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Vol. XXV No. 8, August 1-15, 2015

A great start – with a championship

Fifty years together – Jolly Rovers and the Sanmar Group

K.S. Narayanan

Jolly Rovers was started by K. Balakrishna Rao of Dasaprakash as a neighbourhood cricket club and was developed by S. Rangarajan of The Hindu as a private club. Through the initiative of its Secretary, V.A. Parthasarathy, in 1966 it came under the patronage of K.S. Narayanan, then of India Cements and later founder of the Sanmar Group, and became a more professional club. Narayanan and his son, N. Sankar, now head of the Sanmar Group, have over the last ten years created a corporate cricket club run entirely on professional lines. The results are there for all to see: over 60 trophies in the half century and 30 times No. 1 or No. 2 in Madras cricket. Significantly, over the years, 24 cricketers who have played for the club have also, at sometime or another, played for the country. As the club enters its Golden Jubilee year, its matchless record is reviewed in a series of articles by V. Ramnarayan, beginning with today’s article.

The first period: 1966-79

A great start – with a championship

On July 29, 1966, V. A. Parthasarathy – VAP to all who knew him – walked into K.S. Narayanan’s office at India Cements Ltd. and suggested out of the blue that India Cements take over the sponsorship of Jolly Rovers, the club VAP ran. Corporate sponsorship of cricket in the city then belonged to the realm of government organisations, private sector banks, the erstwhile British-owned companies and the like.

VAP explained that running a cricket team was growing more and more expensive. He had till then persuaded his friends and well-wishers to fund the club on an ad hoc basis, but it was no longer a practical option.

KSN spontaneously accepted the offer of the team and decided to sponsor Jolly Rovers Cricket Club from India Cements where he was the Managing Director. In this decision, he was actively encouraged by A. Ananthanarayan, a former Madras player in the Ranji Trophy and a senior executive of India Cements, and his deputy, K. Ramamurthy, an active University and club cricketer.

Coincidentally around this time, having heard that India Cements was looking to appoint cricketers, B.K. Anantharaman, the General Manager of Indian Telephone Industries in Bangalore, called KSN to propose the hiring of top-class Bangalore cricketers like K.R. Rajagopal and Najam Hussain by India Cements. He was himself no longer able to support these cricketers through ITI.

Thus, 50 years ago began the search for a high-performance cricket unit to nurture. The decision was made on July 29, 1966 and the team fulfilled KSN’s expectations by winning the league in that very first season.

The knowledgeable Madras crowd was treated to some high quality cricket every time the new Jolly Rovers team stepped on to the ground.

Jolly Rovers who played for India.

K.R. Rajagopal, Najam Hussain, K.V.R. Murthy, and P.K. Dharmalingam from among the non-residents, and S. Venkataraghavan, P.K. Belliappa, V.R. Rajaraghavan, K. Bharathwaj, G. Srinivasan, A.K. Vijayaraghavan and P.S. Narayanan, among the locals, made the team a star-studded outfit. N. Kumar, A. Ananthanarayan and K. Ramamurthy completed the squad. Other excellent players, like Balaji Rao, George Thomas, P. Sampath and T.E. Srinivasan, also turned out for the Club during the decade.

When the 1966-67 season unfolded, there was excitement in the family, created by the arrival of these outstanding cricketers. The excitement was mutual. The players responded magnificently to the grand welcome they received.

What made Jolly Rovers such a force to reckon with, was the keen eye of the top management for talent spotting. KSN had an unerring instinct for picking the right personnel, not only talented but also blessed with a propensity to thrive as members of a well-knit team. The team was a confident group of men, secure in the knowledge that their bosses at work would support them to the hilt in their league campaign. Besides KSN and Sankar, A. Ananthanarayan was another father figure who looked after the interests of the team.

The captain P.K. Belliappa, who had earlier turned out for Esso, was surprisingly dour in his attitude to batting; surprising because he was an extrovert off the field. He was laid back in a tongue-in-cheek, bantering style, but once he put on his pads to bat or keep wickets, he was a picture of concentration, preferring safety to excitement.

