Exemplary Cricketers They Were

Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar are the recipients of the C. K. Nayudu AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT in cricket. Shantha Rangaswamy, Ramakant Desai and V. V. Kumar also received special awards. They were all absolutely wonderful cricketers.

Steve O’Keefe, who sensationally bowled India out in the first Test of the on-going series, must have been surprised by the ease with which he got his wickets. To say that the Aussie spun India out may be a bit of an exaggeration, for he got his wickets by being accurate, as the Indian batsmen played for the turn and were trapped in front of the stumps to the straight ones and had to walk back to the pavilion shaking their heads.

What O’Keefe did was the toughest thing to do for a spinner on a pitch where the ball was gripping and spitting— that is, to bowl straight. Ravichandran Ashwin got it right at the start of the Australian second innings, when he dismissed both left-handed openers with deliveries that went straight through. But he was bowling with the new ball and that doesn’t always break even on a pitch where there is plenty of turn.

BEFORE THE PUNE TEST, O’Keefe was not rated very high by many Australians, who thought that Ashton Agar should be picked ahead of him in the playing XI. Be that as it may, O’Keefe showed that in cricket you can never under-rate anybody. He grew in confidence with every wicket, and especially in the second innings, O’Keefe preyed on the Indian batsmen’s uncertainty and tentativeness to snare another six wickets to set up a record for bowling in the India versus Australia Test series.