FOOTBALL OR CRICKET?
Vengrai Parthasarathy
(The following are selections from many sources—all about Cricket. But.. there is
a But to it. Is the first item Football or Cricket? You be the judge..)
Mankad pushed the ball to mid-on. Merchant set off for a single that was turned down by Mankad. Merchant was too slow in turning around and making his way back. The situation wasn’t new for Compton: the ball was under his control; he knew Merchant was never going to make it; the knee bended a bit and the boot came down, quick as a flash, kicking the ball and hitting the stumps with pinpoint accuracy. “[Denis] Compton running behind the bowler at mid-on kicked the ball on to the stumps in a style that belonged more to Highbury than The Oval,” wrote Mihir Bose wrote inA History of Indian Cricket.
For once the phrase “an amazing display of footwork by Compton” sent out the wrong meaning on cricket field. The Bombay legend seemed infallible till then, and Compton’s kick was perhaps the only way he could have got out. The Glasgow Herald reported: “His [Merchant’s] 128 has an overwhelming logic about it and a mastery which suggested the certain flow of the rising tide. It was the fitting culmination to a great season’s batting by a great cricketer footballer..”
Born in Kapurthala, in the Punjab, Amarnath began as a wicket-keeper while still a student at Aligarh University. Later, he demonstrated that he had not forgotten his trade when, with P Sen injured, he held five catches in the first Bombay Test of the 1948-49 series against the West Indies.
As a bowler too, Amarnath was out of the ordinary. He appeared to deliver the ball off the wrong foot. Sharp inswingers, mixed with leg-cutters, brought him close to a hat-trick in the Lord’s Test in 1946, when he dismissed Len Hutton and Denis Compton, and finished with Cyril Washbrook and Wally Hammond for figures of five for 118 from 57 overs
Polly Umrigar – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
He played first-class cricket for Mumbai, and Test cricket in the Indian cricket … In the Madras ‘Test’, he moved from 90 to 102 with two successive sixes off Frank Worrell. He hit Worrell for a six when at 90; the wile Worrell gave him a dolly of a ball inviting Umrigar to hit him, hoping that Umrigar would give a catch. but Umrigar sent Worrell for another six and Worrell was gracious to applaud Umrigar for the bold defiant second sixer….
Umrigare reached his hundred at Port of Spain with a six off Sonny Ramadhin. … When Wes Hall took the second new ball, Umrigar hit him for four fours in an over. They were Cricket legends in those days, early forties and fifties of the last Century..