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The Magic of Indian Cricket
that, even as he inflicted a crushing defeat on its national cricket team, he was idolised by millions of natives. Yet Tony Greig did just that in India during that winter Test series. On the field, he inflicted one of the worst defeats ever sustained by India at home; off the field he advertised towels, creams for chapped skins, ointments for bruised ankles and even the awful Indian blades, proving that sexual appeal is not dimmed by a change of climatic zones. Calcutta’s Grand Hotel where the MCC stayed, was virtually immobilised by hundreds of Bengalis screaming to get a glimpse of ‘Taani’, while even as India won a solitary Test at Bangalore, women of this supposedly archconservative southern city flashed their considerable bellbottomed trousered legs at Greig. As one Indian journalist put it, ‘He beat our men, took our money and screwed our women’, and that from a modern cricketer is something. Much of what he did would have been banal in England, dismissed in that classic Brian Johnston phrase, ‘Greig is doing his nut.’ If he beat a batsman he would raise his arms and keep them raised for a minute; if he stopped a ball he would go down on his hands and knees and pause. Once, he cover-drove Bedi, going down on his left knee, and remained frozen for almost a minute, much to Bedi’s annoyance. Standing at silly point, he would flex his muscles and bring a roar from the crowd, or he would turn to them and pointing at the batsman shake his knees, capturing the batsman’s uncertainty. But his gestures were discriminating, distinguishing between populist expectations and elitist tastes. In India, the cheaper stands are all to one side of the ground, generally known as the east stand. Here great masses of people are herded in like cattle – and a single movement can cause whole ranks to sway. For hours they stay rooted to one spot, ready with tiffin carriers and makeshift potties (generally empty coconuts). When the cricket becomes boring, incidents are generated; and often during the course of a day’s play there are huge roars to relieve boredom, and totally unrelated to the game. In front of the simple medieval crowd Greig performed antics which one English journalist, apologising for his fuddy-duddy image, opined no English Captain should indulge in. His favourite one was to indicate a shapely woman by rubbing the ball on his breast in a manner that was unmistakable. For the affluent sections, which invariably included the press and players’ enclosures, Greig would doff his cap or wave and smile – gentle, appropriate gestures, to a crowd aware of its own status as the leaders of modern thrusting India. Greig’s task was made easier by the fact that Bedi, the Indian Captain, was a Sikh, and subject to Irish-style comic jokes, the ‘Sikh twelve o’clock’.
