K.C. Bhandari asks, “Jim Laker took 19 wickets in the 1956 Test at Old Trafford and helped England to a thumping victory against Australia. Tell me, who took the only other Australian wicket?” Without waiting for a reply, he shoots off the answer — “Lock” — and turns the pages of a fat, dog-eared album, stopping at the one dedicated to Laker.
Pages with articles and photographs, focussing on the exploits of great cricketers, mostly from the past, make Bhandari's album an enchanting chronicle of cricket. Signatures of around 80 international players, including Bill Lawry, Frank Worrell, Vijay Merchant, Dennis Lillee, Wesley Hall, Rohan Kanhai, Paul Sheahan and Keith Stackpole, scrawled across the pages, suggest the album is more than a cut-and-paste job.
In 1962, Bhandari — a club level cricketer then — began to collect clippings from the past and current issues of sports magazines dominated by cricket. When a Test match was played at Chepauk, he would carry his album and request a player to sign on the page dedicated to him. In December 1969, when Australia faced India at Chepauk, he got many Aussie signatures.
“At Connemara, I got the autographs of Keith Stackpole, Ian Redpath and Paul Sheahan. In jest, Stackpole signed for Bob Cowper (who had retired in 1968) on the latter's page,” recalls Bhandari.
Celebrity signatures
Bhandari has a story to narrate for every autograph. However, even without the strength of these celebrity signatures, the album stands as a gripping commentary on how cricket was played in those days.
It has a wealth of articles, each with a different tenor. In a piece of lucid writing, Jack Fingleton discusses why Graham McKenzie is ‘the gentle giant of Australian cricket'.
“The Thrill of A Six” by Harvey Day is expository writing at its best. It talks about the big hitters of that era. A snippet about David Stuart Sheppard, an ordained priest who played Test cricket for England, humorously relates Sheppard's poor showing as a fielder. On the field, the reverend had difficulty “putting his hands together” and taking catches.
“A good number of the clippings came from Sport & Pastime ,” says Bhandari, who is bowled over by the quality of the magazine's photos. Pointing to some of them, he says: “Look, they have not faded with time.”
A dash of glamour
With all its merits, the album is not a perfect work of art. It's marred by photos of film stars Bhandari has smuggled into some of the pages. These images actually capture some of the most beautiful faces of all time, including Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Lauren, Elizabeth Taylor and Madhubala, but they blunt the focus on cricket. In addition, there are articles about unforgettable political developments such as the Partition and the WW II bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Bhandari, now 62, regrets having mixed cricket with films.
“These photos draw attention away from cricket,” he admits. “However, a few international cricketers, to whom I showed this album, think the photos of film stars add glamour to the album.”
