JOIN USHow a DH employee was at the centre of history's most famous Test match
Thirty-five years ago this week, an employee of Deccan Herald and Prajavani’s circulation department checked out of the MG Road headquarters and went home to pack for a flight to what was then Madras. Seven days later he was at the heart of one of the most famous moments in world cricket history.
Vikrama Raju was in charge of ensuring that copies of the two newspapers reached homes throughout Bengaluru, and on time. It was a quiet life, punctuated by the odd crack-of-dawn trip to distribution points to sort out bottlenecks. He had graduated to the job after joining the Printers (Mysore) -- publisher of DH and Prajavani -- as a cashier in his early twenties.
The son of a police fingerprint expert, Raju’s own fingers had produced leg breaks in club cricket, and he could open the innings to boot. He was even captain of the Deccan Herald team. But he had more success when he traded his cricketing whites for an umpire’s coat and tie. It started unpromisingly, at a salary of Rs 5 per day in local league games over weekends. But by 1959, he had qualified to umpire in the Ranji Trophy, which took him to cricket grounds across India and earned him Rs 250 a day.
He hit big time when he stood in the first flood-lit international game in India, at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru stadium in 1983, pitting Kapil’s Devils against Pakistan.
In between these bouts of excitement, he would return to work in Bengaluru, keeping track of bill collections and ‘returns’ or unsold copies of the two Karnataka papers.
“I would apply for leave whenever I had to umpire a game, giving the office one week’s notice. There was never a problem,” the spry 87-year-old told DH. Then, in 1986, he was assigned a game that would change his life: the first Test of an India vs Australia series, to be played nearby in Madras. He landed in the searing hot city two days ahead of the game, which started on Sept 18, to do the normal checks: confirm the distance of the boundaries, inspect the condition of the ground and the rolling of the pitch.
His partner umpire for this match was Dara Dotiwala. Raju remembers being paid a princely sum of Rs 5,000 for the game.
His recollections of the game, until the fateful final day, centred around Dean Jones’ vomit-and-bat epic 210 (“he went to hospital after the first day”), Sunil Gavaskar playing his hundredth successive Test, Krishnamachari Srikkanth’s rapid half-century, and Kapil Dev’s hundred, which still left India trailing by 177 on first innnings. And it was hot, really hot.
“Australian coach Bob Simpson and captain Allan Border suggested that we remove our coats and ties,” recalls Raju. “We asked them to ask our BCCI president....we knew it wouldn’t be allowed.”
After Australia manufactured a surprise declaration in their second innings, India took up the challenge of scoring 348 to win. They were well on track but a mini-collapse left the last pair at the crease. With only two to get. Ravi Shastri, the coach of the present Indian team, took a single, exposing the rabbit Maninder Singh to the offspin of Greg Matthews. The ball hit Maninder’s pad, a roar went up....and so did Raju’s finger, ending the match in what remains one of only two Ties in 144 years and more than 2,000 games of Test cricket.
“It was a perfect decision, and there was no DRS those days,” says Raju, pre-empting any question. “Shastri should not have taken a single, and we should have won.” The hurt of having arguably the most famous decision in cricket history being questioned -- largely by Shastri -- still lingers, though.
A lot has been written, in the last three decades, about Raju and the tied Test. But few remember that he stood in another tied international. It was six months after Madras, in the India-Pakistan one-dayer at Hyderabad. That ended with Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir getting run out with scores level, and India being awarded a win for having lost one wicket less than their rivals. That run-out decision was not Raju’s: he was at the other end as umpire Sunit Ghosh gave Qadir out.
Raju never stood in a Test again, though he did one-day internationals until early 1988. He remained a minor celebrity, making a trip to Australia in 2007 to umpire, along with Dotiwala, a festival game to mark 21 years of the Madras game.
He retired after a career with Printers (Mysore). But he had another encounter with the Madras Test, a couple of years ago, when he was refereeing a game in the Karnataka Premier League. “Dean Jones met me, and he said the decision was correct.”
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