K Balaji The Hindu Ranji Trophy

The stylish southpaw topped the batting chart for TN in his debut season and scored a terrific century against Hyderabad in his second year but quit Cricket soon after

"When capability is unequally distributed, the leader has to extract the best out of the players. It just did not happen in TN cricket in the late 1970s" - K Balaji

In the mid 1950s, 16 year old S Ram, son of legendary auto man TS Santhanam, who had played for the South Zone Schools had to make the choice between pursuing serious cricket and academics. He chose academics and let go of cricket. Two decades later, a youngster from another renowned traditional family business, made his debut for TN in the Gopalan Trophy aged 19 but let go of cricket for two years to pursue his Masters. He came back to score runs aplenty in Ranji Trophy cricket in his first two seasons prompting the Great GRV to extol lavish praise of his batting style in the process touting him as a solid long term middle order prospect for TN in the 1980s. And yet, he felt his upbringing did not permit him to continue in the team environment that existed then, one that did not contribute to either the development of cricket or the personality. He quit cricket at 24 after having played just a dozen matches for the State and pursued a career in the corporate world. Here is the story.

Picks up the bat Left Handed 

K Balaji, son of legendary G Kasturi (Editor of The Hindu for 25 years from 1965), began playing serious cricket aged 13, though he was forced to make one 'surprise' appearance for Jolly Rovers when he was just 10years old. His uncle Rangarajan was running the Jolly Rovers team at that time and much against the wishes of his cousin Kasturi, picked his son for the leage match at the Vivekananda College ground. While he did not get to bat in the match, Balaji took a skier at point, an early indication of his cricketing talent.

It was a couple of years after this match that Balaji began his serious focus on cricket that lasted just over a decade. His coach KS Kannan at Don Bosco asked him to open the bowling, even though Balaji wanted to be an off spinner. Much to his surprise and the coach’s delight, he began taking wickets (Former India Wicket Keeper Bharath Reddy who played for MCC School remembers Balaji taking 9 wickets with the new ball). 

When he picked the cricket bat for the first time, he faced left handed (probably against the leg spin of his younger brother, K Venugopal, former Editor of The Hindu Business Line) even though he was a right hander in all other sports – Tennis, Shuttle and TT. Wickets with the new ball earned him a place in the city and state schools team. Balaji and Venugopal played together, first at school and later at Loyola College. During the four years at school, Balaji shone more with the ball than the bat. Despite his fine performances in cricket, academics remained at the forefront throughout his schooling and he was consistently among the toppers in his class (While Venugopal cherished being a leggie, he did not pursue cricket as seriously as Balaji and went to the US for his Masters giving up cricket soon after college). 

Balaji sitting next to his first coach. Also seen in the pic is K Venugopal

The Musical Interest 

As a teenager, Balaji also learnt Violin for a brief period from legendary TN Krishnan though he found it difficult to straddle between Cricket, Academics and Violin. It was that initiation by the music legend that kindled Balaji’s interest in music that has stayed to this day. 

Tamil Nadu’s Hat Trick man B Kalyanasundaram who was at the fag end of his career when Balaji made his Ranji debut and who counts him as one of his closest friends in life is grateful to Balaji for infusing the musical interest in him “He was a good violinist and was the one who created the music interest in me. He would often call me to a musical ‘Sath Sangam’ and share with me the wide range of recordings he had in his possession. If I am still listening to carnatic music at this age, it was because of those musical days spent with Balaji.”

              

Radio Cricket Commentary at 15!!! 

While the Violin initiation generated his musical interest, an unforeseen ‘cricket’ opportunity came his way in 1971. All India Radio Madras had launched quite a unique programme called the ‘Youth Commentators” in an endeavour to develop cricket commentators. IOB cricketer ‘Ram’ Ramesh suggested to them the name of Balaji as a prospective commentator. Just like his batting fluency, Balaji was fluent in the English language as well, for he conversed a lot of the time in English with his classmates at Don Bosco. Balaji recalls the audition that he did at the AIR studio “I was petrified to be locked inside a studio. The producer asked me to imagine a cricket match and commentate for about 3-4 minutes. Obviously they found something right in those few minutes for they asked me to do the commentary of the next match that came up at Chepauk.” (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/04/cricket-tales-12-memorable-cricket.html)

And thus, much before his cricketing debut for the state (which too he was to make in a Gopalan Trophy match), this teenager sat alongside the renowned Ramamurthy, with his unique voice, RT Parthasarathy and NK Murugesh to present English commentary on the state cricketers with whom he was to play later in the decade debuting his commentary(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/04/memorable-cricket-matches-on-radio-1985.html) stint with the Gopalan Trophy match between Madras and Ceylon in January 1971. Balaji was paid a princely amount of Rs. 30 per day as the fee for his commentary. Impressed with his commentary, AIR continued his services for the Ranji Trophy matches as well over the next couple of years before commentators such as Ramamurthy began commentating on their ‘colleague turned cricketer’ when Balaji began playing for TN. 

