Ritesh Misra, Surat, 11 August 2024
We started our Icons of India series with Bishan Singh Bedi. Last month, we covered B.S Chandrasekhar and now let us cover another famous member of the spinning quartet, off-spinner EAS Prasanna.
Cricket was a game played for passion earlier, rather than as a profession. Probably a good example of this was Prasanna Sir, who played just two test matches, then left the game for a long period of five years to complete his engineering degree, and then came back to the rigours of test cricket to play for over a decade.
Overall, Prasanna (always Prasanna Sir but for the purposes of this article referring tp him as Prasanna for convenience, though the Sir and respect will always be there) played 48 Test matches in which he took 189 test wickets. He took five wickets in an innings ten times and ten wickets in a test match twice. Let us travel back in time to discuss a few aspects of this wonderful cricketer’s career and his personality.
Wicket-taking bowler in test cricket
Prasanna was a wicket-taking bowler. He had the record of reaching 100 test wickets in just 20 test matches, a record which was broken by another great off-spinner Ravi Ashwin.
First-class cricket giant
Prasanna played 235 first class matches and had 957 wickets which included 56 five-fors, and ten wickets in a match nine times. He loved playing Ranji Trophy and took his team to Ranji triumphs twice. The first time they won the Ranji Trophy was in 1973-74 in which they stopped a 15 year run of Mumbai in the semi-finals with Prasanna having a five wicket haul. In the finals they defeated Rajasthan. Karnataka next won the Ranji trophy, once again under Prasanna’s captaincy, in 1977-78 when they defeated a strong Delhi team in the semi-finals and Uttar Pradesh in the final.
Unbelievable control over flight
The hallmark of Prasanna was his highly deceptive flight, which deceived the batsmen who were drawn out of their crease to find that the ball was pitching ahead of where they anticipated, leading to their downfall. Prasanna also could, in the words of successful Aussie off-spinner Ashley Mallett, get the ball to “dip wickedly” and had terrific change of pace as well, so much so that it was almost as if he “had the ball on a string and haul it back his way when the batsman advanced.” Mallett calls him brilliant and says that he could trouble even Ian Chappell who was a fantastic player of spin bowling. His stand-in captain Chandu Borde is on record that Prasanna fooled Ian Chappell into driving and getting caught and he had exclaimed in astonishment, “how could you do it”. Ian Chappell too has described him as the best spinner he has faced.
Basketball helped him
Interestingly Prasanna has said in an interview published by Mid-day that basketball helped him become a good spinner, as the only way one can shoot a basket with tall defenders is by having a loop and dip. He played as a right-winger, and hence shooting from side-on helped him develop the same attributes in his bowling. Running up and down for 60 minutes also builds up stamina.
The fish effect
This is an interesting concept spoken about by the Master to bcci.tv. To quote him, “You can also employ something known as the ‘fish effect’, a principle that is used in flying planes. While taking off and landing, the plane is held in floating position because of this phenomenon. The fish effect is nothing but the friction created between the wind and the ball. Due to this, the ball holds in the air for longer before drifting and then dips suddenly, hence deceiving the batsman in flight.”
In fact, the publisher of Nirvik, Sobhan says that Prasanna Sir had retained this ability (of loop and dip) even at almost 50 when he used to come for the all India youth camp along with his fellow Karnataka and India legend, B.S Chandrasekhar. He used to bowl to the youngsters and beat them in the air. Once he told Sobhan (while they were bowling together at the nets) that he was going to get the batsman out in a particular way and actually did it. Then, playfully, he winked at Sobhan!
What can we say except, WOW!
A man with a strong heart
Prasanna took disappointment in his stride and came out stronger. As mentioned above, he was the fastest to reach 100 wickets in 20 tests and reportedly had the confidence of inspirational captain Tiger Pataudi but was later dropped in favour of Venkataraghavan for the iconic series of 1971 when India defeated West Indies and England. He shrugged off the disappointment and made a comeback to the Indian team and played till 1978.
Prasanna himself accepts that having the captain’s faith is imperative for a spinner and he had a special relationship with Tiger Pataudi.
Best bowling figures in Sunny Gavaskar’s debut captaincy test
This was at Eden Park, New Zealand and his 8-76 was instrumental in getting India a very small target of just 69 which was achieved easily. This was Gavaskar’s debut test as captain and it was also the debut of Dilip Vengsarkar and Surinder Amarnath. Gavaskar scored a hundred and so did Amarnath, emulating his father, Lala Amarnath. Prasanna took 11 wickets in the match and Chandra 8. The match will always be remembered for the terrible umpiring by partisan and biased home umpires, which led to the famous appealing by Chandra when he had got a batsman clean bowled. The umpire asked, “he is bowled, why are you appealing?”, and Chandra retorted, “I know he is bowled, but is he out?” The genius of Prasanna and Chandra could not be stopped by the biased umpires and India had a famous win.
Prasanna Sir’s autobiography is named One More Over. He has been awarded the Padma Shri as well as the CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement award.
Sir you are an amazing Icon of India!
