Bishan Singh Bedi will be remembered not only for his cricket but his strength of character
Bishan Singh Bedi will be remembered not only for his cricket but his strength of character
Bishan Singh Bedi, who served cricket in multiple capacities as player, Test captain, team manager, coach, and selector, passed away on October 23, at the age of 77. Whether he was playing for Delhi in a Ranji Trophy match, or county cricket for Northamptonshire, or leading the Indian men’s team to victory in international cricket, the legendary spinner always attempted to put his best foot forward. Official recognition came with the Padma Shri Award in 1970 but his lasting contributions can be best understood through personal testimonies.
When Bedi, who was born in Amritsar in 1946, turned 75 in 2021, the Delhi-based publisher Roli Books published a comprehensive volume titled The Sardar of Spin: A Celebration of the Life and Art of Bishan Singh Bedi. A collection of essays edited by Sachin Bajaj with support from Venkat Sundaram, it is a must-read for those who follow Indian cricket.
Former cricketer and captain Kapil Dev, who wrote the foreword, recalls, “He was my first captain. He was also my first cricket manager when he took on the role in 1990 for the tours to New Zealand and England. I spent a lot of time with him, and believe me, it was education in cricket and life.” Bedi took it upon himself to guide young team members on their first overseas tours. When Dev made his debut in Pakistan, and “was subjected to sledging by some of the seniors in the Pakistan team”, he relied on Bedi’s support to stand up for himself.
Dev calls him a father figure because Bedi went beyond his job description and took young players under his wing. “He did not believe in saving on the allowances that he was privileged to have as a captain and later as a cricket manager. Like a true leader, Bishan paaji would treat us lavishly and did not allow us to part with our allowances,” remembers Dev. Moreover, Bedi demanded respect for players in the form of better fees, travel arrangements and accommodation. He did not hesitate to speak out for himself, his peers and his mentees.
Bedi’s influence on former cricketer and captain Sachin Tendulkar is also worth noting. In the same book, Tendulkar writes, “I always had this feeling that he treated me like his son. He would greet me as ‘Sashoo, my son’, and I could always feel the warmth in his tight hug. When one was down, he would try to strike a conversation and make one feel comfortable.”
Both Dev and Tendulkar credit Bedi for laying emphasis on fitness drills to prepare players for matches. In his essay, Tendulkar expresses gratitude for the fact that Bedi also made himself available for heart-to-heart chats for hours at a stretch. That meant a lot to him.
When Tendulkar turned 50 earlier this year, Simon & Schuster India published a book titled Sachin@50: Celebrating a Maestro. It is conceived and curated by Boria Majumdar. One of the glowing tributes in this book is from former cricketer Kiran More, who also served as Chairman of the Selection Committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
More narrates the story of Tendulkar’s first Test century in Manchester in 1990. Bedi, the team’s coach, was looking out for Tendulkar. More recalls, “The shots he (Tendulkar) played on the up were astonishing…I was slated to go in to bat next when he was batting with Manoj Prabhakar. We all wanted Sachin to get that hundred. I was moving around the dressing room, juggling balls. Bedi sir told me to sit quietly at one place till Sachin got his hundred.”
In another book titled Stargazing: The Players in My Life, published by HarperCollins India in 2021, former cricketer and head coach Ravi Shastri says, “Bedi was my bowling hero for obvious reasons. He’s probably the best left-arm spinner ever. At least, I haven’t seen anyone come even close in the past half-century. The languid approach and classical action was poetry.” These reflections appear in a chapter of the book called “Spin Maestros”, which is about four Indian spin bowlers – Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan – who are fondly remembered as the Indian spin quartet.
Shastri has co-authored this book with Ayaz Memon, who is a sports columnist.
Shastri adds, “I enjoyed his time as manager of the team in the early 1990s. In fact, he was instrumental in my playing as opener in England in 1990, one of my best tours.” He was impressed by Bedi’s sense of humour, and the man’s ability to take a joke sportingly. Apart from Bedi’s leadership skills, Shastri was also awed by his technical finesse in the sport.