In the pre Television days, Radio Commentary of state matches had a huge audience and Balaji counts that as one of the most enjoyable experiences of his teenage life.

Shoulder Injury – New Ball bowler to a full-fledged batsman 

Injury to his shoulder in the first year at Loyola College forced him to give up bowling completely (medical solutions to cricketing injuries were not available those days – Swing bowler S Ram too damaged his shoulder and he too never felt the same again in terms of bowling fast) and he become a full fledged batsman, something he considers a ‘blessing in disguise’. By the time he was into the 2nd year at college (B.Com), his batting had blossomed and he began to make some big runs that made the selectors sit up and take notice of this young talent. 

While he continued to play serious cricket for the college, the strong focus on academics continued and he was keen to pursue a Master’s Degree. In the final year of his graduation, when he also captained the Loyola College team, the Rohinton Baria Tournament clashed with the CAT exam (IIM –A) which meant that he did not have the time to prepare for his examination. After playing the first match at Mysore, Balaji took a bus to reach Madras the next morning to write the entrance examination. With Madras University winning the second match, he made the trip back to Mysore to play the third match!!! 

He was in terrific form for the Madras University that year and his two centuries including one in the Semi Finals against a strong Bombay team (that included Vengsarkar and Sandeep Patil) earned a State call for the 19 year old against Ceylon for the Gopalan Trophy match at Salem in February 1975 (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/09/michael-dalvi-gopalan-trophy-salem.html), one known for the scintillating century by Michael Dalvi (Dalvi scored a century in both of Balaji’s debut!!!! as a commentator 4 years earlier and this match as a player). Balaji made a good start scoring 34 in the only innings he played. However, events of the morning of his debut gave an early insight into the leadership in the team that left a bad taste in him on the first day (more on this later in the story) and it was the reason that led him to quit serious cricket, 5 years later.

Masters - Away from Cricket for 2Years

A few months after his debut for TN and even though a Ranji debut was just a step away, Balaji much like S Ram of the TVS(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/06/tvs-ram-s-cricketer.html), kept cricket aside and went to Bombay for his Masters with an eye on his professional career. The Masters Programme was so intense that during the two years of the course, he did not touch the bat. 

City Schools Team - 1970 ( Photo Source: Rocko Sundar - IOB)

A dream debut season in Ranji Trophy

He came back to Madras in the summer of 1977 after the completion of Masters and joined The Hindu in Circulation. He was roped in by Bharath Reddy to play for MCC in the first division league. Such was his natural talent that despite being completely away from cricket for two years, he hit top form straightaway. Within six months of his comeback into competitive cricket, Balaji was in the state reckoning again, this time in the TN Ranji squad for the 1977-78 season. And it turned out to be a dream season. 

Though there were established batsmen in the team - TE Srinivasan, V Sivaramakrishnan and Abdul Jabbar, among others - Balaji topped the batting charts for TN in his debut season scoring 225 runs, quite a significant achievement. The two best knocks came against Karnataka when he top scored in both innings, though TN lost that match. In his first season, Balaji contributed in every match. It was a season when S Venkataraghavan was away in Australia and he flourished under the captaincy of P Mukund. As seen later in this story, the absence of the ‘Legend’ Venkat proved to be a blessing in disguise for Balaji, and he had his best year in cricket. He counts that year as one when he played with a lot of freedom and was able to express himself with the bat.

A Century after a Jaundice Strike

At the beginning of the next season, Balaji fell ill with Jaundice and missed the first three matches. He had not played any cricket in the preceding months when he was called up for the final league match of the Ranji Trophy against Hyderabad in January 1979. On a challenging wicket, TN was toppling against the likes of Abid Ali and V Ramnarayanan chasing Hyderabad’s 218 and had lost 4 wickets at the top of the order. It was then that Abdul Jabbar joined Balaji to forge a winning partnership. Balaji’s delightful century helped TN gain the first innings lead in the final match of the season. 

