MUMBAI: It’s been a month since Bishan Singh Bedi has passed away, but the former India captain keeps getting remembered by those who played with him. On Friday, at the Reliance Digital presents 92nd annual prize distribution function of The Times Cricket Shield for the year 2022-2023, former India left-arm seamer
Karsan Ghavri narrated an interesting incident while playing under Bedi’s captaincy, when he took five wickets bowling left-arm spin, much to Bedi’s surprise.
“I was basically a left-arm seamer. Out of my 109 Test wickets, only eight have come bowling left-arm spin. During a Test match against Tony Greig’s England at the Wankhede in 1976, Bedi, who was the India captain, went inside the dressing room for a massage or something.
Sunil Gavaskar, who was the vice-captain then, gave me the ball. I bowled eight-nine overs, in which I picked up five wickets, and England were all out,” recalled Ghavri to a warm applause.
He then continued: “As we were coming off the ground, Bedi was all ready to come back to the ground, and said: ‘I’m ready to bowl. I’ll run through England.’ However, after seeing everyone coming back to the dressing room, he was left surprised and asked our manager: ‘what’s going on?’ ‘England have been bowled out,’ the manager replied. ‘How’ Bedi asked. ‘Ghavri took five wickets,’ the manager replied. ‘Did we take the new ball, Bedi asked. ‘No, he bowled spin,’ ‘Really?’ wondered Bedi.”
Ghavri’s success as a left-arm spinner then went on to land him in ‘trouble’ with the captain.
“In the dressing room, he (Bedi) got hold of me, and said: ‘Karsan, stop bowling spin.’ ‘why paaji. I just took five wickets,’ I asked. ‘No, forget in the match, don’t even bowl in the nets,’ he said, before saying (in jest): ‘if you take a ‘fiver,’ what will I do?’”
Meanwhile, Partha Sinha — Chairman of the Times Shield — recalled his memories of having watched Ghavri, his ‘hero’ and other star cricketers in the Times Shield.
Ghavri, a popular cricketer of the 70s and early 80s, fondly recalled his long association with the Times Shield as a player.
“It is a premier cricket tournament in Mumbai. I played for 18 years in the Times Shield. I played for five years for ACC, with greats like Polly Umrigar, Bapu Nadkarni, Ramakant Desai and Dilip Sardesai as my teammates, and later Sunil Gavaskar joined us in 1971. Later on, I switched my job to JK Chemicals. Today, it’s called Raymonds. Vijayapat Singhania and Tiger Pataudi (former India captain) insisted that we form a team and participate in the Times Shield. That side was very competent, and it had players like Mohinder and Surinder Amarnath. Unfortunately, that team was there for only three years.”
Ghavri’s third and final team was Nirlon Sports Club.
Ghavri urged the Times Group to start a similar competition for the women cricketers of the city too.
“My only appeal to the Times group is to start a women’s Times Shield too. The Indian women’s team is doing extremely well. Every state has a women’s team now. So why not give more and more opportunities to women cricketers in the city, so that they get more job opportunities, more matches and basically more competitive cricket,” Ghavri stressed.
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