Madras sports writers to remember

by Partab Ramchand

Having closely followed the sports pages of the news-papers in the city first as a young sports lover and then as a -professional sports writer, it has been my good fortune to be -influenced by many outstanding seniors in the field. Chennai that was Madras has produced some of the finest sports writers in the country whose writing has been an ideal blend of the colourful and the knowledgeable.

The first name that comes to mind is S.K. Gurunathan. For almost a decade, from 1958 up to his death in 1966, he was the Sports Editor of The Hindu. By then he had earned an exalted status as one of the leading cricket writers in the country. Not for him the frills and the hype associated with today’s sports writing, for he was basically a very serious writer who concentrated on facts and figures but blended them with a neat turn of phrase and impeccable English.

A writer who wielded considerable influence, SKG or Guru as he was popularly known to his colleagues, was the founder editor of Indian Cricket, an almanac based on Wisden, …. from 1947 to 1965. He was also the Indian correspondent for Wisden. In days when touring abroad was almost unheard of, Gurunathan covered the Indian team’s tour of England in 1952 and also went to Pakistan to cover the 1954-55 tour. A traditionalist and a stickler for detail, Gurunathan’s copy was eagerly looked forward to every morning in the days of Radio. The sincere and handsome tributes paid by cricketers and officials when he died underlined the stature he commanded among the cricket fraternity in India and abroad.

Gurunathan was succeeded both as cricket correspondent of The Hindu and as editor of Indian Cricket by P.N. Sundare-san. Popularly known as PNS or Raja, Sundaresan freely acknowledged his predecessor as his guru but he was no what less when he stepped into those big shoes. A sober and knowledgeable writer, he too specialised in cricket though he wrote felicitously on tennis and hockey too. Sundaresan also succeeded Gurunathan as Indian correspondent for Wisden. For me, Sundaresan will always have a special place in my life for it was he who brought me into the profession in 1968.

Sundaresan retired from The Hindu in 1974 but continued writing on a freelance basis for Sportsweek magazine. Hewrote a couple of books and brought out various publications on behalf of the BCCI. Sundaresan passed away in 1994 and among the many who came to his house off Kasturi Ranga Road to pay their respects was MJ Gopalan, then well into his 80s and walking with the help of a stick, symbolising the respect Guru-nathan enjoyed from the sports fraternity.

N.S. Ramaswami who was a contemporary of Gurunathan and Sundaresan, was a writer of a very different kind. He was straight out of the Neville Cardus school and in fact adopted the nom de plume ‘The Cardusian’ when penning his column ‘In the pavilion’ for the Indian Express in the 1960s. It made for delightful reading as he would describe the happenings of a nondescript third division or fourth division league match while sitting under a tree at the Marina or Vivekananda College. A scholarly writer who specialised in literary descriptions of players and events, NSR, as he was popularly known, was also a keen student of history and archaeology and he was perhaps at his happiest describing places associated with the Indus Valley Civili-sation while covering the Indian team’s tour of Pakistan in 1978.

Cricket-wise nothing pleased NSR more than the aesthetics of the game and who can forget his masterly description of Gundappa Viswanath’s immortal 97 not out against the West Indies at Chepauk in 1975? NSR also worked for The Hindu and post-retirement wrote match reports for news agencies. He passed away in 1987.

Another outstanding sports writer in the city around the same time was T. Govindarajan of The Hindu who was known to young and old simply as TG. Few writers could be more vividly descriptive in their match reports as TG and you could really visualise through his writings the action as it happened. He wrote effortlessly on all sports but specialised in tennis and football. He was particularly pleased when Neale Fraser, the Australian captain during the Davis Cup tie against India at Bangalore in 1970, took copies of the newspaper along with him saying that the reports were some of the best he had read.

For me, TG will always have a special place for he was my writing hero. I loved his style, complete with the apt phrase and faultless English. As a youngster, I tried to ape his style, not with much success I am afraid. Seeing this he advised me to develop my own style, adding that he should be taken “not as an example but as a warning” given his general cavalier approach to the profession. TG retired in 1989 and hardly wrote on sport thereafter. His death in a road accident in 1998 came as a big shock to the sporting fraternity in the city, while for me it was a great personal loss.

And, finally how can one forget J.C. Jacob? He was the Sports Editor of The Mail, the city evening daily that was around for well over 100 years before it folded up in 1982. Jacobs English was exemplary, his knowledge of various sports profound and he wielded a facile pen. He could write with authority on a number of sports and the best tribute I can pay him is to state that I used to read his articles no matter on which sport it was written. For example, my knowledge of horse racing is next to nil but when Jacob wrote a comment piece on events at Guindy, I was an avid reader. I found his style easy to follow. He stuck to the basics, never indulged in hyperbole and the phrases followed in a neat context. For balanced judgement on sporting events, JC as he was popularly known, had few equals.

Fortunately, even during the active days of The Mail Jacob had been appointed Sports Correspondent for The Times of India and he reported for that newspaper almost till his last days. Shortly after I joined the profession, a senior colleague told me that K N Prabhu, then Sports Editor of The Times of India had given instructions to the news desk that not even a word of Jacob’s copy was to be edited. Such was the confidence and respect that Prabhu, himself a doyen among sports writers, had for Jacob who started his career in journalism in 1937. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 89. Editor’s Note: He was Madras Musings’ Sports Correspondent from its beginning, writing fortnightly till he passed away.

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