Popular: ICC rankings | Awais Zia | Sydney Barnes | IPL 2012
Different Strokes

« Australia needs to introspect | Opportunity knocks »
February 3, 2010
Posted by Samir Chopra on 02/03/2010 in Samir Chopra
Memories, faithful and unfaithful

Sigmund Freud famously wrote of the impossibility of autobiography and biography. Part of the reason the good doctor thought thus was because that wonderful human facility, memory, which is often thought to be constitutive of our personalities, is also an amazingly flaky thing. To put it mildly, if you know what I mean.

As cricket fans, we are all subject to the vagaries of the art of recall. Players grow in stature; we are mysteriously present at games we never attended; statistics grow and multiply.

And in the modern internet era, we no longer need to rely on the photographic memories once needed to commit all those Wisdens and Frindalls to the insides of our craniums. And the internet can also serve to remind us of the things we get wrong.

For years, one of my favorite cricketing stories was told to me by my father. It concerned two greats of years gone by: CK Nayudu (the Colonel) and Keith Miller. Their encounter, during the Australian Services team tour of India in 1945-46, had for my father, the status of legend. In 1998, I posted an account of this story on the cricket newsgroup rec.sport.cricket. Some folks enjoyed it, and I certainly enjoyed telling the tale. Recently, I posted the story again on my blog, Eye-on-Cricket. There is a twist to the story that needs some tackling.

For it does not seem that the story told to me by my father and faithfully reproduced by me can possibly be true. At least, not in its statistical details. I had realised even back in 1998, that I needed scorecards to confirm its authenticity. I didn't do the needful for a very long time. Perhaps subconsciously, I resisted the moment of truth.

A quick examination of the scorecards of the Australian Services Team to tour India in 1945 shows that they played nine games. They played one game (Princes XI vs. Australian Services) in Delhi, the one that I presume my father attended. More the point, it was the only game of the tour that CK Nayudu played in (his youger, and largely overshadowed, brother CS Nayudu played for the Indian team in the Tests of the series as well as in this game). The scorecard for the Delhi game shows that Miller was bowled CS (not CK) Nayudu for 18 in the first innings; that CK Nayudu was bowled by John Pettiford for 14 in his first, and in the only second innings, Miller was caught and bowled CS Nayudu for 35.

So, something is amiss. Miller could not have hit 30 runs off CK Nayudu in either innings. CK's bowling figures (4-0-28-0 and 5-0-15-0) make that impossible. And neither did CK do that off Miller. Whatever happened that November in Delhi, it wasn't exactly like the way the story goes.

And of course, it’s not clear whose memory is at fault. Did my father tell me a reasonably simple story of how perhaps Miller and Nayudu hit a six or two off each other, and I grew that little tale into an epic? Or did my father, then attending the game as a wide-eyed 10-year old schoolboy, himself embellish that tale before passing it on to me? Or was it a combination of the two?

I realised of course, that it didn't really matter in the end. Some things still stood out: the impact that those flamboyant allrounders Miller and CK Nayudu made on my father; the recall of CK Nayudu at the age of 50(!) to play the Aussies; and the fact that the two greats did have some kind of encounter. For after all, the game did take place in Delhi, and Miller and Nayudu did play in that game. That much is true. The rest is in the story and it’s worth recounting.

And it’s still a damn good yarn. For if nothing else, it contributed to the romance I associated with the game, and played a significant role in the attention that I paid to its history. So, if there is ever a campfire around, I’ll make sure I tell the story in the form (I think) I heard it first.

Comments (1)
Posted by: Madappa Prakash at February 5, 2010 9:52 PM

A charming article about stories told, stories written, and those ripe with romance, but not necessarily all the facts. Notwithstanding errors in recounting, stories are precious as if you don't tell your story, who else will?

I recall a friend chastising me; he said, ``You always remind me of facts; you only know facts! Why do you spoil my fun? Have you no romance in you?''

Name: Email Address:
Comments: characters left
Shanaka Amarasinghe
Shanaka Amarasinghe Shanaka Amarasinghe Possessing the best disguised googly in Sri Lanka (because no one has ever really seen it), Shanaka is the finest legspinner to never have played top-level cricket. He is a popular cricket analyst and host of The Score, the No. 1-rated, if slightly infamous, sports show on radio in Sri Lanka. While in England playing rugby, he earned his LLM at King’s College and is a lawyer by training if not inclination. He is also an actor, a journalist, a writer, and thinks he is a comedian.
Mike Holmans
Mike HolmansMike Holmans, a database consultant by profession, has spent thirty summers (and a few winters) going to the cricket. Brought up in one and working in the other, his dearest wish is for a season to end with Yorkshire winning the county championship by beating runners-up Middlesex by one wicket with five minutes to go. If it’s also a summer when England win the Ashes, so much the better.
Michael Jeh
Michael JehMichael Jeh Born in Colombo, educated at Oxford and now living in Brisbane, Michael Jeh (Fox) is a cricket lover with a global perspective on the game. An Oxford Blue who played first-class cricket, he is a Playing Member of the MCC and still plays grade cricket. Michael now works closely with elite athletes, and is passionate about youth intervention programmes. He still chases his boyhood dream of running a wildlife safari operation called Barefoot in Africa.
Saad Shafqat
Saad ShafqatSaad Shafqat takes special pride that his cricket-watching life began during the three-month interval between Javed Miandad's debut Test in Lahore and Imran Khan's 12-wicket haul at Sydney. Although a practicing neurologist based in Karachi, cricket has never been far from his activities. He has co-authored Javed Miandad’s autobiography Cutting Edge and has been a contributor to Cricinfo since 2005. His regular column Reverse Swing appears fortnightly in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English daily.
Latest News
Specials
Sitemap  |  Feedback  |  RSS  |  About Us  |  Career  |  Privacy Policy  |  Terms of Use
© ESPN EMEA Ltd