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November 6, 1997
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The cricket interview/E A S Prasanna
"If I bowled today, I would still take wickets..."
Erapally Ananthrao Srinivas Prasanna formed one of the Indian quartet of magical spin bowlers who ruled cricket through much of the sixties and seventies. A true artist with a neat, high arm action and near-incredible control of flight, length and loop, Prasanna was a prince of spinners, giving away runs through his penchant for attacking, challenging the batsmen to play strokes at him all the time -- but, at the same time, luring batsman after batsman to his doom through the mysteries of his craft.
His Test debut was at Madras against England in the fifth Test of the 1961-'62 series, and as late as 1976, he was still the leading Indian bowler in that year's series, also against England. However, for a bowler of his proven ability, selection to the side was no sure thing, and 'Pras' found himself in and out of the national team, with little reason and no rhyme.
In fact, Prasanna did not play a Test for five years, following his first overseas tour (to the West Indies, in 1961-'62). However, whenever he was a regular member of the playing side, he often ended up leading the wickets tally, whether at home or away.
Subsequent to his retirement, Prasanna, an engineer by learning and profession, went back to the workaday world but has, in recent times, come out of the closet to pen articles on Indian cricket for a variety of publications -- articles, incidentally, that are, like the man himself, hard-hitting, outspoken and, always, incisive.
Pras spoke to Haresh Pandya on his first love, off-spin bowling. And the state of Indian cricket. Excerpts:
You are ranked as one of the best off spinners the world has ever seen. So what do you think of your successors, the current practitioners of the art?
Well, frankly, I don't think much of today's off-spinners. By nature, off spin is an attacking style of bowling. But today's boys are more concerned with fulfilling their captain's wishes than in taking wickets. So they end up bowling passively, defensively. Regretably, I find today's off spinners too defensive."
Could that be because there is a preponderance of one day games, where keeping the runs down is the main objective of the fielding side? Maybe if you were bowling today...
No, that is not correct. If I were bowling today, I would still bowl the way I did then, and I can promise you I would be picking up wickets as well. I was always able to turn the ball, no matter what kind of wicket I was bowling on. And I knew where I wanted my fielders. I think, if I were bowling in one day cricket today, I would maybe concede 50-odd runs, but I would definitely be picking up four, five wickets. So I don't understand what this logic is, that a medium pacer who bowls 10 overs for 45 runs and no wicket is counted as good, but an attacking spinner who gives about 50-odd and takes wickets is termed "expensive". To my mind, an off spinner playing limited overs cricket has to be a big turner of the ball -- if he can do that, he has the advantage over the batsman. Then again, his captain has to be intelligent enough to know how to handle his bowler.
Would you, looking back over your career, say that your tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1967-'68 was the highpoint of your career? When you took something like 49 wickets in eight Tests?
Well, yes, during that tour of Australia when I got 25 wickets, people like Ian Chappell and Keith Stackpole were calling me the finest off spinner in the world. And yes, I got a lot of wickets against the best batting lineup in the world at that time. I don't know what it was about that tour, really -- I guess the Aussie wickets are very sporting, they offer a lot of bounce and I always enjoy bowling on such wickets. And I was able to turn the ball a lot. In fact, though I didn't know it at the time, my 49 wickets in the eight away Tests, four each against Australia and New Zealand, is a standing record. And records mean much for any cricketer, though of late I am beginning to realise that the true charm of a record is when it is broken, when someone outdoes what you have done. Actually, I am still happy that my record of 100 wickets in 20 Tests still stands -- hopefully, someone will better it one day.
You've bowled to some of the all time greats of batting. Who among them, in your book, played you well?
Oh, lots of them. Ian Chappell, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Tom Graveney, Vijay Manjrekar, Sunil Gavaskar, and of course, my Karnataka colleague, G R Vishwanath!
Vishy in fact was a class apart, a very unusual batsman in the sense that you never knew when he was scoring runs. He would look indolent and lazy out there, but at the end of the day he would be 60, 70 not out and nobody knew when he had got those runs or how, whereas with other batsmen, you could see the effort involved in getting runs.
Vijay Manjrekar was a bit of a mix of Gavaskar and Vishy, I had the pleasure both of bowling against him, and also playing alongside him in the Indian team. In fact, I have a lot of admiration for all the batsmen I mentioned, and am happy that I had the chance to bowl to them.