40 years later, Abdul Jabbar, who was the backbone of the TN middle order in the 1970s and early 80s, looks back at Balaji’s century with delight “I still remember that knock of Balaji. It was a Superb Century. I enjoyed his graceful strokes from the other end. On his day, he made batting look so easy. His batting was all elegance with superb timing in his strokes mainly on the offside, both on the front foot as well as off the back foot. It was always a treat to watch him bat. I made some 70 odd runs but it was Balaji’s batting display which dominated our innings that day against Hyderabad.” 

A month later he fell to the guiles of Bishen Singh Bedi in both the innings in the knock out match against Delhi on a slow wicket where it was difficult to play strokes, a match that TN lost. 

A premature end to his cricket career 

Later that year and within 12months of scoring that gritty century against Hyderabad, Balaji came up once again against the same team in what turned out to be his last Ranji match. It was a horrible season for TN. 

Balaji recalls the earlier match in the season against Karnataka in particular, a match that this writer distinctly remembers listening to AIR’s Kannada commentary in full

(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/04/domesticindia-cricket-matches-1979-1983.html) in Dec 1979 one in which he had played a reasonably good knock though he did not carry on to a big score “Roger Binny’s century left Venkat (he had dropped Binny early in his innings and that added to his anger) fuming.  With every run that Binny added, Venkat’s anger became uncontrollable and it was difficult to handle. Binny’s century and Saad Bin Jung’s century later that month meant we did not qualify for the knock outs. His inability to get crucial wickets in that match in Bangalore and then his personal failure once again in the important first innings against Hyderabad left him red faced and the players had to face the music.”

The Hindu's Cricket Correspondent PV Vaidyanathan writing at that time said "In bowling, TN suffered because of Venkatataraghavan's tendency to get away from the firing line at a time when he was needed most. The attitude of the TN captain was rather strange."

A TN Batsman for the 1980s - GR Vishwanath

Leg Spinner VV Kumar remembers his State Bank teammate the artistic GR Vishwanath telling him after watching him bat in that match “This left hander Balaji is a delight to watch. He has such fluency in his strokes. He is likely to go a long way for Tamil Nadu in the 1980s.” 

Little would GRV have known that this was to be one of the last matches of Balaji for the State.

                                       

VV Kumar says that after such lavish praise from a legendary batsman, you knew what a talent Balaji was "In that phase, going into the 1980s, there was a place for a middle order batsman like Balaji in the TN team and he had the advantage of being a left hander. He had it in him to be a long term middle order bat for the State. But his career ended much sooner than it should have."

Early 1979, Balaji was as buoyant as any youngster could be after his stunning century against Hyderabad. He was looking ahead to the season on the back of two very successful years in Ranji Trophy cricket. His confidence was high and he was on a roll. Clearly, a long career beckoned. But the events of the year led him to quit cricket at the beginning of 1980. The season of 1979-80 left Balaji disgruntled with the way the team was being led and he made his voice known. Three senior cricketers – VV Kumar, B Kalyanasundaram and V Krishnaswamy who played through a major part of the 1970s  retired by the end of the decade and TN was in the process of building a young team.

A Meeting with the Chairman of Selectors

While the entire team from the 1970s and 80s discussed behind closed doors the leadership of Venkat, Balaji, who right from his childhood was a forthright personality, was the one who boldly raised the issue with his former captain P Mukund.

Bharath Reddy, as the senior member of that team and with international experience, was the one who anchored a meeting that season with the then Chairman of Selectors Balu Alaganan. Balaji and Mukund too were part of that meeting. Bharath Reddy remembers that meeting “There were new youngsters coming into the team, most of them in their 20s and we were looking to build a team for the 80s but the atmosphere was not conducive for good cricket to be played. He was becoming too hot to handle and it was impacting the performance of the TN players. We wanted the Chairman of Selectors to address this issue in the larger interest of the state and its performance. It was a genuine attempt by us to try and get Venkat to be a motivational leader.”

Bharath Reddy(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2019/11/bharath-reddy-players-man.html) recalls as to how this well intended 'good for TN cricket' meeting backfired on them “Instead of addressing the real issue, Balu Alaganan positioned it as three players revolting against Venkat and this infuriated him even more. In the next match, Venkat openly abused the three of us for raising our voices against him. It was a period when Venkat abused his own players, the opposition and even the Umpires. No one was spared. The fact that Venkat was bitter with life did not help TN players in that phase.”

