Retired Ranji veteran Ashok Bambi
Lucknow: Exactly 50 years ago, we arrived in Bombay for an 18-day tour of eight matches.
The tour happened thanks to the kind help of Vilas Godbole, then Joint Secretary of the BCA, and our star bowler Vikram Lele. Vilas bhai was so impressed by Lele’s bowling that he rated him as another Chandrasekhar. When we reached Bombay, the Times of India even ran a small headline before our matches: “Another Chandra has arrived.” Sadly, back pain kept Lele from performing as expected. Still, his conversation made a deep impression on Polly Umrigar and Sunil Gavaskar, and he enjoyed some special facilities at Wankhede Stadium.
None of it would have been possible without the tireless efforts of the late Mohd Akram, who collected funds from our admirers. Each player paid just ₹60, and the club bore the rest.
The touring party of 16 who arrived in Bombay that day:
Ashok Bambi (Captain), Arun Bajaj, V.K. Merh, Abid Farooqi, Vijay Bhatia, Mohd Akram, Abhijeet Sinha, Vishwajeet Sinha, Anuj Gautam, Vikram Lele, Sharad Khandelwal, Virendra Rawat, Abhijeet Chaudhury, Dinesh Wahi, Himanshu Shukla, and Pt. Dhirendra Chaturvedi (Manager).
We opened against Sasanian Cricket Club and won by 5 wickets. The moment everyone remembers is Dinky Merh hitting the winning six off Balvinder Sandhu, who bowled off-spin in those days. Winning the next match earned us a good reputation, and the leading Bombay newspapers covered our games regularly. In all we played 8 matches, winning 4 and losing 4, against good teams.
The most memorable was the last, a two-day match against Century Rayons, whose side was full of top players. They batted the whole day and scored 325. Our start was horrible: we lost our first three wickets on the first three balls. The bowler was Tawade, a reserve member of the Bombay team, who took a hat-trick with left-arm inswingers. I top-scored with 36, and seven of our batsmen were out for a duck. They enforced the follow-on, but we requested them to end the match there, as most of us were exhausted by Bombay’s heat and humidity. We had been warned, and soon found out, that October is the worst month for Bombay’s weather.
Dinesh Wahi and Vishwajeet Sinha bowled well and learned a lot on the tour, and Pochu did a fine job behind the stumps. We made a name for ourselves in Bombay cricket and gained a great deal from the whole experience. The only real complaint was the heat and humidity.
We were refused accommodation at the Arya Samaj Mandir in Santacruz. Thanks to Polly Umrigar and Vilas Godbole, we were allowed to stay at Wankhede Stadium instead. We bathed in the players’ dressing room and slept on the pavilion stairs. Even so, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and we learned a lot about cricket and about life.
Fifty years on, that tour still warms our memories.
