Narendra Hirwani knows only one Tamil sentence. “ Naan unnai kadhalikkiren ,” he deadpans. Little realising what Kris Srikkanth was getting him into when he taught him these words — and not what they meant — the former India leg spinner went around expressing his undying love to random strangers during the days of his Test debut at Chepauk.
And what heady days they were. Hirwani's 16 for 136 in that match, against a West Indies side at its frightening 80s peak, remain the best match figure by a Test debutant. Now, as a national selector watching Tamil Nadu play Delhi at the same ground, he still waves his hands about enthusiastically as he describes getting Viv Richards bowled in the first innings 22 years ago.
“On the first day, Richards had been cutting me regularly between point and cover. I knew I could get him out if I bowled the flipper. I couldn't sleep till around two that night; I repeatedly visualised bowling my flipper and beating him for pace.” The next day, the scenario panned out like clockwork: Richards' bat coming down too late, stumps in disarray.
The bespectacled leggie saw only sporadic highs after that in a Test career curtailed by Anil Kumble's emergence and the movement of bowlers such as Venkatapathy Raju and Rajesh Chauhan above him in the pecking order.
Still, Hirwani bowled on in domestic cricket, and — as a lot of spinners tend to when they go deeper into their 30s — became an even more potent wicket-taker, scalping an astounding 132 first class wickets over the 2002-03 and 2003-04 seasons.
Great domestic spinners
The conversation moves on to the great domestic spinners who never got an international break. “What a beautiful bowler Kanwaljit Singh was,” Hirwani reminisces when asked about the off spinner from Hyderabad, whose career ran contemporaneously to his. “Paddy (Padmakar) Shivalkar was another great bowler. I haven't seen Rajinder Goel bowl, but I've heard so much about him as well.”
Unlike all of them, Hirwani did play Tests, 17 in all, and took 66 wickets at 30.10 — an average that sits between the exalted names of Subhash Gupte and Erapalli Prasanna. Wasn't coming back from that to the grind of Ranji matches difficult to handle? “It was, initially,” he replies. “But I got used to it, and was happy that I was still enjoying the game and giving it my best. And now, I feel the same happiness if a youngster I've coached is doing well.”
Hirwani now juggles selection and coaching assignments all over the country. He says he tries to keep things simple while mentoring young bowlers. “Am I a good coach only if I can speak for an hour using a lot of high-flown technical terms? I have a feel for spotting technical flaws because I struggled to correct them early on in my own career,” he says. “I try to make small adjustments if a bowler is going wrong in his action or run-up — that one change should lead to all other things sorting themselves out.”
Asked about the paucity of leg spinners in Indian cricket, Hirwani says it's a reflection of the times. “People don't have that much patience nowadays,” he says. “Leg spin is very difficult to bowl, and kids are probably discouraged by the amount of practice they'll need to master the craft.”
There are two kinds of leg spinner, says Hirwani — those like him who are slower through the air and rely on turn, and those like Anil Kumble who don't turn the ball that much but bowl a quicker stock ball. And he argues that there can't be a middle ground. “Anil Kumble is so fast and accurate that if a batsman makes a small error, he is out, bowled or LBW,” he says. “I see some youngsters trying to do both and bowl an in-between speed — you lose some turn and won't beat the batsman in the air if you bowl like that, and you'll get punished if your line and length go slightly wrong, because you're not quick either.”
