Farewell To A Man of Elegance

News of the death of one of India's finest cricketers, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, severs a link between the past generation of cricketers and the current superstars. Robbed of his right eye in a car accident when he was only twenty, he was later to be robbed of his royal title when the Indian government removed such things in 1971. Regardless of said decree, those of us who were seduced by the romance of the game as boys, will always remember him as the 9th Nawab of Patuadi.

The Nawab became Indian captain at just 21 and leading by example, he scored nearly three thousand Test runs despite only seeing from his left eye. In similar circumstance, the English batsman Colin Milburn retired. His highest Test score was the 203x he scored against England at Ferez Shah Kotla in 1964 but there is general agreement his greatest batting was the brace of 75 and 85 against Australia in Melbourne in the first few days of 1968. In the first innings he was in a 5-25, batting down the order with an injured leg and in mist and rain, not ideal visual conditions for a man with one eye. Of the other batsmen, only Russi Surti, later of Queensland, made double figures against a rampaging Garth McKenzie who took 7-66. Simpson and Lawry passed the Indian score themselves and Ian Chappell, batting at five made 151 as Australia piled on the runs. Second time round, a future captain, Ajit Wadekar, made 99 and the Nawab batted with the tail but failed by 4 runs to make Australia bat again.

The Nawab's legacy was to create a group of Indian players who believed in themselves. He saw India's strength as spin and developed the policy which regularly saw three spinners chosen. India's greatest spinners emerged under his leadership: Bishen Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekar (himself crippled as a child by polio) and Venkat (look up the full name yourself). He also encouraged the wristy strokeplayers who are so much a trademark of Indian cricket still. Players such as Wadekar, Gundappa Viswanath, Ashok Mankad and Sunil Gavaskar were all directly developed under his guidance.

As a young man he captained Oxford and during his career he gained further captaincy success with Sussex. He was a Test match referee during the 1990's and had been an official of Indian cricket for a long time, becoming a strong opponent of Lalit Modi in recent years, even taking legal action against Modi and the Board for their failure to run cricket in India honourably.

The Nawab is survived by his actress wife Sharmila Tagore and their three children. Like Sharmila, two of their children are Bollywood actors.

Known as the Tiger, he was legendary for his refusal to submit. He was the first to instill this in Indian cricketers. In the end, a lung infection struck him down at 70. He used all the advantages the Raj gave him, including an education and the fine tuning of his cricket skills and took it back to India. In doing so he became the first building block upon which Indian cricket constructed the strongest cricket nation in the world.

Yet, with all his strength and determination, he was a man of elegance and style and peerless humility. Cricket can ill afford to lose such men.