Field marshall!

Raju Bharatan

Bronze and Beer, even as we were matching the shade of the two, even as we were getting to savour the flavour of medallist Malleswari being from India, the Olympics turned into the 'Olympits' for us.

Excuses, more excuses and still more excuses were all we got in the face of our monumental failure to build upon that one international success.

This perpetual hard-luck story, in 2000 AD, was a 'reminder in reverse' of how South African Kevin Curran reacted, to a similar situation, in the year in which he was serving like the invincible Wimbledon champion.

As Curran 'finally' met his serving match in Boris 'Boom-Boom' Becker, the art of unfurling those aces suddenly deserted Kevin.

As he came off second-best from the Centre Court, the media buttonholed Kevin about his signal failure to get his (by then) legendary service going. Whereupon Curran shot back:

"I'm not a magician, you know, I can't do it every time!"

To which the counter-query posed to Curran was if, in the circumstances, he was happy to be Wimbledon runner-up.

"Not at all!" came back Curran. "You asked and I explained how I failed to get my serve going; but that doesn’t mean I excuse myself."

"By no means am I happy to be number two -- this game is all about winning, the world has no time for losers!"

As the meaning of feeling that way sinks into our medallists-that-never-were, let us stay with Kevin Curran's South Africa -- the country our cricket team was due, for the first time in its playing history, to tour in 1991-92.

For that landmark tour of Nelson Mandela's South Africa, Ajit Wadekar had emerged, as India's manager, as unexpectedly as he had sprouted as India’s skipper -- a full 20 years before that.

It was a trip to the land of Jonty Rhodes -- the most exciting thing on two legs, on television, right then -- so Wadekar, as manager, thought he would take a similar 'inspirational' figure, from Indian cricket, along for his first morning of practice -- as the new man in charge of Mohammad Azharuddin's touring team.

So along with Ajit Wadekar went Eknath Solkar -- at 6.30 in the morning, I saw, to the Wankhede stadium lawns in Mumbai.

The effect on our team to tour was electric.

Here, as manager, was the man who had clinched three Test rubbers in a row for India -- with him was the supercatcher displaying a pair of hands that had initiated the Spin Revolution in Indian cricket.

Why, oh why, could our cricket mentors not have made use of Ekky Solkar, in a similar nobly motivating capacity, at the recent Chennai camp?

What Indian cricket urgently needs is a role-model in every specialist area.

And, is there an area more specialist (in the Mini World Cup) than fielding -- determining, on TV, the final ICC outcome?

My timely focus here, therefore, is on Ekky Solkar -- the man with 53 unhelmeted catches to his name from just 27 Tests.

The two men standing alongside Solkar -- in that lethal leg-cordon underlining the quality of our spin -- were Syed Abid Ali (with 32 catches from 29 Tests) and S Venkataraghavan (33 catches from 36 Tests up to the time Ekky was there in the Indian team).

It was Ajit Wadekar who put his shrewd finger on the essential difference between Abid Ali and Venkat, on the one hand, and Solkar, on the other. Noted Wadekar:

"Where both Venkat and Abid -- while being equally good catchers -- lost out to Ekky was in the fact that each, often, stretched out one hand for the catch; whereas Solkar, you would have noticed four times out of five, got both his hands to the ball."

"This means," went on Wadekar, "that Ekky saw the possible catch that split-second sooner -- to be able to get both hands to the falling ball."

I next took the matter to the man who was the first to change the calibre and character of our spin -- Erapalli Prasanna (a career haul of 189 wickets at 30.38 each from 49 Tests).

And 49 of those 189 wickets had come from the 1967-68 Siamese-twin tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1967-68 --25 at 27.44 from 4 Tests in Australia; 24 at 18.79 from 4 Tests in New Zealand!

On that dual tour, our best close catcher had been Rusi Surti, as Syed Abid Ali was still evolving.

