Mid-Day
Mumbai, Feb 10: "Don't remind me about that, yaar!” Sunil Gavaskar’s Melbourne walk-off in 1981 was the last thing former Test all-rounder Bapu Nadkarni wanted to talk about as he settled into his office seat yesterday.
A slight hesitation and a chuckle later, Nadkarni could not stop the flow of memories. “Sunny was shaping to get a hundred before he was declared leg before,” recalled 73-year old Nadkarni, who was assistant manager of the team.
“I requested Wing Commander Durrani to do something. Else, the Test would be forfeited. Meanwhile, I told the players to stay in the viewing enclosure and no one should go to the dressing room,” Nadkarni said.
Asked how he reacted on reaching the dressing room, Gavaskar said, “I don’t remember. Guess I would have thrown my gloves but not the bat — never the bat — it’s too precious to throw and it might break, gloves don’t.”
According to Nadkarni, the little master soon joined his mates in the players enclosure. “He stood before me and said, ‘Sorry Bapuji’ and I said, ‘Fair enough. It’s OK.’
The Indians ended up laughing away to that same dressing room after Australia were bowled out for 83.
Profile of R G "Bapu" Nadkarni, a maiden-over specialist:
courtesy: Cricinfo
Full name Rameshchandra Gangaram Nadkarni
Born April 4, 1933, Nasik, Maharashtra
Current age 72 years+
Major teams India, Maharashtra, Mumbai
Batting style Left-hand bat
Bowling style Slow left-arm orthodox
Batsmen faced with the problem of playing Bapu Nadkarni's left-arm spin had two scoring options to choose from: nil and negligible.
Nadkarni was one of the game's most noted economist ever - he gave away just 1.67 runs per over over in his Test career. In the 1960-61 series against Pakistan, he returned figures of 32-24-23-0 at Kanpur followed by 34-24-24-1 at Delhi.
He crowned that with Test cricket's finest display of quantity-control bowling, with 23 successive maidens in his 32-27-5-0 against England at Madras in 1964.
His legendary parsimony and precision were the result of untiring research and development in the nets - he would bowl endlessly at a coin placed on a good length.
Although he is mainly remembered for his bowling, Nadkarni was actually a competent allrounder. An obstinate batsman with a pronounced crouching stance, he scored 52 and 122, both not out, against England at Kanpur in 1963-64, and in his next outing, against Australia at Chennai, he came up with his Test best bowling effort: 5-31 and 6-91. And with a first-class average of more than 40, and an innings of 283 not out for Bombay v Delhi to his credit, he'd have been an automatic pick if one-day cricket had been around in his time.