Reminiscing about his senior, Shastri says, “Bedi had the ability to make the ball ‘hang in the air’ and wrong-foot batsmen. He also had a deadly arm ball that nipped many promising innings in the bud as the batsman failed to read the change in line and pace. His experiences in county cricket helped him a lot, especially in understanding the mindset of batsmen.”
Beyond Bedi’s stature as one of the greatest spin bowlers, the number of wickets he took and his wins as a captain, his legacy is to be assessed from the way he treated people. His concern for young players went beyond the Indian team. During the Pakistan versus Afghanistan match in Chennai on October 23, which was part of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup, former Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden said, “As a young boy, I can remember walking out through this Madras Cricket Club and there was Bishan Bedi here in the middle to discuss, not batting, but the art of spin bowling. A boy from the bush, a boy from Brisbane brought up on green wickets, had no idea how to play spin but Bishan was there.”
While his devotion to cricket as a sport is evident here, what makes Bedi even more special is his concern for the well-being of people who play other sports. A glimpse of this is found in historian Ramachandra Guha’s essay “Watching Bedi Bowl”. It is part of a book mentioned earlier – The Sardar of Spin: A Celebration of the Life and Art of Bishan Singh Bedi.
Guha says that, when India was playing a Test match in Bangalore under Bedi’s captaincy in the mid-1970s, the Indian hockey team happened to be in the same city to train for the forthcoming World Cup. Since cricket is prioritized over other sports in India, the cricketers were put up at five-star hotel and the hockey players had to stay in a dormitory. The cricketers got a generous daily allowance but the hockey players got Rs. 30 per day.
“Bedi, perhaps the only Indian cricketer who would have recognized the injustice of it all, took them out for dinner, I believe more than once,” writes Guha. This anecdote speaks volumes about the kind of person Bedi was and the values he stood for. Guha adds, “10 years later, a member of that World Cup side, the great full-back Surjit Singh, died tragically in a road accident. This happened just prior to Bedi’s richly deserved benefit match. Instinctively, but without fuss, the Sardar donated a share of his proceeds to the hockey player’s family.”
As more people pay homage to Bedi, more such stories might emerge and bring comfort to the loved ones he has left behind – his wife Anju, daughter Neha, son Angad – who is a film actor – and other family members. His daughter has written a beautiful essay titled “Bishan Singh Bedi, My Father” in the book The Sardar of Spin: A Celebration of the Life and Art of Bishan Singh Bedi. She gives rich insights into his personal life, especially his love of dogs and perfumes. Once, he got a pair of Pembroke Welsh Corgis from the Manchester Kennel Club. He named these dogs Diana and Charles. The London airport officials asked him, “Are you taking the mickey out of our Royalty?” He replied, “No! I am taking Royalty with me.”
Gen Z, who might be more familiar with Angad’s acting than his father’s bowling, would be pleased to learn that Angad – a left-arm spinner – played at the Under-16 and Under-19 levels for Delhi. In a book called The Great Indian Cricket Circus (2023), published recently by HarperCollins India, Abhishek Mukherjee and Joy Bhattacharjya write, “With future international left-arm spinner Rahul Sanghvi also in the Ranji Trophy squad, Angad did not get his break at the senior level and decided to get into modelling, and subsequently, acting.”
Though he could not represent India in international cricket, Angad played the role of an international cricketer – Robin Rawal – in Abhishek Sharma’s film The Zoya Factor (2019) based on Anuja Chauhan’s novel of the same name. He also played an ex-international cricketer Arvind Vashishth in Karan Anshuman’s drama series Inside Edge (2017-2021), where he is the captain of two franchises – the Mavericks and the Haryana Hurricanes.
One hopes that a biopic on senior Bedi will be made soon, and junior Bedi will be part of it.
Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer who tweets @chintanwriting.
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