‘They all ganged up, but he kept fighting’: Sanjay Manjrekar reveals how Dilip Vengsarkar secured his India spot

Mumbai: Former India and Mumbai captain Dilip Vengsarkar is widely respected for being a great cricketer during his playing days in the 1970s and 1980s, and also for being one of the best chief selectors India ever had. Both as India's captain and later as chief selector, Vengsarkar would not hesitate to back players he believed in, even at the cost of being unpopular among his colleagues.

At an event in the city on Wednesday evening, former India batter-turned-commentator Sanjay Manjrekar recalled how Vengsarkar always supported and mentored him and how he "put his foot down" for a young Manjrekar's selection for India's 1989 tour of the West Indies. After much argument, a young Manjrekar, who had made his Test debut against the West Indies in Delhi in November 1987, was finally drafted in as the 17th member of the squad. The tour turned out to be disastrous as India were blanked 5-0 in the ODIs and lost the Test series 3-0, but a silver lining was the emergence of the 24-year-old Manjrekar as a technically sound batter capable of countering quality pace.



Picked at the expense of veteran batter Mohinder Amarnath, Manjrekar finished the series as India's highest run-scorer, scoring 200 runs in four Tests at an average of 33.33, including a gallant 108 at Bridgetown, Barbados, in the second Test, even as the rest of India's batters floundered against the West Indies' lethal pace attack of Curtly Ambrose, Ian Bishop, Courtney Walsh and Malcolm Marshall.

Recalling how Vengsarkar pushed for his selection while overcoming stiff resistance from the selection committee chaired by Raj Singh Dungarpur, which met after the third Test against New Zealand in Hyderabad in December 1988, Manjrekar said:

"One thing that I owe to Dilip is that he backed me, no matter what. Dilip has been in my corner and, with the kind of nature and approach I have in my life, there aren't too many people in my corner. I'll give you an example of my selection for India when he was the Indian captain.

"So this was the tour of the West Indies in 1989 and he was the captain. We were in Hyderabad and there was this selection meeting, and it went on for two hours. We were all waiting in our rooms, waiting for the good news. We were all on the fringe of playing for India, wondering whether we had made it.

"I still remember Dilip came, wearing this white sadra, proper night attire, and he had oil on his head. He had taken a nice head massage.

"He came in and said, 'So much tension and stress in the selection meeting.' And the greatest stress for him was to get me into the team. I was the 17th member picked on that tour of the West Indies. They had about 16 players in the squad and I was the 17th. He got a lot of resistance from other selectors, who were saying that he's not ready and he doesn't deserve to be here.

"But Dilip was the guy who put his foot down. They all ganged up, but he kept fighting and I got onto that tour and whatever career I have today."

Apart from Manjrekar, many of Vengsarkar's former India and Mumbai teammates — Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Karsan Ghavri, Raju Kulkarni and Chandrakant Pandit — along with Mumbai Cricket Association president Ajinkya Naik, were present at the launch of a book on the 116-Test veteran, aptly titled A Legend with a Difference, penned by his King George School cricket teammate Sanjay Satam.

Remembering how Vengsarkar boosted his confidence on that West Indies tour, Manjrekar said, "I was the highest scorer in a very low-scoring series. He (Dilip) was ready to play me straight away and gave me a lot of confidence when I was playing local cricket.

"So, deliberately in front of me, he would quietly praise me so that I could hear him saying something nice about me. That was a huge dose of confidence."

"So in the West Indies, I was having dinner and he said, 'Manjhi, are you coming to play tomorrow?' I said, 'Yes, of course.' He wanted to find out if I was ready."

'Dilip was scared to sleep alone at night'
Manjrekar revealed that during his playing days, Vengsarkar was scared to sleep alone in his room at night.

"Dilip has one major weakness that everyone knows and now I think he's overcome it. He gets scared to spend the night alone in his room and that was one of the reasons I don't think he wanted to captain India for too long because then you get a single room and he loves sharing a room!" Manjrekar said.

Manjrekar added, "Vengsarkar is indeed a Legend with a Difference. He was actually a legend but, for us, he was a buddy and that is where his greatness lies. That's the rare quality that he has.

"He's a very humble man with people who are in his corner and I'm very proud to say I'm very privileged to be in his corner."

Crediting Vengsarkar for mentoring him in his early days in Team India, Manjrekar said, "He was a mentor to begin with. On the tour of England in 1990, I learnt that with steak and kidney pie, you've got to have a little dash of English mustard, and with crispy aromatic duck in a Chinese restaurant.

"Every time I sit down to have that, I remember Dilip!"

Manjrekar recalled that despite being a senior player who had played more than 100 Tests, Vengsarkar was like a "buddy" to youngsters like him in the India dressing room.

"Dilip, despite being a senior player, was a little different in the sense that, despite the age gap and the stature gap as well, we were buddies. Can you imagine?

"Dilip was the captain on one particular tour, but he used to find time to hang out with us. It was amazing that a guy who had already played more than 100 Tests still found the time and had the humility to be with people like us."

Praising Vengsarkar's dry sense of humour, Manjrekar said, "I always see the funny side of Dilip. I mean, he is incredible. Sometimes I think he intentionally keeps a serious face and says something funny."