TA Sekar - The fastest Indian bowler of the 1980s

The story of how the tag of the 'fastest bowler in India' went against him at three important moments in his life

In Pakistan, Imran Khan went out of the way to identify the fastest bowler and made him a legend. In India, we had the fastest bowler in front of us and took all efforts to ignore him

‘Sekar was the fastest bowler in the World in 1983’ - K. Srikkanth

‘This lad will kill some batsman with his pace’- Sunil Gavaskar during the SZ v WZ Duleep Trophy match in 1982

 

In January 1983, a tall and lanky 26year old 6footer from Madras got a surprise call in the middle of an overseas series. He neither had a visa (when he was asked to leave the country on an urgent mission) nor foreign currency (even when he landed subsequently in our neighbouring country).

From playing tennis ball ‘test’ cricket over weekends for the ‘Guru’ (Gurumurthy) Team at the Somasundaram ground in T. Nagar as a RKM school student, Thirumalai Ananthapillai Sekar had got the real ‘Test’ call - a moment that he calls his biggest ever in his cricketing life - to play for India against the mighty Imran Khan led Pakistan in Pakistan, a series in which India had already been vanquished by the time he landed in Karachi.

The early days

TA Sekar got introduced into cricket with tennis ball cricket at Somasundaram ground organised by Mr. Gurumurthy (YSCA Trophy fame!!). Those days bowling fast with the tennis ball is what gave Sekar the clear edge with pace years later as he went up the ladder. Having started off with the C team of Gurumurthy (along with Kedarnath), he quickly moved up. That stint with the Guru team at the Somasundaram ground, where he used to also roll the mat and hit the mat nails, taught him a lot of discipline in addition to teaching him to bowl as fast as he could to beat the batsmen.

There were days when Kalyanasundaram (Kalli), the other great fast bowler of Tamil Nadu who played in the 60s and 70s, would come to watch Sekar bowl at the Somasundaram ground.

In his first match in the TNCA league, playing for Rising Stars, while still at school, Sekar took 4wickets against Milky Way. He played for over 4years for Rising Stars. While in PU (Pre Univ), he toured Mangalore and Kerala with the Tamil Nadu Juniors (Colts) and was the highest wicket taker there.

Immediately after, playing the Ramadurai Tourney in Salem, he took 19wickets in 3matches immediately catching the attention of RT Parthasarathy, who wrote to Sriraman about the need to groom the youngster for the State and as a possible replacement for Kalli (http://prtraveller.blogspot.in/2011/08/kalli-b-kalyanasundaram.html) , after the latter retired.

(It is another matter that the 'posted letter' from TNCA asking him to report for the Ranji camp never reached him!!!! Much later, Annadurai and Sriraman questioned him as to why he did not report for the camp. We will keep that story- of the letter not reaching him- for another day)

By the time he was 21, while doing M.Com at Pachaiyappas College, he was offered a job with the RBI, a team which was in the first division then. Sekar happily grabbed the offer (discontinued his post grad) in February 1977 and joined at a then princely starting salary of Rs. 595 (the highest for any bank).

TN Debut

A couple of months later, in April 1977, he played his first big match for the state - the Gopalan Trophy match at Chepauk, one that two others remember quite well for very different reasons… Kalli captained TN (in the absence of Venkataraghavan) for the only time for the State.

Kalli says that one could see the potential he had as he pushed back the star studded Ceylon line up early on. I gave him the new ball and asked him to bowl as fast as he could. Despite not picking up wickets and going for a few runs against Roy Dias and Duleep Mendis, he impressed us with his pace and all of us who saw him that day knew he had the potential to make it big.

Kalyanasundaram recalls telling Venkatraghavan after that Gopalan Trophy match in 1977 that Sekar had the potential to make it big.He was a very good batsman too in those days.

For the former TN Ranji Trophy winning captain S Vasudavan http://prtraveller.blogspot.in/2007/10/s-vasudevan-tn-ranji-winning-captain.html), this was a big match. He got 5wickets and scored a century, a performance that was to elevate him into the Ranji team in the coming season.

“Yes, I remember him opening the bowling with Kalli in that match and he was real quick. I had seen him much earlier in a city college match at the University Union ground in 1972-73, one that I did not play. On that slow Union wicket bowling against the Districts, Sekar got 7wickets. You could see the class in him even at that early stage in his career (he was just 16years old then)”.   

Vasudevan and Sekar also played for the same league team- SPIC- for 5years in the 1980s. ‘He would get the ball menacingly up from a good length’ says Vasudevan and he too considers it unfortunate that a player of his potential did not get to play more international matches.

All through his teenage years, his family was very much against Sekar spending all his time at the cricket field. When once he broke his front foot while landing in a YSCA Trophy match, he was almost scared to go back home with a plastered leg. 

