hero ML Jaisimha got and the sight of New Zealand players, eager to wrap up a series-clinching win, joining the ground-staff in mopping up operations.

An earlier generation of writers were the fortunate ones, watching him bowl and describing him. As indeed, that generation of batsmen from around the world who were also envious of his team-mates as they did not have to play him (and his mates, Erapalli Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar and S Venkataraghavan). 

And, since his retirement just before the advent of colour television in India, not a few have benefit from his knowledge, so immense that Anil Kumble called him a university on the game. I have been privileged I am among the beneficiaries of his affection and penchant to share his beliefs and philosophies of life, not just cricket. 

Even before I moved from Hyderabad to Delhi in 1992, to try and make a mark in the world of sports journalism, I knew that he had galvanised Delhi and North Zone cricket as nobody else had done before him. But the enormity of his impact, felt many years after he hung up his spikes, became clearer within a few weeks of my shift to the Capital.

It is a pretty well-known fact that Paaji spends time with anybody who is interested in learning the art of spin bowling, the values of the game and life at large. Why only learn? Anybody who is curious about his chosen art is always welcome to hear his point of view. He opens up his knowledge and spreads the gospel of spin bowling in particular and cricket in general. 

In fact, he sees it as his sacred duty. 

Many an overseas spinner has benefited from this wonderful nature of his. Daniel Vettori, Monty Panesar, Shane Warne and Jason Krejza are some names that spring readily to the mind as having benefit from intense conversations with him. There is always a takeaway, a nugget, a tip, for them from such conversations. 

It was not long after he retired from sport that he made the Pakistan spin bowlers Tauseef Ahmed and Iqbal Qasim realise that on a diabolical M. Chinnaswamy Stadium track in Bangalore, they did not need to impart as much spin on the cricket ball as they would have to on a normal pitch.

On a pitch that assisted spin bowlers, he shared the important tip that they just needed to bowl in the right areas without imparting much spin and let the pitch dictate the course of action off the ball. His simple advice, one that was perhaps lost on the Indian bowlers, was that the spinners did not have to try anything beyond showcasing their normal stuff.

It is not as if he did not want to spend time with Indian spin bowlers. I remember a time in the last 90s when he told me to ask a particular spinner to spend six weeks with him in his home, Cricket Abode. “I will get him to understand to use his hips better so that he can be a more effective spin bowler,” he said. It is another matter that the offer was never taken up.

Then again, to think of his only as a spin bowling philosopher would be to undermine his respect for the game at large. He has a strong, nay, a very strong, opinion on everything cricket, holding the traditions dear to his heart and being a veritable defender of the noble game as he knows it. 

“Cricket is called the Gentleman’s game for a reason. And when something is not right, they say ‘It’s not cricket!’ rather than “It’s not football!’ or ‘It’s not hockey!’ We are emboldened to uphold this,” he has told me often, putting forth a very strong case for cricket to be seen as a metaphor for life.

We saw that approach when he showed enormous respect for Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi by celebrating his skipper’s life to mark the silver jubilee of Bishan Bedi Cricket Coaching Trust. He flew in his dear Captain’s friends from far and near and presented a select gathering a wonderful evening of joy, commemoration and conversation that Tiger would have loved. 

Of course, there were many heart-warming recollections of the legend that Tiger remains, but I remember 1983 World Cup-winning India captain, Kapil Dev praise Bedi’s commitment to the process of coaching. “We have learnt from Bishan Paaji. He has a big heart and is a great person. I could not do what you (Bedi) do. You have gone back and taught the young the etiquette of cricket. You are giving back, still serving the game. Hats off to you,” he said.

While Paaji is passionate about cricket, he has boundless respect for other sport and their practitioners. I have seen how greatly he admired hockey legend Balbir Singh Sr. And I recall reading that he shared a part of the proceeds from his benefit match with ace hockey player Surjit Singh’s family.

Come to think of it, Bedi has travelled a long distance from his early days in Amritsar when he would watch the legendary athlete Gurbachan Singh Randhawa. Yet, has never forgotten the life lessons imparted by his cricketing guru Gyan Prakash, and has always placed the game on a pedestal – well above the individuals who have played or are playing cricket.

They say he has never said anything that he didn’t mean or meant anything that he didn’t say. And that he has always worn his heart on his sleeve. It has meant that he has expressed his inner-most emotions without hesitating even one bit or considering possible repercussions. It was almost as if the only time he spent time planning was at the bowling crease.

In the present context, athletes choose platforms like Twitter and Instagram to make their points against the sports establishment but earlier, it was an uphill battle for them to make their points of view be known to public at large. But by speaking up against cricket administration of his time, Paaji emerged both as a leader and an activist. 

His penchant to call a spade a spade may not have endeared himself to many people but that has not stopped him from being the best version of himself every single day. He is a complete stranger to the option of being politically correct. Yes, that is hardly his style. He would rather call things out as he sees them.