Surti was the total athlete in any position and a great catch close to the wicket, so I pointedly asked Pras how Rusi compared with Ekky.

"Never again mention the two in the same tone!" came back Pras.

"In fact, never compare Ekky Solkar with any Indian fielder, any time, anywhere!"

"Ekky was sheer class."

"Solkar remains for me," stressed Pras, "the greatest Indian fielder of all time."

"By his unique agility and mobility close to the wicket, Ekky added at least 25 wickets to my Test bag."

"Maybe only half of those 25 wickets ultimately came off Ekky's catching; but the remaining half had their origin in the unmatched pressure that Ekky, at omnipresent forward short-leg, exerted on the batsmen," concluded Prasanna.

How revealing that no fewer than 50 of Solkar's 53 catches (in 27 Tests) came off our spin quartet (Prasanna, B S Chandrasekhar, Bishan Singh Bedi and Venkataraghavan).

If 12 of those 53 catches were off Prasanna, 10 were off Venkat, 14 off Bedi and 14 off Chandra.

Plus, the 51st catch on which Ekky closed his hoary hands came off the quality spin emerging from the lithe left hand of Salim Durani, so does Prasanna not have a point that there has been none like Solkar?

What a shame, therefore, that they had no real use for Solkar after he had played 25 Tests for India.

But, at least, Ekky crossed the 'benchmark' of 25 Tests.

For C K Nayudu award-winner Polly Umrigar (who, as manager, wrote off Eknath Solkar, as an India player, after our 1975-76 tour of New Zealand and the West Indies) was, later, instrumental in getting our Cricket Board to pay Rs 2 lakhs, per match, to each Indian cricketer who had figured in 25 or more Test matches.

A poignant moment here was Rusi Surti ringing me, from distant Australia, anxiously enquiring if news of such per-Test bonus was true.

"It is," I told Surti, "and you just about qualify (for 52,000 rupees), Rusi, since you have played 26 Tests for India."

For what a pittance our dedicated players settled those days!

Solkar, for his part, felt grateful that they had put him out only after the embargo of 25 Tests -- upon being jettisoned after 27 Tests, Ekky felt shaken; but not broken.

Solkar, happily, was noted to have taken a fresh grip on himself by the time the 1979 World Cup came along, fielding like the Ekky of old, for Bombay and West Zone, in the 'selection matches' for that big event in England.

We felt heartened to see that, yet again, was Ekky exploring those 'areas of catching darkness' as he took his ubiquitous position at 'looking-forward' short-leg.

Tony Greig, given his own ability to Jurassic Park himself at silly mid-off, epitomised the Solkar persona tellingly when he remarked: "Ekky? While taking my batting stance, I always got this feeling that the guy was nestling between my legs!"

Imagine, Eknath Solkar's 53 catches from 27 Tests -- right up to the end of the 1976-77 season, following which he was shunted out of the Indian team -- then rated next only to wicket-keeper Farokh Engineer's 66 catches from 46 Tests!

Solkar thus averaged, remarkably, nearly 2 catches per Test -- more than that, if you count the three 'pouches' he added to those 53, fielding as a substitute for the Indian team.

Let us bring into perspective the Solkar catch that I rate as this wonder snapper's best, since, for once, Ekky, here, moved momentarily away from short square-leg, before miraculously managing to reach for the ball..

The occasion was the new year of 1973 and it was the make-or-break (for Ajit Wadekar as captain) second Test (at Eden Gardens) vs Tony Lewis’s England.

India, under 'Lucky Wadekar', had conclusively lost (by 6 wickets) the first Test at Kotla -- after that emotional high of our first-ever 'rubbers' in the West Indies and England.

So the second Test at Eden Gardens was a must-win one for India; and here is where Solkar came up with a catch in a million, one that opened the way for Wadekar & Co to spin through, nerve-tinglingly, by 28 runs.

And Solkar's hapless victim, here, was Tony Lewis, who had all but played the violin in the National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival.