Turning Point – Moving from RBI to IOB

In 1980, when he was practising in the RBI nets watched by his teammate VJ Kumaraswamy, he held the ball loose and found that suddenly the ball swung big. With this new found grip, he was bowling even faster. In the Hindu trophy that year, he took 7wickets including a hat-trick and then took 4wickets in a losing cause against IOB. But that match led IOB to offer him a job which he accepted much to the angst of RBI.

This however was a turning point in his career as 7wickets in the first match that season got him into the Buchi Babu squad where again he picked up 7wickets in successive matches. Against a strong Mafatlal team that included the likes of Ashok Mankad, Sekar captured 5wickets. At the end of that match, Mankad claimed that Sekar was the fastest bowler he had faced in India and that he was test match material.

Wicket with First Ball in Ranji Trophy
That same year, he got a wicket of the very first ball in Ranji Trophy claiming Hyderabad Opener Shahid Akbar.  He took 3wickets in that match watched by South Zone Selector ML Jaisimha. He was immediately, within a month of his Ranji Debut, picked by Jaisimha for South Zone under the captaincy of Brijesh Patel, who too having seen and played Sekar was of the view that he was true test match potential and that he would play for long for India.  Though South Zone lost to Central Zone, Sekar impressed and justified Jaisimha’s decision to back him in his very first Ranji season picking up 4wickets in the 2^nd innings in his first Duleep Trophy match.

‘It was a big call from Jaisimha to pick up in my very first season. He really picked me for my potential and believed that I could make it big. I felt happy that I was able to validate his selection in terms of immediate performance’ says Sekar looking back at his first season.

However, with Sunil Valson coming into Tamil Nadu the next season, Sekar was in and out of the squad in 81-82. He was left out of the historic debut match of L Sivararamakrishnan (who took 7wickets and boarded the flight to the West Indies) - the quarter final against Delhi which TN lost.

Duleep Trophy Match against Gavaskar

The next year in the season opening Duleep Trophy match, he was up against the great Sunil Gavaskar on a moist wicket at the Wankhade Stadium in early October. In what he terms as his  best performance, he took 5 for 66 against a strong West Zone team, a performance that earned him an immediate place in the Rest of India squad for the Irani Trophy match and one that was to set the tone for his international selection later that season..

With a Sonex ball in hand, Sekar remembers a bouncer to Gavaskar that he evaded only to find the ball bounce a 2^nd time near the boundary (for 4byes). This fast and furious spell of Sekar led Gavaskar to announce that this lanky lad could kill batsmen with his pace, a compliment that Sekar still cherishes after 3decades.

A fortnight later he played under Gavaskar (a match better known for Srikkanth’s belligerent 2^nd innings century that helped ROI beat Delhi in a historic 400+ run chase), Sekar bowled really fast but did not take a wicket in the entire match.

Sekar still remembers those motivating words from Gavaskar. He came to me, tapped me on the back and said “You will bowl lot worse some day and pick lot more wickets. Hence don’t worry. You did bowl really well in this match”. Those words gave Sekar a lot of confidence as he went into that season that turned out to be a momentous one for him.

In January 1983, in what looked like a career changing spell, Sekar took 9wickets for 54runs in a 14over spell at Palakkad against Kerala in a Ranji Trophy match. 10days later he was aboard a flight to Karachi to play for India.

His Test Debut – The trip to Pakistan - January 1983

Sekar replaced an injured Madan Lal in the same week that Mudassar Nazar and Javed Miandad had given India a belting with a world record 451 run partnership (which at that time equalled the best ever in test – that of Ponsford and Bradman).

He landed in Karachi not knowing how to reach his destination and without having the Pakistani currency. No one welcomed him at the airport!!! Shockingly, the Indian team including the captain Sunil Gavaskar were not aware that Sekar was joining the team.

Managing to speak in broken Hindi, he picked a cab (after convincing people that he was there to play for India!!!) to the hotel room where he met a surprised Gavaskar. The very next day he made his international debut at the fourth one-dayer of that series.

Looking back at that match, he says, “Gavaskar did not want to disclose too much of me and wanted to save me for the forthcoming test. He shielded in that match (bowling only 4overs) where India were once again demolished by Zaheer Abbas.” 

Sekar made his test debut in the 5^th test of that 6 test series a match. Despite being wicket less, Srikkanth who also played in that test believes Sekar bowled well. “He was quick and was clearly the fastest bowler on view.” And you may not have said that of any Indian bowler till Sekar came on the scene.

In the final test of that series (one that is also known for Ravi Shastri’s century as an opener- he replaced Srikkanth!!) and one that turned out to be the last for Sekar, Dilip Vengsarkar dropped 3catches in the slips of TA Sekar’s bowling as Mudassar, Mohsin and Javed Miandad made merry at Sekar’s cost. If those three catches had been taken at slip, Sekar’s career may have taken a different turn and one for the good, for he was rated by all as the fastest bowler seen from India until then. Unfortunately as fate would have it, Sekar was never to bowl again in tests.

