This is a blog post from
If one had read the sports pages in the lead-up to the Ranji trophy fixtures over the last few days, the focus on the Mumbai’s 500th game (earlier known as Bombay) would have been unmissable. For long, the self-congratulatory club of the Mumbai/Bombay Ranji trophy team (henceforth referred to by its more recent name) hasn’t let the rest of the country forget that it has been the domestic ‘dada’ of Indian cricket, with a bevy of scarcely believable records.
This year’s season is the 84th edition of the premier Indian long-format domestic competition. Mumbai has won 41 of those titles. To put this into perspective, other champion teams like New South Wales and Yorkshire have accumulated 46 and 33 titles respectively (over a longer time period, in a pool of fewer teams). The second team in the Ranji trophy title honours list is Mysore/Karnataka, which is far behind with eight titles. Even in league football, Manchester United, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich don’t enjoy such dominance.
At the height of Mumbai’s powers, they won 15 seasons on the trot before their streak was broken by Karnataka in the 1973-74 season (after that, Mumbai won three more, which made a total of 18 titles in 19 years). Even in their so-called 32-year-long lean patch from 1984-85 onwards, Mumbai have won 11 titles. With such statistics, it isn’t surprising to see Mumbai players feeling that the Ranji trophy is their birthright. No doubt, Mumbai is the biggest “brand” in Indian domestic cricketing history. But is the influence of this champion team on Indian cricket all positive, or is it basically bluster?
Take, for instance, their playing record. In 499 matches, they have won 242 matches, drawn 231 and lost only 26. In Win-Loss ratio terms, it is an insane 9.3. But in terms of Win%, it is only 48.5%. In comparison, the winningest team in international Test cricket, Australia, won around 47% of their matches . For a team that is known for their winning mentality and towering over every other team, this suddenly doesn’t look as impressive considering that it is in the domestic arena.
Mumbai cricket is also known for the famed “Bombay school of batsmanship” or “Bombay gharana”, which produced many batsmen of repute. Newspapers and sports websites have been singing paeans about their never-say-die, stubborn, khadoos attitude. But one needs to see how many of those dominated the world stage over their entire career. Two names — Gavaskar and Tendulkar — are no-brainers when it comes to commanding a spot in a hypothetical World XI; the Test match arena didn’t get to see much of both the excellent Vijays — Manjrekar (the founder of the school) and Hazare; Vengsarkar was a great batsman for half a decade; the cupboard is now barren. Hopefully Rahane can fill in their gigantic shoes. Several other Mumbai players have extremely tall feats in the Ranji trophy and served India with distinction in many instances — Rusi Modi, Ashok Mankad, Ajit Wadekar and Polly Umrigar, but they were never consistently world-class. But did you notice a bigger problem? All of them were primarily batsmen.
Where are the world-class bowlers from Mumbai?
Sorry, the bar is too high. Where are the Mumbai bowlers who had a long careers in the Indian Test team? Mumbai bowlers are conspicuous by their absence either in the Ranji Trophy records lists for most career wickets or most wickets captured in a season. The Mumbai bowlers who have the most wickets for India are Zaheer Khan and Vinoo Mankad, both of whom have claims for a spot in a dream India-XI but were imports or “outsiders” from other Ranji sides. Raj Thackeray would have certainly been incensed. One would have to go back as far as Subhash Gupte to find a “Bombay-bred” bowler who played for India. In 2010, ESPNcricinfo had a fantasy exercise to select an all-time Indian test team . Needless to say, the team was picked by a distinguished jury (with a knowledge of the game far greater than mine or any average Indian cricket fan). Obviously, Tendulkar and Gavaskar made it to the team, and apart from them, in spite of a glorious history, it is slim pickings in the 39-member pool for the Mumbai players — Gupte, Vengsarkar, Tamhane, Umrigar and Merchant. Seven Mumbai names in a 39-member shortlist. One bowler.
Its inward looking culture is symptomatic of a narrow worldview satisfied with domestic hegemony rather than global excellence. It is rather surprising that for a city that prides itself on a keen, calculating mind and the business of getting things done, Mumbai has contributed very little in the business of winning Test matches for India through its bowlers.
Contrast this with other cricketing dynasties. New South Wales: Trumper, Bradman, Border, Steve Waugh, Gilchrist, McGrath, Bill O’Reilly, Davidson, Lindwall; Yorkshire: Boycott, Hutton, Sutcliffe, Root, Trueman, Illingworth; Barbados: Greenidge, Worrell, Weekes, Walcott, Hall, Sobers, Marshall, Garner (my due apologies to the illustrious players that I may have missed out). Even if a post-war cutoff is applied, the batsmen in each list certainly dwarf Mumbai’s, and they also produced world-class bowlers to boot. Lest I be accused of “jealousy”, I would like to state on record that my home state Karnataka perhaps has contributed as many world class players — if not more — as Mumbai (same goes for Saurashtra, by the way); besides, their bowling roster occupies pride of place in Indian cricketing history, and they were some of the most self-effacing cricketers as well.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d like to reiterate that bowlers are the match-winners in the longest format of the game. At best, a batsman can set up a match, and occasionally win the team the match by chasing down a lofty fourth-innings score. A batsman may score 500 runs in an innings but if the bowling lineup cannot muster 20 wickets (fewer if a declaration is involved), a team cannot win. Based on historical trends, it can generally be said that batsmen score runs in victories and draws, whereas the bowler has great wicket tallies mostly only in wins — which shows their starring role in the longest format.
