Fearless account – The Hindu BusinessLine

A smiling Mohinder Amarnath running away from adoring Indian fans at Lord’s is one of the most enduring images from the 1983 World Cup, the tournament that changed the sporting destiny of a nation. He was the Man-of-the-Match in the semi-final and the final of that World Cup, which saw India, the dark horse, galloping all the way to the title.

But the World Cup in England isn’t the only thing that the name Mohinder Amarnath means for those who followed cricket in the 1970s and ’80s. His courage, his resilience, his never-say-die attitude, and his comebacks – perhaps more than any other international cricketer in history – all made the remarkable player he was.

And yes, there was that hook shot, against the fastest and most dangerous of bowlers. Of course, there was also the nickname he gave to the selectors of the Indian team – ‘bunch of jokers’. Fearless, a memoir he has co-authored with his younger brother, Rajender Amarnath, is a vivid account of his long career and it tells why he was forced to hit out against the selectors once. It also gives us a close look into the efforts that turned him into one of the premier batters in international cricket in his time.

Four-pronged pace attack

Running into more than 450 pages, it is rather a big book. But you will never get bored. For, Amarnath’s life as a cricketer was never boring. How could it be when it is the story of getting dropped and fighting his way back into the squad? How could it be when it is about taking on the most feared bowling line-up of all time – the four-pronged pace battery of the West Indies containing the likes of Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Andy Roberts – and getting the better of them, even at the cost of a broken tooth?

Fearless begins on a promising note. When Amarnath was born, his maternal grandfather announced it with the firing of guns. But the baby fainted but he was shaken awake by his mother, who, then, shocked all the relatives: she ordered the gunmen to reload the guns and fire ten rounds. “My son cannot be a coward!” she said.

Those bullets were not wasted, of course. Amarnath went on to be admired for his courage as much as technique as a batter. The book gives deep insights into how he did it. It was largely due to the work ethic instilled in him by his legendary father, Lala Amarnath, who scored India’s first ever Test century and was revered by his opponents from Australia to Pakistan (he grew up in Lahore).

Anecdote filled

Amarnath tells us in detail how his father made him and his brothers train hard when they were little boys and how he made them devote time to cricket, even at the expense of academics. The chapter on childhood proves an excellent opening for the book, with the narration of incidents like watching the same Hindi film Sampoorna Ramayana for a month, bunking classes, until the youngest brother, the book’s co-writer, betrayed his siblings and told their father. You would find far more interesting anecdotes, many of them quite funny, later on in the book. That is one of the reasons why Fearless reads so well.

Amarnath’s description of India’s tours of the West Indies and Pakistan not merely records some of Indian cricket’s greatest moments – such as the Test win in Port of Spain by making 406 for four in the fourth innings – but there are many interesting funny stories as well.

In Fearless we also get to know more about Mohinder’s talented older brother Surinder, a left-handed batter who got a raw deal from the selectors – Amarnath suspects his own frequent omissions had more to do with the famous surname – despite scoring a hundred on debut and performing fairly well when he was given an opportunity.

And there are some fine sentences in the book such as this one about a batting colleague: ‘he often ignored his partner’s call. However he ran like a gazelle to collect runs on his own strokes.’ Through Fearless we get a close, intimate look at one of the most important stages of Indian cricket.