Waking up Frank Worrell

M.S. Padmanabhan on his time with the West Indian cricketing great

April 17, 2015 07:31 pm | Updated 07:31 pm IST

M.S. Padmanabhan (extreme right) with (from left) Frank Worrell , R. Panchu and Ramadhin.

M.S. Padmanabhan (extreme right) with (from left) Frank Worrell , R. Panchu and Ramadhin.

I struggle within the deep recesses of my memory, but I fail to remember how I was introduced to Frank Worrell in 1951.

But cut me some slack. I turn 90 this May, and if life is a collection of memories, I have misplaced this one somewhere along the 64 years that have passed by.

But we met a number of times in January 1951, the month that Worrell was in Madras to play the fourth unofficial Test between India and the Commonwealth. I was a young man then, who had just joined the family business, with possibly a lot of time on my hands.

I was also passionate about cricket — having played it in college and in the league — and aware that Worrell, who had finished a hugely successful tour of England the year before, was a cricketer to watch out for. What I did not know then was he would go on to be regarded as one of the game’s great heroes: become the first black man to captain the West Indies, a senator in the Jamaican parliament, a knight for his services to cricket and, most important of all, one of the game’s great ambassadors for his gentleness, bravery, large-heartedness, and a donor of the blood that saved Nari Contractor’s life.

It was a gentler, less-hurried time then and cricketers were not blanketed by the smothering security they are these days. Somehow, it became my lot to pick him up from his hotel and ferry him in our Chevrolet to the Madras Cricket Club grounds (now Chepauk) on both practice and match days. He stayed at Connemara hotel, which then stood next to sweeping colonnaded Spencer’s building that was ravaged by a fire and eventually replaced by an unprepossessing mall.

How relaxed a time it was may be gauged from this anecdote. On a match day, I had gone to pick up Worrell and found no response when I knocked on his hotel door. Finding it unlocked, I pushed it open, only to find him fast asleep (with nothing on but his athletic suspenders!). Next to his bed lay an open book he had been reading the previous night and a pen with which he had underlined some passages. A transistor played music. I woke him up, reminding him it was time to get going, shaking my head in disbelief that he could be so calm and unperturbed before an important match.

At the nets a day before the unofficial Test began on January 20, I found Worrell was getting out to every other ball that was being hurled at him. “Will you be all right?” I made bold to ask. “Did you have too much to drink the previous night?” He just threw back his head and laughed.

There was no problem, however, when the Test began. I remember Worrell’s knock in the first innings well (71 run out), characterised by that fluid and sinuous elegance that would mark his style, and set him apart from his prodigious but much less elegant other two ‘Ws’ – Clyde Walcott and Everton Weekes. There was one audacious stroke, perhaps somewhat unbecoming of a man regarded as a classicist, I will never forget. He turned on his heels with his back to the bowler and then drove the ball over fine leg for a towering six.

In those days, visiting cricketers were given temporary membership at the Madras Gymkhana Club. I had taken Frank there one evening for his tot. At an adjoining table, a group of five or six Englishmen were having a drink, and invited us over. I remember there was a convivial conversation at the time and Frank’s alertness at the end of the evening. By oversight, the bearer at the club had billed us twice for the drinks but Frank was quick to remind him that he had already signed for the round.

I have only one photograph of us together. The ink on it is fading but it is signed ‘Happy Memories, Yours Sincerely, Frank Worrell, 21.1.51.” The date is interesting because it was taken on the second day of the unofficial Test – could it have been just after Worrell had made his 71 not out? Frankly, I can’t remember.

There are four of us in the picture shot at GK Vale & Co, located then on Mount Road and not far from the MCC grounds. There is the diminutive Sonny Ramadhin, the great West Indian who spun the ball both ways, and who, along with his fellow spinner Alf, inspired the calypso – “Those two little pals of mine, Ramadhin and Valentine.” Ramadhin played in the Governor’s XI match before the unofficial Test in Madras, which the archive shows he did not play in. The fourth person is my friend R. Panchu, who went on to become a senior executive at Rallis.There are other memories as well – for instance, of a lively dinner party at someone’s house in Alwarpet where Frank was in his elements. I wish I had maintained a diary of my time with him instead of having to rely on memory.

After he left, I followed his career from a distance, saddened at his early death due to cancer and reliving our few days together at a time when Chennai was Madras, where there was more time on everyone’s hands, and when friendships were easier to strike.

(As told to the family)

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