Lewis thus had come to India with the reputation of being able to play Bedi as well as Bach.

It was the fourth afternoon of that crucial second Test at Eden Gardens, an afternoon on which Bedi was at the peak of his spinning powers.

Well he might have played Bach, Lewis now was certainly playing Bedi very badly.

That 'Sardar of Spin' had, in fact, squeezed Lewis's England into a tight '1 for 3' crunch by that fourth afternoon, having swiftly accounted for Dennis Amiss (1) and Keith Fletcher (5).

This was when Bedi tossed one sensuously up to Lewis (batting 3).

And India's 'parabolic' left-arm spinner had the England captain playing the wildest heave attempted on a cricket ground.

As played by a Glamorgan person, it very simply was a Welsh heave -- so beefy was it that Solkar ducked.

"Even as I so scooted away," recalls Solkar, "Farokh, from behind the sticks, shouted: 'Hold it, Ekky!' "

"By the time I whipped round, the ball was barely in the air and still a good seven-eight feet away from the point to which I had moved by then -- I leapt for it, all the same, and, to my utter disbelief, got my left hand smack under it.

"It was one time there was no question of going for the catch with both hands, so far had I got away," reminisced Ekky.

"So great, therefore, was my sense of fulfilment at managing to get to such a faraway catch that, in the next second, I was up on my toes, gleefully throwing the ball up."

As the plane in which the Ekky and I were seated took off, purely coincidentally, in that very moment, Solkar's description of his action in throwing up the ball sounded credible enough.

Here I thought it pertinent to enquire of Ekky if he really needed to so throw up the ball after holding it -- not every umpire could be counted upon, I pointed out, to treat the catch as completed, adding: "Wadekar doesn’t throw up the caught ball, Abid Ali doesn’t, Venkat doesn’t, need you do it, Ekky?"

"I can’t help it," noted Ekky, "the moment I catch it, up it goes!"

There you have the essence of the catchy Ekky.

"One thing I never could do was catch to order," went on Solkar.

"But this is exactly what I was required to do, in that (1972-73) series, by the stage of the fourth Test at Green Park in Kanpur."

"It was with a total lack of awareness that I had brought off 12 catches in the first three Tests of the series till then; and the press now said that I had, somehow, just to hold on to one more catch to make it 13 for a world record."

"That," pointed out Ekky, "only made me fatally conscious of the fact that the next catch to come my way was one I had to hold on to for dear life!"

"That did it -- it was the simplest of catches to me at short-leg, as Graham Roope obligingly turned Chandra; and, horror of horrors, I put it down!"

"I never did catch for the record."

"Now you say you want to know about the six catches I held in a single Test" (March 1971: the second Test, at Port-of-Spain, that Wadekar's India won, historically, by 7 wickets to go on to clinch the five-match series 1-0).

"Believe me, I find only one on those six catches worth recalling," went on Ekky.

"It was a lightning head-high hook that Rohan Kanhai (37) played off Pras, on the opening day at the Queen’s Park Oval -- I remember, I covered a good 20 yards to reach out for that shot, a hook almost certainly going for six."

"I just about got the tips of my fingers to it -- my feet planted inside the boundary-line with some difficulty."

"But even this catch, looking back, was nowhere near as testing, to get to, as that one which came like a thunderbolt from the bat of Clive Lloyd (163), off Chandra, in the second innings of the (November 1974) first Test at Bangalore’s KSCA stadium."

"That shot was played by Lloydy like a Muhammed Ali punch, it literally had me floored, as I first fell back, and then had to go sliding forward, in a rugby tackle, to just about take it, when the ball was almost hugging the turf."

"It’s the one catch of which I'm proud -- as a take that nearly blew off my hands!" concluded Ekky -- the soul of humility.

Yet it is not such 'long hauls', but those catches he made close in, that make Eknath Solkar the folk-hero he is in Indian cricket.

