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Pataudi: Nawab of
Cricket
The rich tone is set by the intimate and moving foreword written by Sharmila Tagore. It ends with equally moving and personal tributes by daughters Saba and Soha. In between, there is Bishen Singh Bedi, N. Ram and Suresh Menon who remind the reader of the kind of challenge he must have faced in banishing parochialism and building a team that is today so nattily called "Team India." He changed a mindset where the batsmen were hidden in the slips only to drop catches. The editor has done well to include a 1966 article of late Vijay Merchant whose casting vote stripped Pataudi of captaincy in 1971, a move that must have rankled long. That year finally saw the results of the hard work he had put in to change the approach to the game. It is Merchant alone who recalls that when young Pataudi, still a schoolboy in 1958-59 season, had come home for vacation from England, he was summoned by optimistic selectors to the nets in the hope that with him in the team perhaps India would be able to face Lindwall and company better. The move failed because those days cricket was a seasonal game. England-based players tucked away their properly oiled bats after September. Out of the game for a few months and unable to adjust to the Indian light after being rushed to the nets from the airport, he failed to make it to the team. Pataudi’s influence is best narrated by actor Naseeruddin Shah. His cricketing contemporaries from the world over highlight Pataudi’s exceptional talent. N. Ram wonders what the world missed because of the accident that created a legend but diminished his abilities. It speaks volumes of the man who scaled down his batting ambitions but raised the bar for his fielding. The humour of his one-liners is also not missed, The nostalgia and the intimacy a reader feels for Pataudi of the book raises an issue: Today a fan knows all about Sachin Tendulkar's cricketing journey, but, how much do we know of Sachin the man, and why not?
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FOR Midnight's Children,
Pataudi Nawab of Cricket is a journey through a nostalgic past.
It chronicles the life and times of a man who was to cricket what
Nehru was to India; not achieving much but laying the foundations of a
successful cricketing culture. Suresh Menon has edited one of those
rare books about a departed cricketer with the potential of bringing
an ageing and young generation together. Most contributors have been
judiciously chosen for they knew Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi as a
cricketer, friend, fan, commentator or a family ember.