His anguish at some of the goings-on in the world of cricket is pretty well-known and does not bear recounting here but I can assure you that what you read in print maybe a watered down version of his angst especially when it comes to corruption of any form of the game that he so dearly loves.

Take, for instance, his call to leave pitches in India uncovered. 

“Covering pitches at night is necessary for countries like England and New Zealand where rain can alter the nature of the track drastically, but does India need their pitches covered?” Paaji said, his heart bleeding for Indian cricket as a former India left-arm spinner, captain, selector and coach. There cannot be a quickfix solution but Indian cricket must heed to sane advice.  

It does not bear repeating here that he gets agitated each time someone draws his attention to the menace of chucking. He could never bring himself to accepting that ICC would alter the regulations to allow for a 15 degree flexion of the elbow. He wants his game to remain pristine pure. What’s more, he wants everyone to speak up for the game that he so dearly loves.

Bishan Singh Bedi is a lot of things to a lot of people – Sir Donald Bradman called him a study for the connoisseur, some else called him the Rolls Royce of Spin Bowling. So it is only fair to ask myself: What does Paaji mean to me? It is an easy question to answer. For me, he will always be the Most Incurable Cricket Romantic I have known.

Then again, I do not say that because he has showered affection and accepted my point of view. It would be the easiest for someone who has shared deep bonds with the likes of Sir Donald Bradman and Sir Garfield Sobers to ignore wordsmiths like me, especially after I stopped working with mainstream publications. But he has stayed firm, letting me have glimpses into his devotion for cricket.

Many of my colleagues in journalism will relate to this. Long before the cellphone became an extension of ourselves, Paaji would call on the landline fairly early in the day. All your senses would be tuned to the earpiece. There would be generous praise of a piece that you wrote or a gentle rebuke when he disagreed with the philosophy of an article.

Into my disorganised mind leaps another tale.  In April 2014, in a piece about R Ashwin’s reaction to a question on leg-spinner Amit Mishra’s emergence, I had written about how the legendary spin quartet celebrate one another’s success in the 60s and 70s. 

I had started my piece with these lines: Some images simply refuse to acquire sepia tones. How can the sight of Bishan Singh Bedi, his colourful patka and lyrical bowling action, running up to his team-mate Erapalli Prasanna at mid-on upon befuddling another batsmen into losing his wicket ever acquire such a tone? The almost impish delight with which the spinners would find one another has often been cited as a superb illustration of how team sportsmen took pride in one another’s success is the essence of team sport. 

Paaji read the piece and wrote me an e-mail.  

“I was very fortunate to have fitted into the scheme of things when Tiger Pataudi was at the helm and camaraderie was even higher amongst the ‘quartet’! Yes, I’ve said this on so many platforms that I learnt an awful lot from purely the pure spinning skills of Erapalli Prasanna and S. Venkataraghvan. From Bhagwat Chandrasekahar, I picked up honesty and humility. I couldn’t have asked for more!” he wrote.

Being a Learner for Life himself, he has encouraged me to keep seeking knowledge. 

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about Paaji is the fact that he continues to learn despite his age he has always believed that learning ends only when life ends a very good example of that is the fact that he saw a dictaphone in my hand one day and was curious to know what it could do. 

The next thing I knew was that he asked me to tell a friend of mine in the United States of America to procure a similar model for him so that he could use it and share his thoughts with the world. It is this eagerness to learn, expressing gratitude and to keep evolving that sets Paaji apart from a lot of people.

There are two other emotional incidents featuring Paaji that spring to the mind as I wind the piece down.  The first concerns a visit that he made a veteran journalist and his wife in their apartment. He had been planning it for long but those were not materialising. Out of the blue, one day in December 2018, he called and said “Let’s do that visit today.”

I was a fly on the wall – and a happy one at that – as the two took a walk down memory lane, recalling those who had been good to them and some who had not been as well as their own ups and downs. There was a bottle of a cherished drink that Paaji gifted the old journalist but their conversation was more heady than any brew could have caused.

A couple of years earlier, he had invited my wife Sudha and I to the premier of the Hindi film, Pink, which featured his son Angad Singh Bedi in a key role against no less an actor than Amitabh Bachchan. Paaji must have been watching the movie a second or a third time that evening but you could see his heart swell with pride that Angad had carved his own path.

It is hard not to think of Bishan Singh Bedi as the cricketer who is closest to a classical dancer with respect to the show of emotions. From Love (Shringara) to Anger (Rudra), from Laughter (Hasya) to Disgust (Bheebhatsya), from Compassion (Karuna) to Terror (Bhayanaka), from Courage (Veera) to Peace (Shanta) and Surprise (Adbutha), he has displayed them all.

Indeed, he is the complete artist. One who has embraced his art and the medium that cricket is. For life. And not only mastered it but also continues to serve it as a traditionalist with his simplicity, honesty and dignity. Bishan Singh Bedi. One of a kind. The Most Incurable Cricket Romantic I know.

This piece appears as a chapter in The Sardar of Spin: A Celebration of the Life and Art of Bishan Singh Bedi (Roli Books, 2021)