The story goes that  clearly  there were sections within the bowling department of the Indian team that were overwhelmed at the pace of TA Sekar and hence were not in favour of someone who had the tag of the ‘fastest Indian bowler’.

Following the Pakistan tour, Madan Lal was chosen again (even though he had not recovered from the injury). It was also the period when the mantle of captaincy moved from Gavaskar to Kapil Dev!!! As you would see later in this piece, Sekar’s international come back later that decade was also ruined in the same way it had happened in the early 1980s.

K Srikkanth knows him as well as anyone from those days for the two played together in three important matches during that 4month period - the season opener - Irani Trophy match, the big Duleep Trophy match against West Zone and Sekar’s debut match in Pakistan.

After having faced the world’s best bowlers during in the first half of 1983 - Srikkanth had faced Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz on green tops in Pakistan and Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Joel Garner on moving wickets in England (1983 World Cup), Srikkanth says with confidence that Sekar was the fastest bowler in the world, not just in India, that year.

‘He had a fantastic debut series in terms of the way he bowled. I was the one standing at Forward Short leg and I watched the batsman’s feet as they were ready to face Sekar and you could see that they were worried at the pace he generated. That Pakistani team had great batsmen and they were truly impressed with Sekar’s pace. If only the catches had been taken in the slips in that test when Sekar made the world’s best batsmen like Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas jump on to their toes, his career may have taken a completely different turn. I am certain if he had those three top wickets in that match at the top of the order, he would have gone on to play for a much longer time for India.”

Sekar bowled 11overs at a stretch and had everyone hobbling. Zaheer Abbas felt uncomfortable as Sekar would constantly pitch short at a face pace, much to the legendary batsman’s dislike.

The story goes that Imran Khan wondered (as did Lala Amarnath – for Sekar had hit his son Mohinder on the helmet earlier that season beating Jimmy for pace) as to how India did not have Sekar in the original squad for that tour.  

The early tests of that series were played on green tops where India was bundled out by a fiery Imran (supported by Sarfraz Nawaz). With his pace and bounce, Sekar would have proved more than handy on those green tops where India only had the slow pace of Sandhu and Madan Lal.  

In the series that immediately followed in the West Indies, Madan Lal who had still not recovered was called back (though he did not play in the first three tests of that series- Incidentally Venkat was recalled for that series and L Sivaramakrishnan made his first overseas tour) with Sekar, the man who had replaced him in Pakistan losing out after having impressed most experts with his spells in the two tests.

Had Sekar made it to the West Indies on the back of his performance in Pakistan, he would have had the opportunity to bowl on one of the fastest wickets in the world in those times in the first test of that series at Kingston, Jamaica (a match that ended dramatically on the final evening). Instead India went in with Sandhu (who of course had his moments)!!!

Later that year, having missed the WI tour, he was up against the great West Indian team post their World Cup loss in their return series in India. And once again, the venue was his favourite Hyderabad and once again he was playing alongside Srikkanth. Playing for South Zone, he scalped Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge in that match.

Compliment from WI fast bowling greats

He still cherishes another big compliment that came his way at the end of that match: Malcom Marshall and Michael Holding asked why Sekar, who according to them was as quick as the WI bowlers of that series, was not playing for India.

Memorable Moment- 24000 boo Sekar and leave the ground

Two months later, came one of his most memorable moments in his cricketing career. In the first Ranji match of that season (83-84) at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, 25000people came to watch day 1 of the Ranji match  between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Almost all of them were there to watch the great GR Vishwanath bat. They were disappointed on day 1 as TN batted through the entire day. With TN batting out a large portion of day 2, the crowd began to become restless.

For the 3rd day in a row, the 25000people returned this time hoping to enjoy GRV from ball 1. Before the end of the 1st over, he had come and gone for Sekar had bowled GR Vishwanath in the 1^st over of the day. After booing Sekar for spoiling their morning as he came back to fine leg,  24000people left the stadium. Despite disappointing the entire crowd, this moment of knocking the stumps back of the great Vishwanath with sheer pace, Sekar rates as one of his prized scalps in cricket.

January 1985 - Getting David Gower twice

The 1984-85 was one of mixed fortunes for Sekar. Twice in three weeks he got the wicket of David Gower. But it also turned out to be the last international season for Sekar.

Srikkanth also remembers the two matches the two of them played on either side of Pongal. “I remember that match in Hyderabad distinctly. It was just before Pongal. I captained South Zone and scored 90 on the first morning. When England came into bat, I gave Sekar the new ball. It was a brilliant spell from him. He even had the normally fleet footed David Gower hopping around and finally got the England captain out.”

