Gurcharan Singh: The Last Cricket Guru

ON A COOL FEBRUARY evening, the stadium behind a school in East Delhi is abuzz with about a hundred youngsters in whites, batting and bowling. At the far end of the stadium, in similar attire and a white sleeveless sweater, Gurcharan Singh, their coach, watches them intently. “Just give me five minutes before you start the interview. The shift is changing. Those who are practising batting will start bowling and vice-versa,” he says. He claps, calling the “boys”. His students, some of whom stop to touch his feet, walk towards the sloping seating area and take out water bottles from their bags. With­in minutes, their coach is back shouting, “Hurry up! Break doesn’t mean you keep sitting here.” The boys rush back to the field.

At 88, Singh does not believe in squandering even a moment. Celebrations by acquaintances, friends, and relatives for his receiv­ing the Padma Shri recently are still going on. He has just attended one to be at the stadium. Neither seeking nor expecting it, the call from the home ministry asking for his father’s name came as a surprise to Singh, the second cricket coach to receive the fourth-highest civilian award and the Dronacharya Award, the country’s highest sport coaching honour, after Desh Prem Azad, Kapil Dev’s cricketing mentor.

“Ask whatever you want,” he says, settling down on a chair. As the sun sets, the wind gets colder, the floodlights of the stadium come on and the rhythm of the ball hitting the bat rents the air. That’s when Singh starts narrating his story from the days in Gandakaas village of Rawalpindi. He would ask his father to get a volleyball whenever he went to Rawalpindi on business. Singh would play volleyball against the wall. In 1947, during Partition, his family moved to Patiala. In the city high school, children used to play cricket. When the headmaster Teerath Singh Vasu once saw him bowl, he made him captain of the senior school, much to the displeasure of his seniors. Those days, only college teams and the royalty played cricket at Patiala’s Baradari ground, now called the Dhruve Pandove Stadium, after the cricketer who died in a road accident in 1992. Singh was one of the students sent for bowling to the Maharaja of Patiala Yadavindra Singh, the father of former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

“The Maharaja was impressed with me, but I didn’t know that,” he recalls. At a Delhi vs Patiala Ranji Trophy match, Singh made his debut for Patiala and took two wickets, bowling spin. That was the last match for Delhi captain Ram Prakash Mehra, who later became the Delhi and District Cricket Association president. From that time in the 1950s until 1969, Singh played Ranji Trophy for southern Punjab and later for Indian Railways, where he worked. At some point, his focus turned to coaching. He joined the National Institute of Sports for a diploma course in coaching, a vocation he has passionately pursued since. The former player—he has played 77 first-class matches, scoring 1,198 runs with a century, and taking 44 wickets bowling off-spin—has coached 12 international and over 100 first-class cricketers.

When Singh applied for a job as a coach at the National Stadium, he did not expect to get it because all the other ap­plicants were more academically qualified. He was not even a graduate, something which he did much later in England. He, however, got the job and wrote to the Railways informing them that he would not play for them any longer. In 1977, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was looking to appoint five zonal coaches. He applied and was selected as the north zonal head coach. As he goes down memory lane, his gaze fixes on the Arwachin Bhawan Senior Secondary School stadium, where he is coaching now, as a student comes up and says he is not feeling well. Singh tells him brusquely that he should take leave on the day he is unwell and that if he is not interested, he should discon­tinue his training. The student is quick to admit his folly. “Sir, this will not happen again.” Later, while talking to the students, one learns that he is not only a strict disciplinarian while training but also very friendly, and focuses equally on each. He is clearly a venerated guru.

As on the pitch, Singh has played his strokes in life undaunted and steadfast, as he did in his fight to get the job as national coach of BCCI. He pauses to ask, “It’s a longish story. Do you want to hear it?” The moment he gets a reply in the affirmative, he says with a smile, “The cricket board did not want a 5’2” Sardar to be­come its national coach.” He walks towards a group of students, gives them some instructions, and returns. Singh had applied and topped three interviews in 1983 for the post. Several coaches, including Azad, and former cricket players were in the fray. The board did not appoint anyone and in 1985, when Singh was in the Maldives, sent by the Indian government on a six-month coaching assignment, it called for a fourth interview. Singh’s wife Mohinder called him and informed him about it. He requested a week’s leave from then Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who was also president of the Cricket Board of Mal­dives, and quietly flew to Delhi to take the interview letter before heading for Mumbai. Just five minutes before the interview, he reached the venue. Nobody knew he was there. When Ranbir Singh Mahendra, then secretary of BCCI, peeped out to call an in­terviewee, he saw Singh. Mahendra went in and within minutes, called Singh in. That interview lasted 80 minutes.

