The Maverick
Who doesn’t have fantasies? They take all forms, shapes, sizes and situations. I have had one for long, and before the reader’s imagination runs wild – it is to do with Cricket. A game one has followed and been involved with since 1971. Though in current times an excess of the game in format, frequency and information makes me lose track of events. What was once a lazy 5-day long game is now like instant noodles with 20 overs. What was once a battle between nations is now a battle between multinational clubs.
But then every generation sees mavericks who are born sometimes far ahead of their times. Who, consequently, end up as blazing stars, but often do not reach the kind of heights of excellence and performance they could otherwise have done. One such blazing star was Salim Durrani, who passed away yesterday. A cricketer par excellence with talents that were sheer genius, but his record and numbers do not show even the slightest glimpse of his greatness. Only those who have watched him play and his swagger, would regard him as a genius.
To me, Salim Durrani was a slight variation of the character that Kamala Hassan played in the movie – Saagara Sangamam – and only those who have watched that movie can relate to what I am saying. In that movie, Kamala Hassan a classical Bharat Natyam dancer, a alcoholic and a maverick convinces the audience by the time the movie ends that his character was indeed the best dancer in the life he lived and in spite of such greatness, he never achieved any accolades. But if the viewer were to step back and review the film, he would realise that the character had done nothing at all in his life to claim that status, yet the audience, his “family & friends” in the movie are all completely convinced of his genius and greatness. It is like that joke we had in school when we said – I am world famous in my school.
Salim Durrani did achieve fame and name to a certain extent, but in the eyes of those who watched him play, he was a genius who’s talents were wasted – for one reason only – in his days there was neither 50 over ODI’s nor T20’s and definitely no IPL league. His style of batting while not exactly copy book style, had to conform to those times lest he be labelled as a cricketer who doesn’t know how to play. In today’s times, the man would have fitted so perfectly that his style would have become the gold standard.
The fantasy I referred to above is having a Indian cricket team today playing a ODI or T20 where the team would include players like Salim Durrani, Brijesh Patel, Sandeep Patil, Srikanth, Pataudi, Nadkarni and others like Surti, Solkar etc. If you dig deeper you get names like CK Nayudu, Farokh Engineer, Kunderan, Ramnath Parker. Some of these chaps could massacre a bowling beyond hope.
A tall gangly chap, he towered above all his team mates often and his rugged good looks made him the darling of the ladies – and he even acted in a movie called Charitra starring the beautiful Parveen Babi and if you see his character in that movie – it probably mirrored Salim Durrani in real life. Not as a drunkard but as some one who accepts a woman with someone else’s child as his own. The big heart as I call it.
This also meant that he did things his own way. I am sure that not all Captains of the Indian cricket team those days liked that, but that was who he was. Story I remember from those days goes that during that famous tour of West Indies in 1971, he simply took the ball and decided to bring himself on to bowl when Wadekar was the Captain and had other plans. That decision resulted in his getting Gary Sobers out for a duck and the rest as they say is history. Others speak a different story. Those who have observed him on the field can say that whenever he did his own thing, he would simply walk away from the situation, once he had proven his point. Whether he had even tried to talk to the Captain, suggest something which was not accepted and he had then done things on his own, I have no idea. But on the field he was like a king, aloof, looking down at what was happening from his commanding height and stepping in when he felt that he alone could solve the situation and then walking away.
From whatever one has read about his subsequent life, he seems to have lived a not so comfortable life, too proud to ask anyone’s help maybe, ignored by most in the fraternity and spending his time like a king who no longer had a kingdom. But then as I said in the beginning referring to that movie, in reality he was never a king, he was not some rich royalty nor did he become a star acting in movies and converting his fame and name into big money. He was the king in the eyes of the beholder.
He was known to be hugely generous and that never indicated whether he had money, maybe he didn’t. I recall reading somewhere that he once requested a journalist to buy him a cigarette since he couldn’t buy one. The popular claim is that he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan but he has denied that. Any search about him reveals little and nobody ever seems to know about his family or even what he did to sustain himself post cricket.
Salim Durrani was a person who seems to have preferred to enjoy the journey of life rather than have targets, focus and objectives, preferred to live on his own terms with whatever dignity he could muster and while he may have died unsung, unfeted, even unknown, to those who have seen him play, he will always be a genius cricketer who was unlucky to be born at the wrong time. Today top politicians, players and journalists may well tweet condolences & maybe even write a piece about him, but when alive not sure how many even were in touch with him.
Today, someone with the genius of Salim Durrani would command the highest pay packet in any IPL league, his not so copybook style would mean sixer’s galore in T20 matches and with his penchant to reward demands for sixers he would not only be the darling of the masses but also of the bookies who would probably bet on this. But then, such cricket also demands the highest levels of focus and discipline and being the maverick he was, who knows, Salim Durrani may well have been placed by the system on the highest peaks only to fall quickly since he didn’t like the rules imposed.
I had the brief opportunity to bump into him way back as a youngster in a match against then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, much before the country was accorded Test status and unlike the others who still behaved like important folks, Salim Durrani graciously gave me his autograph on a scrap of paper I had since I did not have anything else to use. I shall always cherish that. Over time I have collected a briefcase full of cricket pictures cut out from newspapers and magazine and in that chaos I still managed to locate these pictures of Salim Durrani used in this blog.
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Of 60's and 70's