Later in the same month, in a rain restricted 15over one day match, bowling fast on a wet pitch in Chandigarh, he got Gatting and Gower (again) for his best ever one day spell taking 3 for 23. 

“You had to see him bowl that day to see how quick he was” says Srikkanth looking back at that short spell.

After Imran Khan and Zaheer Abbas in Pakistan a couple of years earlier, now Gatting and Gower were all praise for the pace of Sekar and they too wondered as to why he was not in the test squad.

After the performances against England in January 1985, Sekar had high hopes of making it to the WCC to be held the coming month in Australia immediately after this 5^th one dayer against England. And once again in overseas conditions that may have suited his bowling. Unfortunately, his hopes were shattered when he was not picked for the WCC.

And alas, the Chandigarh match turned out to be his last.

Later in the decade, Sekar met with Lillee (through S Srinivasan of SVPB) and immediately impressed him with his pace. He moved on to play for MP that year where he used all the learning he had from Lillee.

International Comeback in 1989?

Motivated by Lillee’s comment that Sekar was still quick enough and good enough to be in the Indian team at least for a couple of years (at the end of that decade), he was knocking on the doors again having performed well for Madhya Pradesh and Central Zone. He had an impressive season and was once again in the considered set (provisional squad) for the Indian team that was to tour the West Indies in 1989. He was unofficially told that he would be on the trip to the Carribean. 

However, once again and for one last time, he was kept out. The same reasons (mentioned above)  that kept him out of the 1983 WI tour and the 1985 Australia tour kept him out this time as well. And now there was no more energy left. That decision to leave out him out finally punctured his enthusiasm and a year or so later he decided to hang his boots from first class cricket to focus on coaching.

It meant that the fastest Indian bowler of the decade had played only 2test matches despite impressing international greats like David Gower and Mike Gatting of England, Marshall and Holding of the West Indies and Imran Khan of Pakistan. The early 80s was a phase where he impressed Sunil Gavaskar too with his genuine pace.

Kalli bemoans ‘You gave Chetan Sharma an ideal opportunity in England in swinging conditions in 1986. Sekar never got that.”

Twice there were opportunities to tap his talent and the country could have benefitted. After a terrific spell in Pakistan in Jan-Feb 1983, there was the fast and bouncy pitches in WI ( March-April) where he would have been useful. And he could have followed that up with the World Cup tour to England ( June 1983). And after impressing against the Englishmen in India in 1985, there was an immediate tour to Australia for the WCC one day tourney, where again conditions would have suited him.

Kalli believes that even if Sekar had been given 1/10 the chance that other India ‘medium pacers’ of his generation got, Sekar would have achieved big. “On his day, no one could play him. He was intimidating for most batsmen and with his height the ball would come from a height of 10feet+ at a pace that was too hot to handle.”

While Srikkanth is normally not the one to mince words, he chose to be more cautious on this one terming the ‘shortened’ international career of Sekar as ‘Unfortunate’. He said, “Let’s not get too much into those reasons. Let me just say it was ‘Unfortunate’ and leave it at that.”  Srikkanth also added that irrespective of how many tests he played, Sekar is a great human being and has been a very nice person all along.

The tag of the ‘fastest Indian bowler’ did not go well with ‘you know who’ and that sounded death knell for Sekar that decade.  In the time that has since passed, India has had  some genuinely quick bowlers playing Test Cricket (Sekar had a role in that as well - to be seen in a story that will follow shortly). But till the end of the 1980s, Sekar had been the fastest bowler to have ever played for India. However much a compliment that may have been, unfortunately, that tag went against him. And thus Thirumalai Anantha Pillai Sekar ended up playing too few international matches than what he genuinely deserved.

PS: As the comment below says, in Pakistan, Imran Khan identified Waqar Younis from no where and made a cricketing great out of him. In those early days, the message from Imran was clear.. Do not bother about wides. Bowl with Pace and we will bowl opposition out ( it does not matter if you are expensive). Imran's contemporary here may have done exactly the opposite. He had Sekar right beside him - someone who could beat the opposition with pace... Sunil Gavaskar playing for West Zone was testimony to that. And yet,  it was ensured that Sekar was no where near the ' international' circles.

Best Moment : Being selected to play against Pakistan and bowling to the likes of Javed Miandad  and Zaheer Abbas

Most prized scalp : Bowling GR Vishwanath in front of 25000people at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in a Ranji  match

Most Cherished performance: 5wickets against a strong West Zone team in 1982-83

Best Batsmen bowled to: Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath, Sandeep Patil and Srikkanth (he was the first batsman to hit over the top)

Best Fast Bowlers played with/against: Kapil Dev/ Malcolm Marshall

Best figures                     : 9/54 against Kerala

Life after Playing days - To be continued………………….