by Abhishek Mukherjee
Port-of-Spain, 1958.
Hanif Mohammad was brimming with confidence after his marathon 337. He was obviously taken aback when Clyde Walcott advised him to not hook Roy Gilchrist.
What could go wrong, he thought, to a man not fresh from probably the greatest grind in the history of cricket. So when Gilchrist bounced, Hanif went for it, then realised it was too quick for him. Hanif arched back, and back, and further back, to an extent that his head came level with the bails.
He lived to tell the tale, but never quite recovered from the shock. Even at eighty he recalled: "I still live to this day the fear of a thunderbolt from Roy Gilchrist during that much-celebrated visit to the West Indies in 1958."
Roy Gilchrist was fast. Very fast, in fact, despite his 5'8 frame. His high leap, a high-arm action, and long hands all made for his lack of height.
But what made him stand out was his fury when he could not remove a batsman, and worse, when he got hit by a batsman. He resorted to bouncers, even beamers, even in club cricket.
It was his temper, his attitude that brought Gilchrist's career to an abrupt halt by 29. He never even played First-Class career before that. He played only 13 Tests, and finished with 57 wickets at 26.68 and a strike-rate of 56.6.
These numbers are comparable to Wes Hall's (26.38 and 54.2) and better than Charlie Griffith's (28.54 and 59.9). Decades later, Hall would hail Gilchrist as his mentor. But while Hall played 48 Tests and got 192 wickets and Griffith had 94 from 28, Gilchrist's career was cut short too soon.
While comparing the two, Chandu Borde said: "Hall was fast in patches and used to mix his pace cleverly. Gilchrist was fast all the time and had tremendous stamina."
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The Indians were in a mess on their home tour against West Indies – to the extent that they had to appoint four captains in five Tests. They lost 0-4, largely due to the pace of Gilchrist (26 wickets at 16,11) and Hall (30 at 17.67).
Beyond that numbers, what stands out is Gilchrist's glee at the plight of the Indians against him: "Those Indians were really on a 'hop'. I sprinkled a lot of bouncers in my bowling, and a beamer or two for good luck … Real little Indian rubber men, those batsmen, the way they bounced about."
Captain Gerry Alexander did not approve of such generous use of the bouncer, but did not step in till late in the series. Of the two, while Hall typically aimed at intimidating the batsmen into submission, Gilchrist seemed to overdo things a bit. He often bowled beamers, even against the lesser batsmen, even in the tour matches.
By the time Alexander intervened, things had already gone out of hand. In the Madras Test, Kripal Singh hit him for 3 boundaries and – somewhat foolishly – taunted him. Gilchrist overstepped intentionally and dislodged Kripal's turban with a bouncer hurled from 18 yards.
At this stage Alexander had been openly criticising Gilchrist as "too dangerous", but still did not leave him out. In the fifth Test at Delhi, Gilchrist broke Manjrekar's arm with a snorter. While there was nothing specifically wrong with the ball per se, it certainly did not help improve the mood.
Then came the tour match against North Zone, where Swaranjit Singh, the local captain, used to be Alexander's friend at Cambridge. Word had got around Swaranjit had apparently written something nasty about Gilchrist, who saw this as an opportunity to get back.
Gilchrist clean bowled Swaranjit for 1 in the first innings, but Swaranjit started confidently during the chase of 246. Alexander asked Gilchrist to bowl the last over before lunch.
The second ball of the over was slightly overpitched. Swaranjit drove it straight past Gilchrist for four and mocked Gilchrist (why on earth?) with the words "You like that one? Beautiful, wasn’t it?"
Gilchrist later described the next ball as the fastest he had ever bowled. The beamer whistled past Swaranjit. Having softened him up, Gilchrist pitched up the next delivery, Swaranjit edged it, and the catch was dropped by – Alexander.
The next ball was obviously another beamer. Swaranjit somehow escaped. Alexander had a word with Gilchrist, but there was no stopping him now. Another beamer followed, and the teams broke for lunch.
The tour selectors met, and the decision was unanimous. "You leave by the next flight. Good afternoon,” Alexander informed him. There were rumours that Gilchrist pulled a knife at Alexander after this.
His Test career was over.
Was Alexander too stern a person to handle Gilchrist? Could Worrell, almost certainly a better man manager, and also a black person, have handled him better? One can only speculate.
Worrell had *apparently* asked for Gilchrist for the historic 1960-61 tour of Australia, but to no avail.
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Ironically, Gilchrist's final taste of First-Class cricket came on Indian soil, in 1962-63. To improve the performance of Indians against quality fast bowling, BCCI invited four West Indian fast bowlers to play Indian domestic cricket in 1962-63. Gilchrist played for Hyderabad.
He played only one Ranji Trophy match – the quarterfinal against Bengal, where he took 9 wickets but could not go past Bengal thanks to Pankaj Roy's 112 and 118. Roy hooked Gilchrist for three consecutive boundaries during the innings. Gilchrist finished the over bowling underarm.
But he had certainly not changed. His temper issues resurfaced in the Lancashire League, where he picked up 460 wickets at under 11. The league batsmen, nowhere close to his class and pace, succumbed meekly, some of them out of fear.
But he made headlines for all sorts of wrong reasons. He overstepped deliberately to bowl bouncers and beamers. He once uprooted a stump and hit an Australian batsman on his head. Once, when a batsman ran away towards square-leg, he stopped in his run-up and threw the ball at him. At times he even carried the confrontations outside the field.
And in 1967, following a heated argument, Gilchrist grabbed his wife Novlyn's throat with his left hand, pushed her against a wall, and branded her face with a hot iron. He got away with a three-month term.
Gilchrist could have been an all-time great. He finished his career as one of their what-ifs.
The medical world in 2020 would almost certainly have done a better job at calming him down, helping him with temper management, getting the most of his immense potential.
Roy Gilchrist was born on 28 June 1934