Sketch by Maha
With all the controversy surrounding the recent Mankading incident, we share an extract from the chapter 'Vinoo and the Verb' from Arunabha Sengupta’s book Elephant in the Stadium
Here is what Sengupta says about the recent instance of Mankading:
”We have already seen rampant examples of equating lawful dismissal to supposed underhand dealing, alongside elevating the act of stealing a yard or three by backing up before the delivery to ‘playing the game’.
”History is ignored, facts are misstated in newspapers… the entire gamut of the sham that is always accompanied with the curious ‘spirit of cricket’
”This last term is a spurious, vague construct that means nothing in particular and can be moulded anywhichway to suit the whining (mainly English) cause. This term grew in use and abuse from the 1920s with the Plum Warners of the game – attributing a simple sport with a fictitous glorious past, anointing it with something esoteric, something undefinable – perfectly synonymous with the sense of self-righteousness and self-proclaimed moral superiority that accompanied the Empire days.
”Cricket being one of the symbols of the British civilisation and subject to hardcore evangelisation, this spirit was an important fabrication.”
The chapter in question starts with Cardus singing praises of Vinoo Mankad's incredible performance in the 1952 Lord's Test - marking him out as an ‘Indian cricketer bringing again to test-match the spirit of youth and adventure’
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By the time Cardus marked him out as an ‘Indian cricketer bringing again to test-match the spirit of youth and adventure’, Vinoo Mankad was 35. He had made his mark long, long ago, in the pre-war days when Lionel Tennyson had brought his team along in 1937/38. In the victorious fourth unofficial ‘Test’, Mankad scored an unbeaten 113 from No.3 and picked up 3-18 and 3-55. He finished the series averaging 62.66 with the bat and 14.33 with the ball, leading Tennyson to remark that he would find a place in any World XI.
At the start of the 1950s, it was had been difficult to remain unaware of Vinoo Mankad.
Yes, he had all those runs, and would go on to register the then highest score by an Indian batsman. He had all those wickets. Besides, Mankad had also added himself into the lexicon of cricket during the 1947/48 winter in Australia.
That was when he had run Bill Brown out in a tour match – after furnishing a warning – for backing up too far before the ball had been bowled. When Brown continued to rush out prematurely during the second Test at Sydney, Mankad ran him out again and eventually his name became a verb associated with that mode of dismissal. Hot and fiery debates raged for days – in homes, pubs, trams, trains and ferryboats. The newspaper offices were hit by an avalanche of letters.
While men like Bradman himself, Bill O’Reilly, Vic Richardson and Ray Robinson were solidly behind Mankad, a few like K.S. Duleepsinhji and Jack Fingleton thought otherwise. And while Mankad was roundly criticised in some of the letters to the editors, one missive pointedly asked, ‘Would Brown have done this sort of thing against the Englishmen? I’ll guarantee he wouldn’t, because he knew he wouldn’t have got away with it. Knowing the sportsmanship of this Indian team he imposes on it … The only bad sportsmanship was shown by the batsman.’
The debate rages till this day.
Charlie Griffith was roundly booed by the Adelaide crowd when he ran out Ian Redpath, but once again found support in the unflinching O’Reilly.
When he dismissed Derek Randall in this manner, Ewen Chatfield was reminded by Ian Botham that he had once been hit by a bouncer and stopped breathing. ‘You’ve already died on the pitch once.’
Kapil Dev warned Peter Kirsten before running him out, thus becoming the target of a torrent of abuse unleashed by the departing batsman. Kepler Wessels supposedly struck him on the shin with his bat. India’s 1992/93 visit to South Africa being a diplomatic hot-potato of a tour, the footage of this incident was carefully removed under the supervision of Ali Bacher himself.
Jos Buttler, done in by Sachithra Senanayake during a 2014 ODI, was shocked when five years later Ravichandran Ashwin inflicted it on him in the IPL.
The most high-profile incident has probably been the 2016 Under-19 World Cup match in which West Indian captain Keemo Paul decided the match with a Mankad dismissal with Zimbabwe three runs from victory.
Every such incident still polarises the cricket world. There are voices that still claim that it is against that curious esoteric concept called ‘the spirit of the game’.
To me, it is as much against the spirit of cricket as a centre-forward anticipating a back pass from a callous defender and scoring past the goalkeeper is against the tenets of football. Somehow, none of the sentinels of this abstract concept of cricketing purity seem to mind batsmen cheating a part of a run.
However, the question is, did Mankad really start it all? Yes, he did bring off the first such dismissal in Test cricket. But, the mode of dismissal has been around almost since the days of cricketing antiquity.