His best catch at forward short-leg, Ekky feels, is the one he brought off to get rid of Alan Knott (1) in the crucial second innings of the third and final Test, at The Oval, in August 1971. To recount it in Ekky’s own words:

"Alan Knott had frustrated even our class spin more than once in the series, so this was one catch I knew I had to reach."

"The moment Knotty got a bat-pad edge to Venkat, I leapt in anticipation as, for all my alertness, I could see I was going to be late, since the ball was dropping barely a yard or so from Knotty’s bat."

"This was when I plunged into a headlong dive and, somehow, got the tips of my fingers to the ball."

"For a worrying moment, the ball rested on the finger-tips of my cupped hands and looked like sliding off; but, somehow, I pulled it back into the hollow of my hands and Venkat had given Wadekar the breakthrough wicket we sought," noted Ekky.

That made Ray Illingworth’s England 54 for 5 at a time when the home team was leading by only 71 runs in the first innings.

How '6-for-38' Chandra helped dismiss England for just 101 (inside two-and-a-half hours) on the fourth afternoon of that third and final Test represents The Oval Shape of India’s first ever (1-0) rubber win in England.

True, it was Chandra, Venkat and Bedi who made The Vision possible.

But the man to translate The Vision into Reality was Ekky Solkar, whose shadow at forward short-leg never grew less.

As Dennis Amiss pointed out, it was the 'hidden' danger Solkar posed that made him a lurkingly disturbing presence, behind the batsman's back, at a time when the guy at the wicket was trying to come to grips with the best spin bowling in the world!

Sadly, Solkar took us critics at our vainglorious word when we observed that he was worth a place in the Indian team for his fielding alone.

That he was, but if only Eknath Solkar had continued to contribute with the bat in the style in which he did in his first two series for India, he would never have lost his spot in our team the way he did.

In the 'India Rubber Year' of 1971, as a fluid left-hander, Solkar had scores of 61, 55 and 65 against Gary Sobers's West Indies; and knocks of 67, 50 and 44 against Ray Illingworth’s England.

But then, as a potentially genuine southpaw, Solkar just fell away.

His only hundred for India (102 in the January 1975 Wankhede Stadium Test vs Clive Lloyd’s West Indies) underscores where precisely Solkar fell short.

As Sunil Gavaskar played a gem of a knock for 86, on his return to the Indian team (after a finger injury) in that fifth and final Test in Bombay, Solkar matched Sunny almost shot for shot, as Ekky raced to 76 not out, in India's second innings total of 171 for 2, by the close of the third day’s play (at a point when Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi’s team had conceded a lead of 198 runs to the West Indies).

From that bat-in-hand 76, it should have been smooth century sailing for Solkar the following morning; but it was not, he really made heavy weather of it and, in the end, had the Windies fielders to thank for being able to get to as far as 102.

Like in the case of a catch that had to be taken, Solkar seemed to become self-conscious the moment he knew a century had to be his aim, once he got to 75.

This suggests that, naturally gifted though he was, Eknath Solkar fell short where it came to putting the finishing touch, on his batting, as a world-class all-rounder.

To this extent, Solkar remained the 'Swadeshi Sobers' to the end.

Yet the unvarnished truth is that things really started happening in our cricket only after Eknath Solkar materialised at eternal short-leg.

What precisely is it that made Ekky Solkar the icing on India’s spin cake?

Let the final word here rest with Erapalli Prasanna, once more, as the originator of the Spin Revolution.

"If Sunil Gavaskar, as a batsman, 'went into the ball'," observed Pras, "so did Ekky Solkar, as a catcher, 'go into the ball'.

"Ekky’s greatness lay, not merely in taking half-chances, but in 'making' half-chances.

"Ekky alone could make those catches happen.

"Because Ekky alone had the reflexes not to get hit -- so only he could spot it as a half-chance.

"For the others, it wasn't even a quarter-chance."

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