Jaisimha and his lion-hearted battle in Brisbane
With the Indian cricket team battling injuries before the Brisbane Test starting on Friday, here’s a Hyderabad connection to the venue as well as bruises. M. L. Jaisimha will be most remembered for his epic endeavour at Brisbane over half-a-century ago. His knocks of 74 and 101 saw the chase for India’s first victory overseas fall agonisingly short by 39 runs.
Omitted from the original touring side for the 1967-78 series in Australia, he was called up after B. S. Chandrasekhar had to return home with an ankle injury. The lead-up to that leap across continents was anything but pleasant.
From the depths of despair to being hailed by doyens of cricket and its writing, the career-defining journey is recounted in My way — The biography of M. L. Jaisimha (Amazon, Apple Books).
Leg spin legend Bill O’Reilly noted: “Indian cricket must be possessing riches... if it could afford to overlook a performer so abundantly gifted as Jaisimha.”
O’Reilly’s Bodyline teammate Jack Fingleton was even more effusive.
“Jaisimha is a naturally good cricketer. He must be so to bat so assuredly today after not even one good net practice. Jaisimha is an extremely pleasant batsman to watch, with correct upright stance, free and flawless backswing of the bat with strokes on all sides. His footwork is exemplary. So one fell to wondering why this debonair and elegant batsman shaping excellently in a crisis was not in India’s original side,” he observed.
To later generations who do not know the ‘Victorious Lion,’ that his name translates to, ‘Jai’ packed a panache all his own, be it as Test player, South Zone captain, Indian team manager, national selector and TV commentator.
His famed acumen always placed team interests above his own. Postplaying days, that same keen sense saw him alone forecast a tie in the 1986 Chennai Test against Australia. On July 7, 1999, the dashing Hyderabadi took his last walk to that great pavilion in the sky.