by Arunabha Sengupta and Sumit Gangipadhyay
“You know what my new name is? I am Tate.”
“What?”
“Tate.”
“What is Tate?” she asked innocently. Swaminathan's disappointment was twofold: she had not known anything of his new title, and failed to understand its rich significance even when told. At other times he would have shouted at her. But now he was a fresh penitent, and so asked her kindly, “Do you mean to say that you don't know Tate?”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Tate, the greatest player, the greatest bowler on earth. I hope you know what cricket is, or are you fooling me?”
RK Narayan’s tales are full of such cricket references. Especially Swami and Friends, the first of the trilogy of novels— the others being The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher —set in British India in the fictional town Malgudi.
The compound wall of Rajam's bungalow is used a temporary wicket.
A portion of the wall was marked off with a piece of charcoal, and the captain arranged the field and opened the batting himself. Swaminathan took up the bowling. He held a tennis ball in his hand, took a few paces, and threw it over. Rajam swung the bat but missed it. The ball hit the wall right under the charcoal mark. Rajam was bowled out with the very first ball! There was a great shout of joy. The players pressed round Swaminathan to shake him and pat him on the back, he was given on the very spot the tide, 'Tate'.
Bradman flits through as well.
“There is one Mohideen, a dark fellow, oh, you know—you will have to keep an eye on him. He bats like Bradman. You will have to watch him.”
And then there are other cricketers
Swaminathan had not thought of cricket as something that he himself could play. He was, of course, familiar with Hobbs, Bradman, and Duleep, and vainly tried to carry their scores in his head, as Rajam did.
Once the Captain chides Swami “Even Bradman, Tate, and everybody spends four to five hours on the pitch every day, practising, practising. Do you think you are greater than they?”
There is MCC as well. But it stands for Malgudi Cricket Club.
Yet it is Tate who dominates the narrative as far as cricket is concerned.
He was a dark horse. On him rested a great task, a mighty responsibility. He was the Tate of the team, and he must bowl out all the eleven of the other team.
“I am taking practice, sir. We are playing a match against the Y.M.U. and Rajam is depending upon me for bowling. They call me Tate..”
Swami and Friends was originally published in 1935. A slightly abridged version of Swami and Friends, with two additional stories featuring Swami from Malgudi Days and Under the Banyan Tree were compiled into a volume called Malgudi Schooldays.
In 1935 was the high noon of Bradman’s career, and after all he was Bradman. Hobbs and Duleep were great names as well. At least so was the case at that time. It is a pity that when the name of Hobbs is displayed on the graphics during modern day cricket telecast, enormously paid commentators need to spell it out painstakingly as ‘Jay-Bee Hobbs’, but that is another story.
But in the novel the lingering allure of Tate shows through. It indicates the way he had stirred up the imagination of the Indian cricket lovers during the 1926-27 tour of the MCC. When he had scored 1249 runs at 34.69 and capture 128 wickets at 13.45.
RK Narayan, a lad of 20 when Tate toured India, had obviously been totally enamoured. After all, those were the days when Tate easily dominated the headlines, even towering above German plots.