From: shamim@bellcore.com (Shamim Naqvi,MRE-2E342,829-4711,,21273)
Subject: Re: Cricketers and their books --Some musings
Reply-To: shamim@bellcore.com
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Morristown, NJ
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 16:18:18 GMT

In article l9quhkINNj7e@aludra.usc.edu,  moghal@aludra.usc.edu (Nadeem Moghal) writes:
>I have read a number of anecdotes related to the Don; one of them comes
>to mind now. It is more of an attribute of his self-discipline than any
>character greatness.

CLR James describes how the Black Bradman would stay up for most of the night 
before a game, smoking incessantly, playing and re-playing strokes to 
every ball that an opponent may bowl at him the next day. He literally 
played his entire innings in his mind's eye. 

BTW, Nadeem, in one of your postings you have referred to Sunny
Gavaskar as the "Little Master." I assume you know that Hanif Mohammad
used to be called the "Little Master."  Somehow I always think of Hanif
when I read this title and not Gavaskar.  (I am not making any
comparisons between Gavaskar and Hanif, just observing that Hanif also
had the same title at one time.) BTW, at the Oval this year, I sat next
to Hanif Mohammad. I think it was the second day of the test.  I had a
fascinating conversation with him, on playing fast bowling, his innings
of 180+ no at Lords, and how he would have played Wasim and Waqar.
Later that afternoon, Trevor Bailey stopped by to say hello to him, and
I had the pleasure of listening to  Bailey. Trevor said that Hanif was
a magnificent player of fast bowling, perhaps the best of his time, and
an equally adept player of spin.   Because of his "twinkling foot
work", Hanif could get to the pitch of a spinning delivery. What made
Hanif a great player of fast bowling, according to Trevor Bailey, was
his minimal backlift and quick eye. This resulted in Hanif being able
to play late, very, very late. I was surprised by this because Hanif
had said precisely the same thing earlier that afternoon, that he would
have tried to play W&W by shortening his backlift and playing as late
as possible. Hanif was of the opinion that a crucial mistake being made
by the English bats was that each one of them had a pre-determined
stroke for playing the Pakistani bowlers, e.g., Smith was intent on
playing forward to Waqar and jumping down the track to Mushtaq. Hanif's
view was to have no pre-determined strokes at all but to wait and see
the ball until the last fraction of a second, and then play the ball on
merit. Of course one is either born with this ability or not. 

Just to carry on a bit more about Hanif, his son Shoiab had an
interesting story to tell about him. Apparently, Shoiab met Don Bradman
while on a tour of Australia. The Don told Shoiab that the first time he
heard that a Pakistani batsmen had scored 337 to relegate him to fourth
place (behind Hutton, Hanif and Hammond), and later that the same
person had broken his record of 452 runs by scoring 499 runs, he had
imagined a physically large person who could slaughter bowling attacks
with immense strokes of power. When Bradman finally met Hanif he was
quite surprised to see a short statured man whose batting was built on
a  sound defense.

Talking about the "Little Master" I am reminded of the "Master", Sir
Len Hutton.  In England this year, some tabloids were talking about
batsmen being "waqared" when bowled by Waqar.  Hanif reminded us that
when Fazal bowled batsmen at the Oval in 1954, the papers coined the
phrase "Fazaled." Fazal had 12 for 99 including Hutton, bowled once
around his legs by a leg cutter.

When I was very young and living in Lahore, in an area called Garhi
Shahoo, our neighbour was none other than Fazal Mahmood. I think he was
a Superintendant of Police at that time. His son, Shahid, used to play
cricket with us (I remember this distinctly because he introduced me to
English made bats  and I used to love playing with them).  I  once
asked Fazal about his spell at the Oval and to save a long story for a
later posting, on how he had bowled Hutton,  the "Master" at the Oval.
He said very simply that he had noticed Hutton exposing his leg stump
to flick the ball down the leg side so he bowled him a leg cutter from
over the wicket, going wide of the stumps, pitching it on leg and
hitting leg.

What a strange and wonderful game: at the Oval, the day after my
conversation with Hanif, Waqar went wide of the off stump, over the
wicket and bowled a leg cutter on leg that hit leg. He bowled it to the
present day "Master", David Gower.  Of course, Gower being left-handed,
it was Gower's off stump and he was in the process of shouldering his
arms to the ball, leaving  his off stump exposed.

	--SAN

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