Another country you have consistently done well against is England, isn't it? How do you rate the English batsmen, as opposed to say the Aussies?
Well, see, bowlers, whether quicks or spinners, are basically aggressive. The endearing thing about Aussie batsmen are that they, too, are basically aggressive in outlook, they are ready to take on your challenge all the time. The English batsmen on the other hand believe in a very conservative, methodical approach, they look passive all the time while the Aussies, because of their aggressive mentality, are always entertaining to watch and challenging to bowl to."
To get back to the theory of your art, how much of off spin is played in the mind?
Cricket, per se, is an intelligent game, a case of mind over body. I've always believed that talent alone does not count, it is equally important how intelligent you are, how you apply your mind. As a bowler, you can't just toss the ball up and expect the batsman to get out, you have to plan his dismissal. And at the same time, the batsman is planning how to counter you. It is like chess, only with a physical element added on to it.
In your time, you had greats like Chandrasekhar, Bedi and Venkatraghavan bowling alongside you. Was this a help, or a hindrance?
Well, frankly, I was, and am, proud to have belonged to probably the greatest quartet of spin bowlers of all time. Bedi, Chandra and I were complimentary to each other, in our skills, and a large chunk of what I achieved, I owe to their presence at the other end. And I obviously admire Venkat, I am in fact yet to see three bowlers like them emerging, anywhere in the world.
You spoke of Venkat. In your playing days, you and he seemed to be always competing for the same place in the team. Did this sour relations between the two of you?
No, Venkat was and still is a very good friend. In fact, there is only one time when I was cheesed off, and that was on the 1971 tour of England. I was the prime bowler at the time, with 125 wickets in something like 22, 23 Tests and I had been bowling well in the county games, at the start of the tour. Yet I didn't get to play a single Test on that tour, and that upset me a bit, I couldn't understand the reason why. But that was all.
At the time, the theory was that you couldn't have two off spinners playing in the same side...
Interesting point, maybe you should ask the people who came up with that theory. I mean, my job was to take wickets, and that is what I was bothered about. Except on the rare occasions when my captain asked me to keep the runs down, I concentrated all the time on attacking, getting wickets. As to the other, well, two left arm bowlers have played together, two fast bowlers have played together, I am not sure why two off spinners playing together is considered taboo.
But this business of being in and out of the side, did it affect you psychologically at any stage?
No, it never really bothered me, frankly. Whenever I got a chance to play for India, I did my best. The same was the case with Venkat. In fact, whenever one of us got picked to play, the other would wish the lucky one all the very best, the fact that we were competing never affected our friendship. As a bowler, he had a lot of plus points, he could be destructive on some pitches, very restrictive on others, he was a class bowler, with a proven calibre.
For a bowler of your class, the tour of Pakistan in 1978 when you and your colleagues were mauled by Zaheer Abbas and Javed Miandad must have been a nightmare. So what went wrong on that tour?
"I think we were badly used on that tour, and possibly, too, we were not properly geared up for that challenge, it was a sort of promotional tour, after 20 long years India was going there again. I think if it had been a five-Test series, we would have steadied ourselves and done better. In the event, the record speaks for itself, and yes, I do wish my career had not ended that way.
Your conemporaries rate you a very good thinker of the game, and possibly captaincy material in your prime. Have you ever nursed any such ambitions?
Well, frankly, I had all the qualities, and qualifications, to be captain of India, I had led Karnataka well, I had led the Rest of India side well. But I never actually aspired for the captaincy of India, though I would be less than honest if I say that had the opportunity presented itself, I wouldn't have grabbed it.
So what are your views on the young Indian spinners of today?
Like I said, I am yet to see attacking off spinners emerging, after our time. And why only off spinners? To my mind, any spinner has to be attacking, aggressive, if he wants to make an impact. That is why Anil Kumble for instance was successful -- because he is an aggressive bowler. As to the future of Indian off spin, what can I say? Well, boys who want to develop in that line have, at least, lots of role models to learn from, there is Venkat, Shivlal Yadav and me. But for me, the bottom line is, the aggressive frame of mind has to come first, everything else follows.
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