There was a time when the Indian team was dominated by players from Mumbai (and naturally, there were suspicions of a Mumbai-bias in selection). Seven Mumbai players represented India at Lords in 1952; in the immortal 1991 Ranji trophy final, the Mumbai team had as many as eight Test-capped players. Back then, players either had to be from Mumbai, or had to perform against them to be noticed; if not, you didn’t exist in terms of national reckoning. Many players shifted to Mumbai for this reason as well. Perhaps this tendency of piling on meaningless runs and glorifying individual batting statistics came from Mumbai as well? Mumbai’s draw percentage is around 46%. This reeks of a dominance built on the basis of batting alone.
Of the international sides, who has the highest draw percentage? It is India, with around 42%. No doubt, Mumbai cricket's tendency to worship batsmen (and many of their meaningless landmarks) has had an inimical influence on Indian cricket. Which other cricketing culture laps up monstrous scores in school-level cricket (case in point: Pranav Dhanawade)? Prowess gained by racking up tournament victories built on the basis of giant first-innings leads is hardly the ideal preparation for an international competition. If Mumbai deserve their accolades for their batting history, a large part of the blame for not giving bowling its due should be shouldered by Mumbai cricket.
An organised cricket culture was non-existent outside Bombay till the 1960s; turf wickets, three-day games and other basic infrastructural facilities were not the norm in other regions until recently, and their bowling revolved around the defensive tactics of testing the patience of a batsman with a 7-2 field. Additionally, the top 2 teams in the trophy hardly faced each other in the final as the tournament had a zonal format where only one team qualified from a zone till the 1970s, at the height of the Mumbai empire.
Its inward looking culture is symptomatic of a narrow worldview satisfied with domestic hegemony rather than global excellence. It is rather surprising that for a city that prides itself on a keen, calculating mind and the business of getting things done, Mumbai has contributed very little in the business of winning Test matches for India through its bowlers. Ramachandra Guha too has noted the absence of world-class bowlers in the Bombay all-time XI , something which Makarand Waingankar has tried to apologetically explain in his A Million Broken Windows (many erstwhile competitors of Bombay cricket, clearly enamoured by its Ranji trophy winning mentality, of have tried to explain this recurring deficiency in the book).
But the most annoying, grating part of Mumbai cricket? The endless stream of “anecdotes”, “distilled wisdom” and narratives of a self-aggrandising, narcissistic, pretentious team filled with circle jerks, so enamoured and infatuated with their incestuous selves. Tendulkar has a great straight drive? Obviously, in his formative years, he played in gullies with tall buildings and narrow roads where scoring straight was the only way to go. Why is a Mumbai batsman khadoos (never mind most of them didn’t display it in the international arena)? You tell me — why would a hard-working, middle-class boy, who travels for three hours along with a heavy kitbag in neutron-star-dense local trains just for a chance to bat, give up his wicket so easily? The resilient spirit of Mumbai, the will to make it is so overpowering, all-pervasive and part of the city’s cultural fabric that each kid is supplied with oodles of this secret sauce. Got out at 47 trying to force the pace in a lost cause? Why, he should have knocked the ball around for a fifty and then tried to force the pace. How strong was your Bombay team? Back in my day, getting into the Bombay team was tougher than getting into the Indian team. Of course, this was if you were a batsman or a ’keeper. Bowlers were always welcome. This list goes on and on.
Viewing the excessive backslapping bonhomie that is in full force with every new season from the outside seems repulsive, especially when more illustrious teams with greater achievements and contributions in the world arena go about their business in a quieter manner. That we were regaled with the same self-congratulatory tales over and over again, even in recent times, speaks volumes about a nation’s cricketing history riddled with chronic under-achievement and insecurity.
No doubt, Indian cricket owes much of its early cognition of cricket to Mumbai — the first ever Indian team to tour England were the Parsis, most of whom were from Bombay; the precursors to the Ranji trophy — from The Bombay Pentangular all the way back to the Presidency Match were based in the city. But in today’s age, it is best to have moved on from the Mumbai-centric cultural imperialism and set higher standards and goals as a cricketing team.
In a pleasant coincidence, India’s best results in its Test history have come at a time when the Indian team has very few Mumbai players; one wonders if it is merely a correlation, or a causation.