“The board tried hard to reject me. One of the interviewers asked why I wanted to be a national coach. Another asked how long I intended to be the national coach. I said just for a day and told them they could give the appointment letter and also take my resignation letter. Someone pointed out that my family was in Delhi but the job was Mumbai-based and I said that it was my per­sonal lookout. I was asked where I would stay in Mumbai, where housing is expensive, and I said, like so many people there, I can also live on the footpath,” he recalls. Three months later, Singh was offered the job, which he held for a year.

He was not one to give up, even when it came to his students. When he spotted talent, he went out of his way to ensure it was not wasted. At the National Stadium, when he first saw Maninder Singh, a teenager then, playing, he went up to him and asked if he played through the year or only during the summer vacation. Maninder told him he played only during the vacation. Singh, however, jotted down his address and landed up at his home on Lodhi Road. “I requested his father to let him play cricket. He was reluctant. But Maninder was interested. I spoke to his elder broth­er and explained to him that Maninder had talent. His brother then managed to convince the father.” Singh did not stop at that. Since he was a coach at the Bal Bharati Public School, he requested the school principal to get Maninder admitted there on a lower tuition fee. Maninder then went on to play in the Under-19, Un­der-22 Ranji Trophy and even sported Indian colours.

Maninder, who represented India in 35 Tests and 59 ODIs, admits that if it were not for Singh, he would not have become a cricketer. “He convinced my parents, saying I was a diamond and he should be given a chance to shine it. We looked forward to go­ing to the stadium. He would make me bowl to senior cricketers. He would tell me to make them drive. He would give tasks, like seeing how many boundaries we could hit,” says Maninder. Singh would ask his students to run around the stadium to test their stamina. Even after dark, he would, in the glow of a 60-100-watt bulb, teach batsmen to play strokes using a tennis ball.

“He would look at 100 students at the same time with the same passion. For him, all his students were favourites. He would not just give a task but monitor it. I have never seen a coach work that way,” says Maninder. After his retirement, Singh set up the Dronacharya Cricket Academy with Maninder at the Yamuna Sports Complex. Among his other illustrious students are Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, Murali Kartik and Surinder Khanna.

There are just about seven-eight girls among the 100-150 stu­dents he is coaching but Singh is hopeful the trend will change, seeing the women’s cricket scene in India. “It’s very encouraging. We should motivate women. After all, what’s the difference?”

In his book, Pitching it Straight: Memoir of a Cricket Guru, written along with sport journalist MS Unnikrishnan, Singh writes that he has no secret formula or a magic wand to churn out players. On his coaching mantra, he says too much coaching may destroy a talent. “I rely on the natural talent of a trainee which I can spot while doing the selection trials, before moulding him through sustained, disciplined coaching. I try not to tamper with the in­born talent of a player, though wherever corrections are required to chisel a player’s game, I do that. But one aspect of my training method is that I am particular about discipline. I cannot tolerate indiscipline among my trainees, even if the boy hails from an influential family.”

Unnikrishnan, who has known Singh since the late-1970s, says if someone was brought before him for training, he would take one look and know if that person had potential. “One of the most important aspects of his training was discipline,” he tells Open.

In the book, Singh says he turned away Shah Rukh Khan, who was then a student at St Columba’s School, because he wanted to make him a top-class wicket-keeper and so was being strict and proper. “Shah Rukh Khan, who kept wick­ets, used to pull back against pacers, fearing that the fast ball would hit him, which, according to me, should not be done by a wicket-keeper as he will then miss a chance for stumping if he runs away from the line of the ball. Despite my warnings, Shah Rukh repeated the mistake and one day, when I tried to hit him with a bat for the same mistake, Shah Rukh bolted from the scene never to return.” Khan went on to become a Bollywood superstar.

What does Singh think about the cricket scene today? He says it has completely changed. “There was no money earlier. But it was played with ‘dil aur jaan [heart and soul]’. Now, it [cricket] is commercial, there is money and corruption. And, in 20 overs, what cricket can one play? But our job is to train.” Singh, however, says India has the best talent today, the best pitches everywhere, and cricket is flourishing.

Asked if he ever considered walking away, he says, “Where will I go? I don’t know anything else.” Standing among the students, most of them taller than him, giving them instructions, the frail coach looks untiring, a towering figure in India’s cricket story.

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