The passing of Bishan Singh Bedi, an incurable cricket romantic, the fiercest defender of the game’s hallowed traditions, one of the most well-read cricketers and a learner for life, has plunged the sporting community into deep gloom. The game’s most graceful left-arm spinner has left countless players, Indian and overseas, united in grief, each feeling the loss of a loved one.
A lot has been said and written about his cricketing acumen, his reading of the game and his steadfast defence of traditional values. A lot more remains unsaid. However, since I interacted with him mainly during the 31 years since I moved from Hyderabad to Delhi, I have been privileged to know the gentle, caring human side.
I can never forget the anguish in his voice when he called to share how his dear friends would not take his calls or respond to messages. It was just as real as his celebration of those close to him. The pride and delight with which he commemorated ‘Tiger’ Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi during the silver jubilee of the Bishan Bedi Cricket Coaching Trust was there for all to see.
He had roped in teammates from far and near and rolled out a magical night of nostalgia and cheer. “Tiger Pataudi was well remembered by one & all… I was willing to die today and have no regrets..!! God Bless You ‘King’ now and always… Fondly… Bishan,” he wrote to me after the celebration of the life and times of Pataudi.
That he loved treading into unchartered territory became apparent when he tried to learn the ropes of running a blog, tossingitup.com, in October 2015. He knew it would take him time to understand evolving technology. “All your attempts to teach me new tricks are not quite registering with yours truly!” he wrote, indicating a willingness to undergo a fresh round of training.
One memory that stands out was a day in March 2019. He had a great conversation with entrepreneur Ritika Singh, who drove him from his hotel to the venue of Playwrite, Chandigarh’s own sports literary festival. From my position in the back seat, that half-hour gave me a fascinating insight into his ability to make friends by showing genuine interest in someone he had just met.
At the other end of the spectrum was Bedi’s affection for friends. He once asked me to join him when he visited KR Wadhwaney. The mutual respect that the former India captain and the retired sports editor of The Indian Express shared was perceptible and, as they flew on the wall, I saw them brush off cobwebs from their memories and reel off one anecdote after another.
Later that year, it was a privilege to moderate a discussion featuring Bedi and Kapil Dev, along with Aditya Bhushan and Sachin Bajaj, who had co-authored a book on India’s famed spin quartet. I was a bit underprepared, having to pad up at short notice, but the straight-from-the-heart approach so characteristic of both former India captains made my task easy.
The Covid-19 pandemic and his own failing health made our interactions few and far between. He needed a triple-bypass surgery and his ordeal with a blood clot that made its way to his brain demanded an emergency operation. His extraordinary willpower saw him battle back and receive visitors at his home in Jonapur.
Yet, I hadn’t mustered the courage to visit him until Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, an Olympic hero, persuaded me in July 2022 to drive him to Cricket Abode, Bedi’s farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi. They were fellow Ambarsaris and held a special place in one another’s hearts, and there was no way I could decline the octogenarian athlete’s call to take him.
Bedi made his senior colleague, who had given a copy of his biography in Punjabi, sit on the cot that he had brought from his ancestral home in Amritsar. And he spoke so lovingly about his mother that you could sense his awe and respect for her. Randhawa and Bedi recalled their early years in Amritsar with a fondness that was almost childlike.
On February 14 this year, Debashis Dutta, who has written reams on cricket in Kolkata’s Aaj Kal daily for several decades now, and I visited him. Debu, as we call him, and I met him for a while, enjoyed his warm hospitality, and saw him head back to his exercise bike and listen to Gurbani streaming from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
It was at the end of March this year that Sudha, my wife, and I visited the Bedis. Just as he had been on my previous visit, he was curious about the thread tied around my wrist. The twinkle in his eyes had not dimmed and his heart continued to swell with pride as he spoke – even if briefly – as a staunch custodian of Test cricket.
Indeed, many memories come flooding back from the subconscious, but there is one that is deeply personal. In the days before mobile phones became an extension of the human body, he called my home number one morning and when Sudha answered the call, he asked to speak to ‘King’. Now, Sudha was befuddled and said “Wrong number”, and hung up.
He called back and laughed when introducing himself to Sudha, and said he had decided to call me ‘King’ after he had read a particularly brave piece in the Hindustan Times. For more than 20 years since that day, he would only call me ‘King’ and never by my name. Even when he admonished me for moving from the printed word to the digital world, it was the ‘King’ he was speaking to.
It was not as if I had reported on many contests that he had been part of and tried to match his lyrical and alluring bowling with my words. At best, as a pre-teen, I had watched him in one Test against New Zealand in Hyderabad in 1969 and later on in a handful of Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup matches for State Bank of India.
He had no apparent reason to care for me. I guess we struck a deep friendship because of his love of reading and his penchant to give in-your-face feedback, be it appreciation or criticism. To call him a voracious reader would be as much an understatement as to speak of him as brazen and blunt in his approach to conversations.
One of a kind, he has departed with a bagful of memories for each one to cherish. Some vacuums can never be filled. There is no point in trying to plug the gap. It is better to accept the void. Bishan Singh Bedi’s passing will be one such in my life. But we must come together to celebrate his life and the rich legacy he leaves behind.