In sharp contrast, K.R. Rajagopal, a dashing batsman who believed in belting the ball from the word go, was socially perhaps the least flamboyant. In wicket keeping too, he was a daring adventurer who thought nothing of standing up to the wicket to fast bowlers, whipping off the bails in a flash to effect some spectacular legside stumpings.

In their divergent styles, the pair batted with rare consistency at the top of the order, each complementing the other. The opening batsman they kept out was P.S. Narayanan who made batting look easy, and his off spin was effective in its deceptively innocuous appearance. Then there was K.V.R. Murthy, an elegant, correct little batsman who had distinguished himself representing more than one State in the national tournament – again another mild-mannered, slightly built man who looked more like an accountant than a cricketer.

There was no one less resembling a cricketer than Balaji Rao, credited with the uncanny faculty of snaffling slip catches in his sleep. No matinee idol was he, that distinction going to the tall, erect Bharathwaj whose trousers were as uncreased at the end of a hard day’s cricket as at its beginning. Here was an undoubted stylist whose bat came down in a perfect arc.

Another Jolly Rovers star of the 1960s was the former Services and North Zone all-rounder P.K. Dharmalingam as slightly built as Balaji Rao and Murthy, a brilliant mover on twinkling feet patrolling the covers and capable of throwing swiftly and accurately, often forcing the wicket keeper to seek additional protection in his gloves.

Dharma was an exciting batsman not known for the orthodoxy of his shotmaking. He was also a highly effective leg spinner, ever ready to throw the ball up. A.K. Vijayaraghavan was another lovely little all rounder, a left arm spinner who was a vestige of an earlier, romantic era with his chinamen, and a useful batsman. With his ready smile and penchant for card tricks, he was a popular draw everywhere. He was to do the star turn in one of the thrillers of the decade, when Jolly Rovers beat State Bank A by two wickets. Vijayaraghavan (3 for 6) had helped skittle the bankmen out for 109.

Najam Hussain was a prince among “poi bowlers”, an off spinner who turned the ball in inverse proportion to the seeming effort of his action, accurate and clever in his subtle changes of pace, but unplayable on a drying wicket as he once proved in a Buchi Babu match. He could bat too, as the situation demanded, stonewalling or gathering runs inventively – the ideal man for a crisis.

A more loyal soldier neither Jolly Rovers nor Tamil Nadu could ask for was that ever-willing Kalyanasundaram. Kalli was a fast medium bowler who turned many a match around with his tendency to engineer collapses. Here was yet another mild-looking character, bespectacled and wiry, but pacy and accurate; more than his legs that carried him at a brisk pace to the bowling crease and his strong shoulders that made him sharp and nippy, it was his brave heart that made him such a competitive cricketer. Eccentric he was, and quite amusingly idiosyncratic, but unleash him on batsmen and he loved to hate them. A memorable performance of his was his complete demolition of IOB in the 1969-70 season, when he sent the bank team crashing to 63 all out, returning figures of seven for 29. Equally forgettable was his experience of being surrounded and shouted at by spectators, when he and Najam Hussain reportedly wasted time to deny Alwarpet Cricket Club a win in a close Buchi Babu semifinal match in the same season. Scores: Jolly Rovers 125 all out, and Alwarpet 123 for 7, when play was disrupted by the crowd, and the police had to be brought in to disperse it.

George Thomas was another quite deadly pace bowler, vicious and dangerous, but his action was not above suspicion. Though he looked more the part than did Kalli, he was deceptively harmless in appearance. Test off spinner Venkataraghavan, one of the great spinners of the world and India’s Test Captain, veteran all rounder K S Kannan and classy Tamil Nadu batsman T E Srinivasan added to the stature of the team in the early years.

League matches drew substantial crowds back then. Jolly Rovers matches were no exception. In the pavilion, the players were often joined by their employers. KSN was a prominent spectator. So were Sankar and Kumar, as well as some other stalwarts of the Group.

The results were palpable. Receiving every encouragement from the management and benefiting from excellent amenities, the new combination won everything before it, claiming the Rajah of Palayampatti Shield in regal style. Jolly Rovers was to dominate Chennai cricket for decades afterwards – (Courtesy: Matrix, the house journal of the Sanmar Group).

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