Lounge
On and off-field anecdotes liven up launch of Sandeep Patil’s ‘Beyond Boundaries’
Summary
The fiery cricketer’s eccentric and entertaining ways were recalled by the people who knew him best—his travelling teammates
When sports columnist Ayaz Memon visited Sandeep Patil in the 1980s, it was the former’s first time interviewing the cricketer, Memon remembers. Patil had made his Test debut in 1980, was this exciting, swashbuckling batter from Mumbai taking the world’s best bowling attacks apart.
At Patil’s Shivaji Park residence, the cricketer told Memon that after the interview, they could have a drink on the plane. While Memon wondered if he had misheard Patil, he was ushered to the terrace after the conversation. Sure enough, on the terrace, was an aircraft converted into a bar.
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This was one of the many amusing anecdotes recounted during the launch of Patil’s book Beyond Boundaries, co-authored by the group sports editor of Mid Day, Clayton Murzello, at the C.K. Nayudu Hall of Mumbai’s Cricket Club of India on 6 November. Attended by some of the stalwarts of Mumbai and Indian cricket, including Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar, Milind Rege and former India coach John Wright, the event was as much about the book as it was about Patil’s eccentric and entertaining ways remembered by people who knew him best—his travelling teammates.
“When I went to his terrace bar," said Vengsarkar soon after Memon’s account, “Patla (as Patil was referred to by fellow cricketers) said when he sits in the cockpit, after three-four drinks, the plane feels like it’s flying."
The packed hall cracked up at every little story that flowed during the course of the evening, a testimony of not just Patil’s popularity as a person but also a tribute to a career that should have been longer than the 29 Test matches and 45 one-day internationals he played between 1980 and 1986.
Vengsarkar recalled that after Patil’s seminal 174 in the Adelaide Test against Australia in 1981, after being hit on the head and concussed by a bouncer by Len Pascoe in the previous match, and an unbeaten 129 in Manchester the following year, Patil was asked to bat at number four. “He (Patil) said he preferred to have five batsmen before him and five after," said the former India captain grinning. “So, he was happy at number six."
Patil and Murzello had collaborated on one other book previously, Caught & Told: Humorous Cricketing Anecdotes, in the late 2000s. Patil’s autobiography, Sandy Storm, was published in 1984.
“My first thought on this book (Beyond Boundaries) was that it will have shitloads of masala," said Shastri, who wrote the foreword for this book. “But you have to give 10% discount (to everything written because of Patil’s apparent tendency for exaggeration). He has never been short of stories. We had 6-7 years on tours (as roommates) and it was good to have his company especially when we were getting hammered."
One of the aspects of Shastri’s camaraderie with Patil involved food—and as Murzello pointed out—drinks. “We never took back money (from a tour) because we would eat like pigs. We also used to make more money than cricketers today," Shastri joked.
“We were also thirsty from a young age. The game would finish at 5:30 (in the evening) and from 6:30, the wet wicket would start," he added, leaving the audience in stitches.
Patil’s association with food evolved over the years, as he became a competent chef, which many of his colleagues referred to. Shastri remembered how Patil only ate meat. “Never seen vegetarian ordered in the room," he said.
Manjrekar, a former Mumbai and international batsmen turned commentator, recollected being invited to someone’s home when they were playing a match in Gujarat. The host had made a Gujarati seasonal staple of vegetables, undhiyo. “But he (Patil) said sorry, I don’t eat vegetarian. We went back to the hotel and he ordered his meat," said Manjrekar.
But alongside Patil’s quirky ways, all speakers remember his hard-hitting batsmanship. Patil was one of the successes in the World Cup-winning team of 1983, scoring an unbeaten 32-ball 51 in the semi-finals against England that took India to that fateful final at Lord’s.
Rege remembered the first time he played with Patil, then an upcoming player, at an inter-club game at Shivaji Park. Patil hit the first ball he faced straight and so hard that it cleared the 90-yard boundary, travelling not more than four feet off the ground and landed up in someone’s home. Shastri called Patil the hardest hitter of the ball along with Kapil Dev, notwithstanding players like M S Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh, who played in a generation that had more lethal bats.
The famous plane on Patil’s terrace merits a mention in the book, of how Patil bought this fertilizer aircraft called Quail Commander, kept aside for scrap, at the Juhu Flying Club. He got the nose of the craft repaired, replaced the propeller with a wooden one and had it lifted up with ropes to his terrace.
“One newspaper said that there are only two people in the world who have planes in their house—the Shah of Iran and Sandeep Patil," he writes in Beyond Boundaries. “You feel good; you feel great."
Shastri remembered the night after the World Cup win when they “were pissed" at three in the morning and then went to Leicester Square looking for food. He said that with Patil, there was “never a dull moment. Consistently consistent. Time pass."
Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who writes on sports and business leaders.
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