Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXVII No. 15, November 16-30, 2017
The left-hander who was overlooked
by V. Ramnarayan
Remembering A.G. Milkha Singh
A.G. Milkha Singh.
Born on December 31, 1941, Amritsar Govindsingh Milkha Singh was an elegant little left-hander who took Chennai school and college cricket by storm in the late 1950s, and went on to serve Madras cricket in the Ranji Trophy for well over a decade.
Barely 16 in the 1957-58 season, the St. Bede’s School product was a stylist Madras’s sports lovers would go miles to see in action, whether it was at the Marina or at the grounds of his school or arch-rivals Madras Christian College School at Harrington Road, Chetpet. As someone younger by five years, I caught my first glimpses of his stylish batting when I was barely eleven.
Coached by his father and mentor, A.G. Ram Singh, Milkha displayed a precocious talent as a schoolboy, easily fitting into adult cricket in the local league. His consistent exploits in school cricket made him an automatic choice for the Madras Schools and South Zone Schools. His brilliant deeds at that level won Milkha the vice captain’s post in the Indian Schoolboys’ team that toured Ceylon that year. On the tour, the Madras left-hander was the outstanding batting success, with scores of 115, 62, 51 and 64. He also took 5 for 61 against Moratuwa Schools, bowling right arm off-spin.
Touring Pakistan with the Indian Starlets, a bunch of young Test prospects under the captaincy of veteran Lala Amarnath, Milkha and V.V. Kumar of Madras, made a tremendous impression with their consistent brilliance. Both received their Test baptism soon and Milkha made his debut at Madras against Richie Benaud’s Australia. Though he did not make a substantial contribution, his courageous batting and smart fielding were noted.
Milkha had few opportunities at the highest level. He batted well against Australia without once converting a good start into a big score, but he was only 18. After a modest outing against Pakistan, he bowed out of Test cricket following a failure against Ted Dexter’s Englishmen in the Bombay Test. The young batsman made a brave effort to stay at the wicket and settle down, but a hostile crowd which booed him from the moment he entered the ground to the time, he was dismissed made sure that his career was halted abruptly. His only crime was that he was a turbaned Sikh and a boorish crowd found that something to ridicule and shout down. Rarely has an audience been crueller to a young and talented but nervous batsman. (As a 14-year-old watching that game I was heartbroken by Milkha’s trauma at the Brabourne, and have recorded the incident and my feelings on more than occasion. Milkha, however, perhaps did not want to remember that experience, and once scolded me for writing about it. “Nothing of the sort happened,” he said.)
That was Milkha Singh’s last break at the international level, but he served Madras (and, later, Tamil Nadu) with distinction, making 2150 runs in 58 innings at an average of 41.35, outstanding statistics for a batsman in an era of uncovered wickets, dominated by great spinners. He scored the first century in the Duleep Trophy championship hitting 151 for South Zone against North Zone in the inaugural match at Madras in 1961-62. In a decade long first class career, Milkha scored 4324 runs (35.44) with eight centuries. He was particularly strong against the quicker stuff, but the way he handled the double spin attack of Prasanna and Chandrasekhar was a treat to watch. He was also very successful in the Gopalan Trophy, played between Madras and Ceylon. I personally remember a blistering attack he launched against the Lankan pacemen at the Corporation Stadium, once walking down the wicket to smash a straight six.
When I bowled to him in the local league, he was past his best, and gave me the kind of respect he did not show bowlers a few years earlier. He had a word of appreciation for my bowling at the end of the day, and this was a regular feature of his interactions with younger cricketers. My younger brother Sivaramakrishnan also received encouragement from him. I had the pleasure of playing with or against his elder brother Kripal, younger brother Satvinder Singh, Kripal’s sons Swaran Kripal and Arjan Kripal Singh and his cousins Jarnail and Harjinder Singh, (not to mention brothers Kalwant and Satwant whom I only watched), a family of fine cricketers. Of course, we all know what a wonderful cricketer, coach and human being Milkha’s father A.G. Ram Singh was. I, like most cricketers of my generation, was coached by Ram Singh and bought my cricket gear at A.G. Ram Singh & Sons at Triplicane.
The family had moved to Madras when Ram Singh was a schoolboy, from their home within a huge six away from Jallianwala Bagh soon after the massacre there. Ram Singh fell in love with cricket the very day the family arrived at Madras as they passed the Chepauk cricket ground and watched a game in action.
A stalwart of the State Bank of India team, Milkha Singh was known for his philosophical attitude to the ups and downs of his career, and his fine sense of humour, which never failed to see the funny side of life. He was quite the life and soul of the party in the Bank team’s dressing room, dismissing pomposity from any quarter with his sardonic wit. Unusually for a Sikh, he used to smoke the occasional cigarette, and, not unusually for a Sikh, enjoyed a drink, too. He and the entire Ram Singh clan spoke Tamil fluently, and Milkha could joke and swear as well in Tamil as in his native tongue or in English.
The Indian selectors never recalled him after his early failures, despite a long and distinguished innings for Tamil Nadu and his good showing in Duleep Trophy cricket. In doing so, they denied India a class batsman in the middle order. I am sure he would have served India as well as the likes of left-handers Ajit Wadekar and Salim Durani, if the selectors had been more patient with him.
