Anandji Dossa, 98, the original walking-talking Statsguru, passes away

Like was his habit, the genial and diligent numbers’ man had written down this obscure statistic on one of his numerous scrap books. On another occasion, Dossa would come to his colleague’s rescue again as he informed him that Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi had been run-out once in a Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup game just as Merchant was about to mention that he never had been.

Anandji Dossa donated his library, which included score sheets, scrap books and paper cuttings, to the CCI.

But he wasn’t just a statistician with a penchant for the outlandish. The name Anandji Dossa might not feature anywhere in the vast records and statistics of Indian cricket. But if it wasn’t for the 98-year-old, who passed away in New York on Monday, there might well have been no records of Indian cricket, especially those of yore. And it’s unlikely that the world would have heard about the contributions of the likes of Vijay Hazare, CK Nayudu and Dossa’s old pal Merchant, especially at the domestic level.

If in today’s world ESPNCricinfo is the go-to for stats-seeekers across the world, in the pre-internet era Dossa was the walking-talking Statsguru. One who according to Tushar Trivedi, a renowned scorer and statistician from Gujarat, was nothing short of a human computer.

“He was the Google or Wikipedia of his day. Remember there were no computers in those days. Before every game in Mumbai, Dossa used to carry two big bags of books with him to the stadium from Santracruz. Once I told him ‘Sir, keep it here only. Why carry it back in the crowded local train?’ But he said this was all precious data which he didn’t want to lose at any cost,” Trivedi recalls.

The Cricket Club of India (CCI) library has preserved all of Dossa’s precious contributions towards chronicling the history of Indian cricket, which includes score-sheets, scrap books and a plethora of paper-cuttings.

His library, which Dossa donated to the CCI, includes records since 1878 when a Parsee team played the British in Mumbai. In it you even find gems like how Dev Anand, the Bollywood superstar, turned up for a celebrity cricket match in the 1950s.

“He used to read a lot and if he found anything related to cricket, Dossa used to cut it out and paste it in his book. He even used to get all the prominent papers from North India posted to his home so that no stat goes missing from his record,” recalls Marcus Couto, a veteran umpire from Mumbai.

Beyond the field

But Dossa’s extensive knowledge of Indian cricket didn’t extend to just numbers. He even had a tab on those cricketers still not active on the circuit, recalls Trivedi. “I was once looking for a Gujarat cricketer whose whereabouts nobody was aware of. So I called Dossa. His answer stunned me, because he said the boy had been caught for smuggling and sent to jail,” says Trivedi before adding, “He was absolutely right. I met the player in question many years later and he confirmed that he had spent some time behind bars.”

And it’s safe to say that on Monday, India didn’t just lose its foremost cricket statistician — it lost one of its greatest chroniclers.