For more than a couple of generations, Indian cricket’s fame and fortunes both at home and abroad were a direct result of its spin bowling, scripted through the 60s and the 70s primarily by four men — the famed spin quartet considered the most potent bunch of slow bowling in tandem ever.
Its exploits — Bishan Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrashekhar and S. Venkataraghavan — has now been brought out in a book. ‘Fortune Turners: The Quartet That Spun India To Glory’ by Aditya Bhushan and Sachin Bajaj has anecdotes, incidents and explanations of the times gone by from its main protagonists themselves.
And one of them, Bedi, was present at its launch here on Sunday, in a gathering that saw the likes of Kapil Dev and former Indian hockey captains Zafar Iqbal and Aslam Sher Khan in attendance. “We were very fortunate that we all played together and we were very proud of each other. There was never a moment when someone took five wickets and the other three would sulk. We took pride in each other’s performance and success,” Bedi reminisced.
“But beyond that, I think our performances were based on the two captains we played under, primarily Tiger (Mansur Ali Khan) Pataudi who, to my mind, was the best thing to have happened to Indian cricket,” he added.
Great, but not athletic
Kapil, who made his overseas debut under Bedi in 1978 to Pakistan, admitted he looked up to them. “Sitting with them itself was more enjoyable than anything else — how they ate, tied their laces, their mannerisms — we used to look up to them for everything. Only, they were not great athletes,” he quipped.
But when Bedi retorted that the spinners would have been redundant today, Kapil was quick to disagree. “I think cricketers adapt to the era they are playing in. These people had the ability, the art of bowling. Today if you look back, you realise they had something which history will never see again. Even today in T20s, you need a great spinner if you have to win a competition,” he said.
Asked about the one quality in each of his three contemporaries that he admired, Bedi was quick to list them. “I loved Venkat’s tenacity, he could persevere in what he had set his mind to do. Prasanna was the best in his craftiness – both with his hand and his mind. And Chandrashekhar, I call him God’s own hand. He was class apart. Imagine, even Viv Richards used to tremble facing Chandra!”
The book has been published by Global Cricket School.