The very thought of
Ranji conjures images of the leg-glance. He was the inventor of the shot, one
that was patently his own and an early glimpse of the suppleness of wrists that
characterised the batting of later Indian stalwarts Gundappa Viswanath, Mohammad
Azharuddin and V.V.S. Laxman.
Ranji worked hard to
hone his talent, hiring professional bowlers from Surrey while he was at Cambridge
The outcome was a
batting style that was as unique as it was novel, and it perplexed the English.
(Neville) Cardus elucidated in Good Days
(1934): “In the ‘nineties the game was absolutely English; it was even
Victorian. W.G. Grace for years had stamped on cricket the English mark and the
mark of the period. It was the age of simple first principles, of the stout
respectability of the straight bat and the good-length balls. And then suddenly
this visitation of dusky, supple legerdemain happened; a man was seen playing cricket
as nobody in England
(Peter) Hartland
summed up the impact of Ranji on the game: “The batting star of the Golden Age
in England was Ranjitsinhji, with a first-class average of 56 - virtually as
high as any English-qualified player has ever achieved and quite phenomenal for
the time, particularly since he scored at around 50 runs an hour. Taking a
qualification of ten thousand runs for all English batsmen who faced their
first ball in the nineteenth century, Ranji’s first-class average is approached
only by Sussex teammate (C.B.) Fry with 50. Test bowling did not slow
Ranjitsinhji much, and the combination of his high average and scoring rate in
relation to others really does mark him as out of the ordinary.”
Ranji’s first-class
average of 56.37 was the highest for a full career by an England-based player
until as late as 1986 when Geoff Boycott retired with a fractionally higher
average of 56.84. And if one considers that Ranji’s career was all but over in
1904; his appearances thereafter were sporadic in 1908 and 1912, and farcical
in 1920, his deeds are even more astounding. Upto 1904, Ranji had scored 22,402
runs at an average of 58.49 with 65 hundreds in 267 matches, really in less
than a decade. That is the true reflection of his genius.
To the outside world
Ranji was an exceptionally gifted prince who toiled diligently in the nets to
emerge as the finest batsman of his era. Yet not many realised the inner
turmoil that he undoubtedly underwent during his best years at the wicket, what
with the drama of his adoption that never was, the machinations over his
succession as ruler and his financial woes at the time. And he was laid low by
illness for long periods. One has to marvel at the fact that he excelled at the
game under these trying circumstances. Or more likely, he used them as a spur
to motivate himself and to prove to those who mattered that he was fit to be
king.
Yet his charm
transcended all the elegant runs that he made. As (Gilbert) Jessop wrote: “From
the moment he stepped out of the pavilion he drew all eyes and held them. No
one who saw him bat will ever forget it. He was the first man I ever knew who
wore silk shirts, and there was something almost romantic about the very flow
of his sleeves and the curve of his shoulders. He drew the crowds wherever he
went, and at the height of his cricket days the shops in Brighton
would empty if he passed along the street. Everyone wanted to see him.”
There was little
doubt that Ranjitsinhji had transformed batting forever. As late as 1944,
Pelham Warner wrote in The Book of
Cricket: “With his wonderful eye and wrists, he could play back to almost
any ball, however good a length, and however fast. Like Bradman, he seldom
played a genuine forward stroke, for, again like Bradman he found that balls to
which he could not play back he could, with his quickness of foot, get to and
drive.” This ‘play back or drive’ method, however, could only be used by one
with a sharp eye and quicksilver footwork, like a Ranji or a Bradman. English
batsmen attempted to copy it with disastrous results. It takes someone
extraordinary to play in an extraordinary way. Ranji scored more profusely than
anyone had done before, just as Bradman was to do three decades later.
Don’s Century
Published
by Sporting Links
ISBN
978-81-901668-5-0, Fully Illustrated
French
Fold 21.5 cm x 28 cm, 188 Pages
Price
Rupees 995
Indra
Vikram Singh’s latest books published by Sporting Links:
A
Maharaja’s Turf ISBN 978-81-901668-3-6
The
Big Book of World Cup Cricket ISBN 978-81-901668-4-3
Don’s
Century ISBN 978-81-901668-5-0
Crowning Glory ISBN
978-81-901668-6-7
Distributed
in India by: Variety Book Depot, AVG Bhawan, M-3 Middle Circle,
Connaught Circus, New Delhi-110001, India. Tel. + 91 11
23417175, 23412567, Email varietybookdepot@gmail.com.
