It is said in joke that it is perhaps the hardest thing in the country to do the captaincy of the Indian cricket team after the person on the 7th Lok Kalyan road. At least in the sixties it was absolutely true.
At that time there were two or two good players in the Indian team, but they did not have the habit of tasting victory. Fast bowling was that the wicketkeeper Budhi Kunderan used to bowl the first over.
Not under any strategy, but because there was no fast bowler in the entire team.
After Contractor's Injury Pataudi Became The Captain
Rajdeep Sardesai who writes ‘The Great Indian Cricket Story' explains that when Pataudi became the captain of the Indian team, his age was 21 years and 70 days. He was given this responsibility in very unpleasant circumstances. On March 1, 1962, in the match with Barbados, at that time, the world's fastest bowler, Charlie Griffith was caught by the captain of the India Nari Contractor, and he fell down there.
The injury was so strong that the Contractor's nose and ears started bleeding. Team Manager Ghulam Ahmed informed the Vice Captain Pataudi that he would captain the Indian team in the next Test. This was the beginning of the Pataudi era which gave new definition to Indian cricket.
Selected In Team For His Captaincy Skills
Pataudi played 47 tests for India, in which he captained India in 40 Tests, as if captaincy were his birthright. In these 9 tests he won and he lost 19 times. It was not such a record that could be proud. But the data cannot justify the fact that Pataudi's captaincy for India was what it meant.
Bishan Singh Bedi believes that Pataudi was less than a hundred years ahead of Indian cricket. Prasanna, another member of his team, says that what was the class and leadership, it was estimated to be in the way of landing in the Pataudi field. Perhaps there are two such players in the world that were included in the team because of their captaincy. One was England Captaincy Mike Brearley and the other Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi.
Offer To Not Play Yourself
Pataudi nephew and play from South Zone Saad bin Jung, who has played against West Indies said, "Before the West Indies tour in 1975, I was practicing with Pataudi on the cement pitches behind my house in Delhi. He told me that I can bowl as fast as possible with a plastic ball from a distance of 15 yards, I can do two balls, he played two three balls but he bowled on the fourth ball. After two balls Saad again bowled them. Pataudi was very upset and said that he did not see the ball.
He says, "He immediately got the selection committee's chairman Raj Singh Dungarpur and said that he should not be selected in the team against the West Indies because he could not see the ball. Raj Singh laughed and said, Pat we are choosing you for the captaincy of your team, not for your batting.
Chandra Shekhar Was Not Removed Even After Being Beaten
Pataudi did not disappoint Raj Singh Dungarpur and the Indian team, which is 0-2 down, won the Calcutta and Madras Test with a 2-2 draw.
The team member Prasanna recalls, "On the fourth day of the Calcutta Test, Pataudi knocked on the door of my room and said, look, the wicket is turning. Do not worry about the runners. I want you and Chandrashekhar out of the West Indie players. “That’s exactly what happened. Clive Lloyd scored two fours on the ball of Chandrasekhar, but Pataudi did not remove him. In the next over, Chandrashekhar got him caught by Vishwanath and opened the way to India's victory by showing the way to pavilion.
Lost The Eye In Car Accident
Pataudi's cricket career would have been more permissible if he had not had an accident at the age of 20. After the match ended with Sussex Brighton on July 1, 1961, all the players of Oxford University sat in the mini van but Pataudi decided to go with the wicketkeeper Robin Walters in car. The car was just a little too far away that the car coming from the front hit it. Another Indian member of the Oxford team who played 10 Test matches for India, Abbas Ali Beg recalls, "We saw Pataudi coming out of the car with his right eye pressing out. His eyes were bleeding. It did not seem that this was a big accident, we thought that it would be fine after the medicine in the hospital, but it did not happen.
He said, "A piece of glass of the car had penetrated into his eye, he had surgery, but his eyesight could not be cured. When he tried to play cricket a few days later, he used to see two balls coming towards him and that’s also six inches away."
Pataudi later wrote in his autobiography 'Tigers Tail', "When I tried to burn my cigarette with lighter, I used to miss it by about quarter inch, when I tried to put water in the glass from the world. So he did not go to the glass and fell on the table directly.
Best Innings Played In Melbourne
After exercising on the net for hours, Pataudi almost managed to overcome his inefficiency. He scored an unbeaten 203 against England in the Delhi Test, but he believed that his best innings of 75 was scored in the 1967 Melbourne green pitch.
India's five wickets fell on 25 runs. Pataudi was injured in the vein (hamstrung) behind the knee and he landed on the field with a runner (Ajit Wadekar). He could not bow before the front. Therefore, he scored 75 runs only with hooks, cuts and glance. Later Ian Chappell wrote, "I still remember two shots of this innings the first time when he had hit Renegberg at the Off the Toes Mid wicket boundary and the second time when he was the best of the world's fastest bowler, Graham McKenzie top bouncer had hit the top. The interesting thing was that he used five different bats during this innings."
Chapel writes, "In the evening, I asked him why you were changing the bat again and again?" Pataudi replied, "I never take my bat and go on a tour." In my kit, only shoes, socks, cream and I see that whatever bat is seen after the pavilion door, I pick it up."
When Pataudi took over the reins of Indian cricket in the sixties, the situation of Indian cricket was similar as it is nowadays of Zimbabwe. It was Pataudi's sense that he got the confidence that he could win the first time in Indian cricket players.
Rajdeep Sardesai says, "In those days, the Indian team used to play the match but they did not have the passion to win, they did not believe that they could win an international match. Pataudi changed this thinking and 'self' in Indian cricket Respect Movement.