In his recently published memoir, Fearless, Mohinder Amarnath has chosen Imran Khan over Sunil Gavaskar as the better captain. In explaining his choice, Amarnath said at the launch in Delhi, “Sunil Gavaskar was a great batsman and was one of the best. But maybe he expected everyone else to be like him and not always did he go up to the younger members and make them feel comfortable. Imran was more of an inclusive leader who made everyone in his team comfortable and happy.”
Rajinder Amarnath, brother and co-writer, defended the statement saying: “It is an honest assessment, and that’s how Jimmy has been and has always played his cricket.”
In Fearless, Amarnath has written that he was informed of his selection in the 1983 World Cup team by a friend in the UK. No one from the BCCI contacted him or bothered to inform him. “Maybe they had a very low estimation of the team based on how we performed in 1975 and 1979,” he recounted. “That’s why they did not bother much with the 1983 team.”
Amarnath also defended his famous “bunch of jokers” comment for the selectors, and said that by then, he had had enough. He was being targeted for no reason, and there was never any explanation as to why he was dropped.
“The yardstick for me was different,” he said. “I was always the one at the wrong end of the spectrum. By then, I was frustrated and asked Papa ji (Lala Amarnath), and he said he was with me in anything that I wanted to do. It was a statement made out of complete frustration and disappointment.”
While i enjoyed moderating the discussion with the Amarnath brothers, may I also add that Dr S Jaishankar, the honourable Minister for External Affairs, added much to the evening with his wit and sense of humour. “You have written in your book that in the 1982 tour of Pakistan, you changed your stance from side-on to a more open-chested one and it paid dividends. I think there is a very close connection with our foreign policy there,” he quipped to raucous laughter. He went on to add thereafter that foreign policy was much like cricket, where there are always home and away games with differing conditions of play. “We are often at the mercy of umpires,” he mentioned in front of a packed audience, which enjoyed every bit of the conversation.
While the book is a very good read, Amarnath has chosen to be diplomatic and not named a number of cricketers whom he has referred to in the book, something that the minister mentioned. That’s where Kapil Dev, his skipper in 1983, came in and said: “There should be a sequel to Fearless with all the names included.”
For one of Indian cricket’s bravest batters, this is now a challenge to stand up to. It is to be seen whether he does so in the future. For the moment, read Fearless and celebrate one of the India’s finest, who helped make the game what it is today.
The book has been published by Harper Collins India.
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