RANJI—MAGICIAN OF THE EAST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 88, 14 April 1945, Page 8 (Supplement)

RANJI—MAGICIAN OF THE EAST

'JpHERE will never be another Ranji; he was entirely original. There is nothing in all the history and development of batsmanship with which we can compare him. His style was remarkable for the way a man could express personal genius in a game, the genius of a whole race, writes Frank Tarrant, one of Australia's most travelled cricketers.

Ranjitsinhji's cricket was Indian; a light out of the East came over England when he batted; it was magic not prepared for by anything that had happened in the game before Ranji appeared. In the nineties the game was English. W. G. Grace had stamped the English mark on cricket.

It was the age of simple principles, straight bat and good-length ball. The fundamentals everywhere were John Bull's, and then suddenly happened this visitation of dusky, supple legerdemain.

A man was seen playing the game as no Englishman could ever play it. The straight bat was not used, there was a flick of the wrist and, behold, the straight ball was charmed away to the leg boundary. Nobody saw or understood how it all happened. Bowlers stood transfixed.

A Yorkshireman once said to me that Ranji never made a Christian stroke in his life? Why should he have done so? Style Is The Man The style of the man, and Ranji belonged to the land of jugglers, where beauty is subtle and not plain and stereotyped. Marvellous is the game of cricket, that can give us a W. G. Grace, as English as a Gloucestershire tree; George Hirst, as Yorkshire as a broad moor; and Rangi, as true to his social psychology as any of them.

The game has known no greater spectacle than that of C. B. Fry and Ranji making a great stand for Sussex.

It has been described as the perfect combination. "Ranji and Fry," as a famous Yorkshireman used to say, as memory moved in him, "every year it was the same old story. We would go to Brighton; Sussex would win the toss; we would get a couple of cheap wickets. Then Ranji and Fry would start close of plav Sussex two for 400! The same old tale every year."

Bowlers have never known a problem so heart-breaking as Fry and Ranji on a perfect Brighton wicket. Happy the man who to-day can close his eyes and see again the visits of Ranji, his rippling shirt of silk, his bat like a yielding cane making swift movements, which circled round those incomparable wrists.

He saw the ball quicker than any other batsman, he made his strokes later—so late, indeed, that the bowler almost saw his off-break crashing on the leg stump, while Ranji remained there at his crease, apparently immobile. Then at the last fraction of a second, Ranji's body would i® an gently over his front leg, the bat would glint in the sun, and the bowler would throw up his hands as the ball would ilash to the boundary, exquisitely fine to leg, with the

speed of thought. This leg glance was Rangi's own stroke, but it is a mistake to say he could not drive. Usually he was too indolent for forcible methods, but none the less his front of the wicket play could reach unparalleled range and precision, and his cut was a dazzling glance. He caused a revolution in the game; he did riot believe in lunging forward to a ball seductive in length. Two-eyed Stance Ranji's principle was to play back, or to drive, and his many imitators contrived in the course of years to evolve the hateful two-eyed stance from Ranji's art, which, of course, was not for ordinary mortals to imitate. He is to-day a legend. Modern lovers of the game, zealous of their own heroes, will not doubt tell us that Ranji, like all the old masters, was a creation of our fancy in a world old-fashioned and young. We who saw him will keep silence as the sceptics rave. We have seen what we have seen; still we can feel the spell. In his corner of India he will be remembered as a prince and ruler. To the rest of India that cares for these things he will be thought of especially as a representative of this country v»ho made a remarkable impression on the general public in England.