According to the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS), the first such incident in first-class cricket occurred in 1835, effected by a round-arm fast bowler of Nottinghamshire called Thomas Barker. At the time of writing, the ACS lists 39 such instances in first-class cricket, 12 in the 18th century, 22 in the 19th and five in the past 20 years. If we equate ‘Mankading’ with the spirit of cricket, we have to conclude that there has not been much change in cricketing moral and spirit through the course of history.
The Nicholas Felix classic Felix on the Bat even has an illustration depicting this as a mode of dismissal. So, it had been in vogue before 1845.
However, the most telling evidence in terms of the acceptance of this manner of dismissal comes from a piece in the book A History of Harrow School. The said article is penned by Spencer Gore, old Harrovian and winner of the first Wimbledon singles title in 1877.
Gore describes the mode of dismissal in 1870 during the quintessential English fixture, Eton v Harrow at Lord’s. An over-eager Harrow batsman, Conrad Wallroth, was run out in this fashion by the Eton captain. ‘Harris … noticed that Wallroth, who was well set, was backing up too eagerly. He put himself on to bowl (quite rightly, to my mind), and, pretending to bowl, caught Wallroth tripping, and he paid the penalty.’
There was no warning and Gore seems quite appreciative of the opportunism shown by Harris.
The Harris of Eton in this tale is none other than our old friend who went on to become the captain of England, and later governor of Bombay, and, for all intents and purposes, ran English cricket for decades. Yes, Lord Harris himself.
All this was half a century before the ‘spirit of cricket’ claptrap shrouded the game with its sustained nonsense from the 1920s. That was the same decade that started with Johnny Douglas and Arthur Mailey each discovering that the other was tampering with the ball in the course of a Test match.
Less than ten years ago as I write, Vinoo’s younger son Rahul Mankad was attending a formal luncheon during an India-Australia Test match at Melbourne. Paul Sheahan, then president of the Melbourne Cricket Club, introduced him as ‘son of the notorious Mankad’.
No one points to the photograph on the back cover of the carefully airbrushed biography Gubby Allen: A Man of Cricket and observes that the author Jim Swanton and the subject Allen are sitting in the garden at Lord’s named after the notorious Harris.
Yardsticks and attitudes.
Gandhi the lob bowler
Perhaps most curious case of equating this mode of dismissal to something heinous occurs in an Ian Buruma novel.
Playing the Game is a very un-Buruma-like book by the Anglo-Dutch author who otherwise specialises in socio-political non-fiction. An unnamed writer researching Ranji’s life in the 1980s comes across a hitherto unknown and unpublished letter in the royal archives of Nawanagar. The letter essentially forms the text of the novel.
The premise is interesting in the context of this book. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, was all set to visit Nawanagar as part of his 1921 tour of India. At the last moment, his plans were revised, and as a minor kingdom, Nawanagar was dropped off the itinerary. In a petulant reaction, Ranji writes to – who else, but – C.B. Fry, asking his friend to judge his claims as someone who deserved to play host to the crown prince. Thereby he launches on an account of his life in fascinating detail – covering every aspect, cricketing, regal and otherwise.
There are lots of recognisable nuggets from Ranji’s life that will delight an adherent of cricket history.
The most curious bit about the book is the portrayal of the schoolboy M.K. Gandhi as a lob bowler with a vicious break from the leg. Ranji comes across him during a match for Rajkumar College. In the tense climactic moments of the game the young Gandhi dismisses him by flicking off the bails at the non-striker’s end as the young Ranji leaves his crease before the ball is bowled.
Later, Gandhi meets Ranji in London and the two watch cricket together. Ranji is fed up with Gandhi’s pretentious and largely misguided commentary on the game.
As far as we know from historic archives, Gandhi never indulged in cricket. He was never a cricketer of either ability or note, and the accusation of ‘Mankading’ is rather far-fetched as far as poetic license goes. He did meet Ranji in London, but no account talks of their watching cricket together.
It may be that in his letter to Fry, Ranji wrote fictitious accounts of Gandhi’s unscrupulous behaviour on the cricket field to underline that he was dead against whatever trouble the man was causing the British with his satyagraha nonsense in the early 1920s. However, if that had been the intention, Buruma does not clarify it in the novel.
What is clear however is that to the Anglophile Ranji, Gandhi is a troublemaker and thereby painted in negative shades. And the supposed dubious manner of dismissal is one of the dark marks that go on to constitute that negative character.
The satire achieved is sheer genius.