TRIBUTE
Follow UsFor generations, Indian parents have had a desire to see their wards excel in every walk of life. They are generally not satisfied if you are doing well in only one discipline. As a result, a child who is a creative painter is also expected to be good at mathematics. Similarly, the fact that you are a sportsperson does not give you the concession to neglect studies. One of the reasons behind this trend was until recently only education could provide a financial stability in life.
Things are changing for the good now, but there’s still a long way to go. So, it is not a surprise that we have seen many Indian cricketers holding an engineering degree. One of the early cricketers who holds this distinction is Erapalli Anantharao Srinivas Prasanna. Even though he was good enough to make the best batsmen in the world dance to the tune of his off spins, his father had felt that the young boy needed an engineering degree to secure his future.
So, Prasanna went on to become an engineer. That didn’t mean that he left cricket or let’s say that he was too good a player to have been kept out of cricket. It would have been a grave loss to cricket had he not returned to the game. Thankfully, engineer Prasanna preferred focusing on the parabolic trajectory of a cricket ball over building machines.
“He was an engineer by trade and he applied the same sort of thinking to his bowling”
The word engineer is derived from the Latin words ingenaire (to create, generate, devise) and ingenium (cleverness). And if one has to think of a clever bowler, then Prasanna’s name is bound to come to the mind. On the 22-yards of the cricket pitch, he exhibited the traits of an engineer. This is a view held by many of his contemporaries. “He was an engineer by trade and he applied the same sort of thinking to his bowling”, said Ian Chappell once.
Chappell had further elaborated, “Prasanna’s flight was impeccable. There were many times when I left my crease certain that I was going to get his flighted delivery at least on the half-volley. It never happened; my estimated time of arrival never coincided with his appointed destination. Pras’ line of thought was that the higher up the bat you hit, the more loft on the shot and the less distance it will travel.”
“The best off-spinner in the world has to be Erapalli, with his craftiness of the hand and the mind.”
As per former Indian captain and Prasanna’s partner in crime as part of the famous spin quartet, Bishan Singh Bedi, “The best off-spinner in the world has to be Erapalli, with his craftiness of the hand and the mind. His bowling was unbelievable!”
Indeed, Prasanna was a thinking bowler who treated the cricket pitch as his workshop. In an age when there were no video-analysis or slow-motion replays available, Prasanna did all the calculations in his mind and that too with the same speed. Richie Benaud had once asked him to slow down and not to rush in between his deliveries. To this, engineer Prasanna’s response was, “He thought that I should slow down to think and bowl. But I had already thought of the next ball, the moment the batsman had played the previous one. So, I was eager to bowl back again. In other words, I already knew where I had to get him out.”
“Length is mandatory, line is your thought process.”
In fact, Prasanna takes pride in the fact that he got batsmen out in the manner that he wanted to. Today, Prasanna is a man proud of his achievements and is pleased that even now people talk about his bowling. But he is equally proud of his engineering degree. During my meeting with him a few years back, the moment that he came to know that I am also an engineer, I could sense an added association. After explaining certain finer points of the game, he would say, “You will understand as you are an engineer.” I was happy with this conclusion.
He had spoken on various topics, but the statement that stayed with me was, “Length is mandatory, line is your thought process.”
As he turns 81 today, I wish him a healthy and happy life ahead. The clarity in his approach to bowling remains an inspiration for all budding youngsters. And like it is said that engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world, Prasanna’s bowling was nothing short of magic.
