Tribute: Bishan Singh Bedi was an extraordinary spinner, and intrepid upholder of the truth

Steeped in the virtues of flight and dip and spin and turn and guile long before such terms as ‘revs on the ball’ became fashionable, Bishan Singh Bedi was reputed to have the ball on an imaginary string, luring batsmen to their doom. (Photo via X/M_Raj03)

Colourful and controversial are the words used most often to describe Bishan Singh Bedi, but there was more to the multilayered legend. He was an extraordinary spinner, no doubt, but he was also a loyal soldier, a great friend, a wonderful leader, an outspoken voice, an upholder of the truth as he saw it, a doting father and husband. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and if he perceived that an injustice was being done, he wouldn’t hold his punches. Bishan Singh Bedi was a fascinating personality, a true man of the people in whose demise the sport of cricket in its entirety has become the poorer.

Bishan, of course, was poetry in motion, beautiful to watch. He literally had no run up, just a short walk of a couple of steps, but when the ball came out of his hand, it was as if he had it on a string.

- Gundappa Vishwanath, in his autobiography 'Wrist Assured' (2022)

His extraordinary numbers will always accompany him – 266 wickets in 67 Tests, 1,560 wickets in 370 first-class matches – but Bedi was always much more than these stunning statistics. He was a magician, an entertainer, someone who provided sheer delight with the mastery of his craft and with the enjoyment that he put into his bowling, ball after tantalizing ball. He sent down more than 90,000 of them in a representative career that lasted 19 years, and not one of them, batsmen of that vintage will aver, carried the threat of embarrassment.

Also see: Legendary Indian spinner Bishan Singh Bedi passes away; a look at his illustrious career

Born 77 summers ago in Amritsar, Bedi’s ascent was remarkable as he honed his skills in Delhi, for whom he made his debut as a teenager. It took him six years of first-class cricket to convince the national selectors that he had what it took to make it to the next level; what he had, of course, was perfection and perseverance, patience and poise. He loved making batsmen dance to his tune, changing things up without any discernible change in action, relying on variations in pace and angle and loop and drift and spin and turn to bamboozle the best in the business.

Among the first Indians to play consistently on the professional English county circuit, Bedi was a massive hit at Northamptonshire, for whom he took a staggering 434 wickets in 102 matches. That a spinner finished with such tremendous returns in a country not known to be kind to that kind of craft, added to the aura around him, which was further embellished by his heroics on the field and his histrionics – as his critics termed it – off the field.

Spin Quartet: Bishan Bedi, EAS Prasanna, B.S. Chandrasekhar & S. Venkataraghavan

It was under Tiger Pataudi that Bedi came into his own, forming a terrific threesome with the off-spinning genius from Karnataka, E.A.S. Prasanna, and the latter’s leg-spinning soulmate from the same state, B.S. Chandrasekhar. The three remained thick friends until Bedi’s demise on Monday (October 23) aged 77, neither the passage of time, the inevitable dimming of faculties over the years nor the physical distance coming in the way of their kinship. On the field, even though they were competing for the same end, wickets, they never saw each other as rivals. Each was secure in his mastery of his own craft, each knew that together, they could produce the kind of magic that would be the envy of the cricket world and the driving force for many an Indian win, at home or overseas.

In his 2022 autobiography Wrist Assured, Gundappa Vishwanath, one of the finest batsmen to grace the sport, writes of Bedi, “Bishan, of course, was poetry in motion, beautiful to watch. He literally had no run-up, just a short walk of a couple of steps, but when the ball came out of his hand, it was as if he had it on a string. His flight was an event on its own, luring the batsman into complacency. Then, the ball would dip without warning and you could see the panic in the eyes of the batsman. From lining himself up for a big stroke, he was reduced to trying to prevent himself from being embarrassed.

“They (the famed spin quartet with S. Venkataraghavan as the fourth wheel) revelled in the other man’s success because they were true lovers and connoisseurs of the sport, first and foremost. Some of Bishan’s fastest sprints have been when Chandra has got a wicket. I marvel at their friendship, at how close they are to each other six decades on.”

End of play

The beginning of the end of his glorious career came on the 1978 tour of Pakistan when, under Bedi, India surrendered the three-Test series 0-2. The writing was on the wall when he was stripped of the captaincy and it didn’t help that in the six subsequent Tests, he only took 14 wickets. But while he might have bowed out tamely, there was nothing timid about the fiery Sardar with the heart of gold.

Bedi wasn’t chary of ruffling feathers, being banned for the Bengaluru Test against West Indies in 1974 for an ‘authorized’ interview to the BBC during India’s tour of England earlier that year, and then accusing English left-arm paceman John Lever of using Vaseline to shine the ball unfairly when the Englishmen visited India in 1976-77. Post retirement, he had particular issues with Muttiah Muralitharan’s action even though it was deemed legal by the International Cricket Council, often likening the Sri Lankan off-spinner to a ‘javelin thrower’, a stance that didn’t earn him many friends but which he was unconcerned by because he was a master for sticking with his conviction.

Appointed cricket manager of the Indian team on the tour of New Zealand in early 1990, Bedi set a stall as an uncompromising task master, pushing the team hard and leaving them gasping for breath. After defeat to Australia in a one-day game in New Zealand, he infamously proclaimed, ‘The entire team should be dumped into the Pacific (Ocean)’. Predictably, it raised the hackles of all concerned, even though they knew that that was Bedi being Bedi.

Also read: Bishan Singh Bedi dies at 77: Cricketers, dignitaries mourn cricket legend’s death

Bedi wore numerous hats but did so without compromising on his values or ideals. His methods might not have been universally appreciated but there was no dearth of respect for the stance he took, for the courage he had to stick by his beliefs. To him, the game of cricket was above all else, and anyone who messed with it didn’t deserve to be spared. That’s how history will remember him – as a man after his own heart, and who always listened to his heart. Oh, and as a spinner par excellence, a genius that strode the cricketing fields like a colossus.