CK Nayudu Trophy awards have gone to the right claimants

There is little doubt that instituting the CK Nayudu Trophy award for lifetime achievement is one of the best things the Board of Control for Cricket in India has done.

Public memory is notoriously short. Once a cricketer retires, he goes off into oblivion. Soon, he is a largely forgotten hero as the new stars garner all the attention. Ten, twenty, thirty years afterwards, young cricket followers are quick to ask `Vijay who, Hemu who, Subhash who' when reminded by older folk of the great feats of the cricketers of yesteryear. Moreover cricketers of past generations did not have the opportunities to make the kind of money today's players have. In terms of monetary rewards and national recognition, the CK Nayudu award has certainly served a more than useful purpose.

The first such award should ideally have gone to the person whom it has been named after. CK Nayudu was the first Indian cricketer to earn international recognition. But he died in 1967, almost 30 years before the award was instituted. The board however has done well in paying him the ultimate tribute by naming the prestigious award after him.

Unfortunately by the time it saw the light of the day, many great cricketers had passed away. There is no doubt that players like DB Deodhar, Vijay Merchant, Md Nissar, Amar Singh, Vinoo Mankad and Vijay Manjrekar would have been worthy nominees for the award.

Since its inception, the award has been presented to Lala Amarnath, Syed Mushtaq Ali, Vijay Hazare, Polly Umrigar and Hemu Adhikari with noted journalist KN Prabhu being the only non cricketer among the award winners. Few would question the list, even that of Prabhu, for he has been one of the leading cricket writers in the country for over half a century now and still continues to wield a facile pen in his late 70s.

Indeed, many leading Indian cricketers are confessed fans of Prabhu, who in his heyday had a following second to none. His lucid comments always carried the stamp of class, he wrote with a lot of feeling about the game he loved and his constructive criticism was always heard by those in authority.

The five others honoured so far are too well known, I am sure, to need any introduction ­ even to today's young cricket followers. Suffice it to say that each one of them is a worthy recipient of the award and they will soon be joined by two others who too have every right to be honoured. At a recent meeting of the Board, it was decided to present the awards for 2000 and 2001 to Subash Gupte and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi respectively.

Gupte was a master leg spinner of the orthodox school. He played for India from 1951 to 1961 taking 149 wickets in 36 Tests at an average of 29.55. Impressive though the figures may be, they do not tell the true story for through the decade, India's fielding and catching was abysmal and Gupte, as the main strike bowler suffered the most. Gupte is now 72, not in very good health and is in the West Indies, where he has been living for the past 40 years.

Pataudi, an endearingly heroic figure of Indian cricket, is of course well known as an outstanding captain who inspired the team to great deeds in the sixties and seventies. Under him, the spin quartet was formed, there was greater stability in the batting with the captain leading from the front and there was marked improvement in the fielding ­ again with the captain setting the example. Pataudi's playing days stretched from 1961 to 1975, a run that included 40 Tests as captain. In 46 Tests, Pataudi scored 2793 runs at an average of 34.91 with six hundreds ­ figures that do scarce justice to his dazzling batsmanship.

There is just one intriguing point about the selections. Picking the award nominees has generally been in chronological order as can be seen from the list. After Umrigar and Adhikari, Gupte was an automatic choice. But Gupte made his Test debut in 1951-52 and Pataudi ten years later. Does that mean that the Board did not find any suitable candidate in between? Certainly I can think of one immediately. Chandu Borde, who made his debut in 1958-59 and played with distinction for a decade, should certainly qualify for the award. Starting out as an all rounder, he became the batting bulwark for much of the sixties, was an outstanding fieldsman and had the distinction of being the only Indian in the Rest of the World team which played Barbados in 1967. Perhaps he will be considered next year. After all, Adhikari made his debut a year before Umrigar but was honoured a year later.