M.A.K. Pataudi, one of Indian cricket’s most charismatic figures died following respiratory problems on Thursday evening in a New Delhi hospital.
Mansur Ali Khan, 70, was the first truly great captain of the Indian cricket team. He lost an eye in a car accident just months before he took over the reins as a young and precociously talented 21-year-old batsman. He was instrumental in ridding Indian players of their diffidence caused as much by colonial shackles as their own timid background of early days of Indian cricket. He induced large dollops of self confidence in them, cajoling them into standing up as people and as batsmen against pace bowling.
Descending as he did from the royal family of Pataudi and Bhopal - born to a Nawab who led India at cricket after having played for England – and educated at Winchester and Oxford, Pataudi Jr was bound to ascend the throne anyway. The job came to him in tragic circumstances after skipper Nari Contractor was almost killed by a bouncer from Charlie Griffith in the West Indies. Pataudi’s men were wiped out in the series but Indian cricket had found its prince who could make a difference to its cricket and its sense of nationalism.
The biggest ‘maybe’ in discussions on the game was how great a batsman would ‘Tiger’ have been had he possessed vision in both eyes. He played all his Test innings with one eye - the right having been badly impaired in a car crash - adapting his technique with a slightly open stance, making 2,793 runs at 34.91 with six centuries. There was no greater cover driver in the game. Nor could many, except maybe Colin Bland, match his tigerish patrolling of the covers. His pick and throw from cover point was a thing of beauty.
‘Tiger’ was not the most organized of men. He would walk into the dressing room without his whites, socks and shoes. At random he would pick whatever was hanging on the clothes pegs and borrow socks and shoes almost shamelessly. And he would go out there and play the innings of his life, making batting against the likes of Graham McKenzie and other quicks of his time seem the simplest thing in the world. There was no more courageous batsman against pace as could be made out in Australia in 1967-68 when he hobbled on one leg with a thigh injury and yet looked several classes better than the young batsmen in his team.
He led India in 40 of the 46 Tests he played in, winning nine. India’s first overseas Test series victory came under his captaincy, in New Zealand in 1968. But he is not a leader to be judged on the basis of statistics. One of the regrets of his princely life – which he extended into a near fairytale existence as he married the beautiful Sharmila Tagore and sired three children Saif, Soha and Saba, the first two becoming like their mother major Bollywood figures - was that he could not get talented Indian under achievers like Salim Durrani play to their true potential.
He was truly a prince among men, addicted to big game hunting and capable of setting up the most elaborate practical jokes on his fellow players. To the end he was a somewhat enigmatic figure, never bothered about where his money was coming from, whether as the editor of a sports magazine or as a consultant to setting up the Sharjah experiment. He rejected a place on the IPL governing council recently but by then age was beginning to sit not too well on him.
The likes of him we may not see again.