You might remember Jonty Rhodes running out Inzamam Ul Haq during the 1992 World Cup, scooping up the ball and hurling himself horizontally at the stumps. Other fielders have pulled off the move since then, but not with the jaw-dropping impact of the South African original.
On a misty Margazhi morning three years ago, however, someone outdid Rhodes. A 60-something mridangam vidwan named Mannargudi Easwaran.
Easwaran was taking part in a ritual that has, for over a decade, been the December music festival’s end-of-season celebration - the musicians’ cricket match. On January 9, four teams of musicians will play the event’s 2011 edition, YACM (Youth Association for Classical Music) Cricket Kutcheri.
Carnatic musicians are, almost as a rule, cricket fanatics. “I think people in general are into cricket, period. We are just a subset of that,” says N. Ravikiran, chitravina maestro and a regular at the musicians’ match, alongside such names as Sanjay Subrahmanyan, T.M. Krishna, Trivandrum Balaji, Vijay Siva, K.N. Shashikiran, Bharat Sundar and Guruprasad.
'What he says might be true, but a surprising number of Carnatic artistes have played cricket at various levels.'
Most aficionados would know that P. Unnikrishnan played in first division cricket, and could have gone on to even bigger things had he not been such a wonderful singer. They might not know that others have reached similar levels of cricketing achievement.
Mannargudi Easwaran played in the first division for Bharathi SC in the ‘60s, under the captaincy of Kerala and Tamil Nadu seamer B. Kalyanasundaram. “I was an opening bowler and could bowl both inswing and outswing,” says Easwaran. “On wickets with bounce, I got a lot of batsmen caught at short leg.”
At the other end of the age spectrum is vocalist Rithvik Raja, president of YACM and the eyewitness who recalled Easwaran’s Jonty moment. Until he turned 18 and decided to turn his full attention to music, Rithvik, an all-rounder who bowled off spin, was a member of the India Pistons squad. “I used to bowl quite often at the Ranji nets,” he says.
Ravikiran didn’t play league cricket, but kept wickets and opened the batting for his school. Wearing the big gloves was a tactical decision he made to ensure that his fingers would be in proper shape to make their blurry way about the chitravina’s 21 strings.
Others had to take more drastic steps. “I stopped playing with the leather ball from the seventh standard, after missing a concert with a broken foot” says Mysore Nagaraj, who alongside brother Dr. Manjunath forms the renowned Mysore Brothers violin duo.
The two, however, have had little chance during the musicians’ matches (always tennis-ball affairs) to stitch together epic partnerships a la the Waughs or the Chappells. “We’re usually on opposite sides,” says Nagaraj.
Nagaraj is known for his versatile bowling. “I bowl mainly medium pace,” he says. “But whenever the situation demands it, I can also bowl leg spin.” Not, he adds, in the manner of B.S. Chandrasekhar and Anil Kumble, those two great leggies from his state, but in the slower, craftier style of Abdul Qadir.
Veteran vocalist T.V. Sankaranarayanan, popularly known as TVS, who says he’s too old to play in this fixture, also bowled leg breaks as a schoolboy. “I shouldn’t say this myself, but I had a killer googly,” he says. “And I was a difficult batsman to dislodge.”
TVS’ uncle, the celebrated Madurai Mani Iyer, dissuaded his nephew from playing cricket beyond his PUC (Pre-University Course) days. “I would have definitely made a certain grade,” says TVS. “But my uncle told me that playing in the sun all day would ruin my voice.”
TVS has no regrets about his career choice, of course, having enjoyed a vastly fulfilling music career which includes winning the Padma Bhushan in 2003, the same year former India skipper S. Venkataraghavan won the Padma Shri. “Venkat and I were from the same school, but different batches,” says TVS. “We had played together as kids in shorts.”
Unnikrishnan’s league contemporaries included the cream of Tamil Nadu’s crop from the late 80s - Kris Srikkanth, W.V. Raman, L. Sivaramakrishnan and so forth. Were there any musicians among them?
“Not really,” he says. “But (former Tamil Nadu left-arm spinner) Sunil Subramaniam, who was my college-mate, was very interested in music. And, of course (former Hyderabad off spinner and editor, Sruti Magazine) V. Ramnarayan, who had retired from first class cricket by then but was still playing in the league.”
Did Unnikrishnan ever burst into song on the cricket field? “Quite often, especially while fielding on the boundary,” he says. “Sometimes, I got carried away, and I remember Akbar Ebrahim, my captain at MCC, yelling at me once when I lost track of the ball.”
Not surprisingly, the musicians love watching cricketers with an artistic streak. "Not just cricket," says Ravikiran. "I loved watching the touch players even in tennis, especially Miloslav Mecir."
"For me, a batsman doesn’t have to score a century,” says TVS. “A single stroke is enough — a square cut by Viswanath or Gavaskar swaying away from a bouncer.”
Unnikrishnan sees other parallels between music and cricket. “You are responsible to an audience in both, and their expectations are very high,” he says. “The practice, the dedication you need to put in is tremendous.”
Ravikiran agrees. “In terms of the search for perfection, Don Bradman is my god.”
