He could surprise even Viv Richards with his pace off the pitch. The bewildered look on the batsman’s face often confirmed Chetan Sharma’s ability to strike stealthily. He hardly looked a fast bowler. “But he could bowl fast,” remembered mentor Kapil Dev.
It was a boisterous evening. The occasion demanded too. Chetan, 46, was celebrating 25 years of a history-making feat of a first-ever hat-trick in World Cup. Nagpur was a grand theatre of celebration as India won the match against New Zealand in 1987 with Chetan scalping Ken Rutherford, Ian Smith and Ewen Chatfield in a row.
“Twenty-five years have just flown by but the match seems like yesterday,” said Kapil, captain in the match and Chetan’s mentor too. “Chetan was a tremendous bowler but he didn’t perform to his potential. I was proud to have played with him.”
As former Test left-arm spinner Maninder Singh, who first met Chetan at an under-15 national camp organised under Chandu Borde, lamented, “If only the administrators had handled us better Chetan and I would have played more. We couldn’t handle success. Apart from the hat-trick, my memory of Chetan is celebrating the dismissals of Richards and Gordon (Greenidge) at Amritsar in a tour game in 1983. He bowled them both with superb deliveries.”
Kapil was convinced of Chetan’s ability when he saw the bowler extract pace and bounce on a “flat” Jamshedpur pitch in a tour match against the West Indies. “A few deliveries went past the batsmen’s ears and I knew we had a lethal weapon in our armoury,” Kapil recalled.
Chetan had a dream series in England in 1986 when he took 16 wickets in two Tests, including 10 in the second in Birmingham. But the hat-trick was special indeed. “I just wanted to justify my captain’s faith in me. It was a crucial match. When I took the wickets of Rutherford and Smith, I was wondering the line of attack for the hat-trick ball. I wanted to move the fielder at mid-wicket when Kapil walked up and told me to just forget the fielder and concentrate on the stumps. He wanted me to bowl on the stumps. I did that and snared Chatfield.” Chetan’s act was followed by Sunil Gavaskar’s only century in ODI and the two shared the man of the match honours.
As the audience grew in number, with Madan Lal, Chetan Chauhan, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Ashish Nehra, Ajay Jadeja, Vijay Dahiya, Surender Khanna, Atul Wassan, Ashok Malhotra, Sarkar Talwar, Anjum Chopra and coaches Desh Prem Azad and Gurcharan Singh praising the star of the evening, it was time for former India skipper Mohammad Azharuddin to take the mike. “Our first meeting gave me a sore thigh. It was a Moin-ud-Dowla match and he hit me with a sharp delivery. The pain lasted for weeks. Chetan could jolt the best with his pace.”
Jadeja recalled how Chetan helped him in his early days. “He would pick me from my house on way for training in Faridabad. How many Test players would do that? Some years later, he did that in England too. He would drop me at my county ground first and then go his way. Chetan is a wonderful person.”
Sehwag agreed too. “I played under his captaincy at ONGC. He was very encouraging and backed the youngsters in the team. He helped me a lot.” Any special memory? “Yes, I got a memo from the management under his captaincy.”
In a career spanning 15 years, Chetan played 23 Tests and 65 ODIs. For his immense potential, he sadly remained an underachiever.
