Bishan Singh Bedi saab and his early morning phone calls will be missed

Bishan Singh Bedi had a habit of making early morning calls. It would mostly be about something that had kept him up all night. Not known to suffer fools or be easily impressed, Bedi set high standards for cricket players and adminrators. A wily left-arm spinner on the field but a straight-talking cricket romantic off it, Bedi truly believed that cricket was a sacred island that needed to be governed the principles of fair play and meritocracy.After suffering a heart attack and brain stroke two years back, Bedi had recently undergone a knee surgery. On Monday, after a prolonged illness and hospitalisation, Bedi, 77, passed away. He is survived wife Anju, son Angad and daughter Neha. With his demise, India has lost a cricketing giant, a voice of wisdom, and the game’s well-wisher.

For the last two years, wife Anju had been a pillar of strength, staying Bedi’s side during the recovery and rehabilitation phase. “He would tell the boys ‘the game is never over until the last ball is bowled’. Doctors would keep telling me, Bishan keeps fighting bravely,” she would say, as Bedi sat in a wheelchair, nodding his head.
Away from the capital’s hustle and bustle, the Bedis had settled in a farmhouse in Mehrauli called ‘Cricket Abode’. Post-hospitalisation, the Sardar of Spin needed assance to walk and had trouble speaking, but when his wife would hand him a cricket ball, his eyes would twinkle. Age and illness hadn’t taken away the dexterity and power from those fabled wrs. Sitting in his garden, he would toss the ball with a vigorous spin, and it would whirl in the silent evening air.
Bishan Singh Bedi was among the quartet of bowlers who reduced pace bowling to a formality, gave India a template to play Test cricket, and also an identity internationally. (IMAGES via ICC)
All through his career, on cricketing grounds around the world, the buzz of the whizzing ball was Bedi’s calling card. For the batsmen, it was an early warning of the impending danger; for the wicket-keeper and the close-in fielders, it was a siren to be on high alert. The flight or the subtle spin was tough to read. The trickery would fetch him 266 wickets at 28.71 in Tests, besides 1,560 scalps at 21 in first-class cricket.
Bishan Singh Bedi released the ball like a loose-limbed yogic, every cell choreographing and culminating in that action of gods. The pivot was a pirouette, the follow-through is so smooth you wonder whether he had one at all.
“A clockmaker would have been proud to set Bedi in motion — a mechanism finely balanced, cogs rolling silently and hand sweeping in smooth arcs across the face,” cricketer and broadcaster Tony Lewis would say.
In 1970-71, Bedi was instrumental in India’s first Test away wins in England and West Indies. He, along with Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan, took 853 wickets in all. Reducing pace bowling to a formality, they would give India a template to play Test cricket, and also an identity internationally. These pioneers would inspire generations of young cricketers to turn the ball and till date, despite the emergence of world-class pacers in the country, India continues to be seen as an intriguing land of spinners.

An ardent reader and very politically aware, Bedi was equally at ease with his county colleagues in England as he was with the Punjabi-speaking North Indian players. At Lord’s, he was Bish; at Kotla, he was the eternal big brother, “Paaji”. As India captain, he took on the English establishment blaming John Lever for using Vaseline. In Delhi’s cricket circles, he is remembered as the man who challenged Mumbai’s monopoly.
Post-retirement, he would still hold reservations about Mumbai and Mumbai cricketers. When his son Angad, an actor, shifted to Mumbai, he would joke: “He has shifted to enemy territory”. Blessed with a sharp sense of humour, he would call a stingy Mumbai cricketer “Crime”. When you asked why, he would chuckle, “Crime never pays”.

Even years after his retirement, Delhi players considered Bedi as the family patriarch. Some years back, at the end of an ODI at Kotla, Virat Kohli spotted Bedi beyond the boundary as he was taking the lap of honour after the game. He, along with the other Delhi boy, Shikhar, leaped over the in-stadia advertisement hoarding and touched his feet. In fact, Bedi’s feet were the most-touched at Kotla.
But a man of strong principles, Bedi wanted to be disassociated from Kotla, when the capital’s cricket adminrators wanted to name the stadium after the late Union miner, Arun Jaitley. In a scathing letter, he would write: “The place of the adminrators is in their glass cabins… Late Arun Jaitley, I’m told, was an able politician. So it’s Parliament, not a cricket stadium, which needs to remember him for posterity.”
In Pakan, he was India’s moral voice of stature. A photo of him is in a living room in Birmingham, England, at the home of his dear friend, former Pakan captain Mushtaq Mohammad. “’Champion, it is only a game. Play hard to win, but I want you in my room for a drink at 6.30’. This is how he was, one of the finest guys I ever met,” Mohammad would tell The Indian Express.

Always game for a good fight, Bedi sided with the underdog and took on the establishment. But while doing so, he remained a proud Indian.
Back in 1984, at the height of the anti-Sikh riots, Bedi had second thoughts about moving to his Mehrauli farmhouse. It wasn’t advisable for a Sikh family to be in a secluded area. Not sure what to do, Bedi thought of selling the land and moving to Amritsar. He went to a senior bureaucrat posted at Rashtrapati Bhavan for advice. “Bishan, if I were you, I would leave the country,” the bureaucrat told him. Recalling the incident, Bedi would say: “I didn’t say a word, but I was fuming inside. I left without any dua-salaam, reached home and told my wife that we are removing the ‘For Sale’ sign from the land. ‘If I get killed, so be it. I will not leave this country. I have every right to be here’, I told her.”Most Read
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That was Bedi. He was suspicious about T20 cricket, sceptical about franchise influence, but remained positive about the health of India and Indian cricket. But he had a complaint about his fellow cricketers and their political correctness. “They don’t speak out, buzdil hain saare,” he would say during those morning calls.

At a time when the game is at a crossroads, juggling its priorities, confused about the T20 influence, Indian cricket has lost its conscience-keeper. It has lost the man who would lose sleep over the health of Indian cricket and also stay awake following the highs of the national team.
With India in the middle of a magical run in the ongoing World Cup, he would be appreciative of Rohit Sharma’s team and the respectful Delhi boy he once trained. Bedi Saab and his morning calls will be missed.