Bharath Reddy says that in all the interactions he had with AG Satwendar Singh, AG Milkha Singh and PK Belliappa in those years, he pointed to them that their putting up with Venkat in the initial years of his captaincy led him to take a dominating position in the team with almost no player being able to come close to him during his playing days. The TN players from those early years should have taken corrective steps in the larger interest of the team. But they did not and he remained unapproachable and the youngsters who came into the TN team without exception feared talking to him. 

Brijesh Patel's Mentorship at SVPB

Another Stylish batsman NP Madhavan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2016/05/np-madhavan.html), who played for TN between 1980 and 86 under the captaincy of Venkataraghavan, points out the huge positive impact that the three year leadershp of Brijesh Patel’s at SVPB/Globe Trotters(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2018/06/svpb-udumalpet-soundararajan.html) made to the players and the success of the team “UR Radhakrishnan, VB Chandrasekar and Robin Singh were all at the start of their careers when they joined SVPB and Peter (Fernandez), Sukumar and myself were the senior members in the team. Brijesh’s presence as a captain was transformational. He would talk to each one of us personally about our strengths and weaknesses and how we could improve our performance as a team. It was his inspirational leadership that helped in getting the best out of the players. Each one of us went into each match with a motivated feeling and that helped us win many tournaments in that phase. You could also see the impact he made on Karnataka cricket that decade in the way the players jelled together as a team.”

Living in Fear of being Shouted at

Contrasted with that friendly and motivational approach, Madhavan found that no member of the TN state team could go near Venkat and there was always the fear that they would be ‘shouted’ at. But almost everyone in that period from the early 1970s remained largely silent and no one raised the issue with Venkat. 

Too Moody for Team's Good

Bharath Reddy, probably the most vocal member of the team in the 1970s and early 80s, says that while he shared the room with Venkat on many occasions, he too feared that ‘Venkat’s fuse would blow’ if he touched the sensitive topic about the fear that existed in the team members and hence he never had the ‘guts’ to tell him anything ‘He was so moody that no one knew when he would blow up. It completely shook the morale of the team in that phase.’

Players left to fend for themselves

It was really this frustration that led Balaji to quit cricket at 24 and he never played for the state again for he moved into his corporate role at The Hindu. Balaji found no leadership in the team. While Venkat may have been a legendary spinner, Balaji looks back at that period of cricket as shattering the confidence of young and upcoming cricketers “For a man, who was seen as a cricketing legend, there was not a single proactive piece of advice he passed on to youngsters. There was zero communication from the top. He expected everyone to be like him. There was very little mentoring and no efforts towards team development.”

Balaji recalls the morning of his Gopalan Trophy match in 1975 as an example of how damaging Venkat was to the morale of a newcomer “When I was handed my debut in the Gopalan Trophy in Salem as a 19 year old, all he said was ‘you will bat at No 5’. There was not a word spoken to me during that entire match. As a teenager, I was shocked that such a legendary player would not wish a debutant with a smile. There was not even a ‘Congrats’ message. I just found it ridiculous. You simply don’t do that to anyone in any walk of life.”

Ranji Trophy Winning Captain S Vasudevan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/10/s-vasudevan-tn-ranji-winning-captain.html), who played with Balaji from the University days, too made his TN debut in that match. He remembers Balaji’s batting the period in the 1970s “Balaji was a very stylish batsman. Had he continued to be available for the State, he would have probably gone on to greater heights but he chose a different career.”

Decision to Quit Cricket in 1980 

The assumption that everyone is as capable or talented or able as him (the leader of the pack) is a completely faulty one, says Balaji. Youngsters always look up to legends such as him for motivational words and encouragement. But he was completely de-motivating “There was not even one word about my batting in the two years, no analysis and no corrective steps. We were just not taken under his wings. Of course, he had great qualities as a cricketer. But when it came to captaincy, he simply did not measure up for he did not 'deal' with people and that is such an important role for leadership.” 

“It was not me alone. Everyone in the team felt the same way. We used to despair among ourselves but there was no option. With zero communication, how could you run a team. If you are constantly running down people, how will they be motivated to play. Most of them did not want to sacrifice their career and put up in silence and continued to play. The atmosphere was so bad and I found there was no point in continuing.”

If you are the captain of the ship, it is your job to keep it afloat and develop a match winning side. Clearly there was a leadership failure in TN throughout that period. Balaji counts his appa’s message as very comforting in that phase “My father had a very balanced approach to life. He did not praise too much when you performed well and did not pull you down when you did not score.” 

With the talent that the team possessed in the 1970s, the team should have done better “We had a collection of gifted individuals through that decade but as you could see, the overall outcome was simply not good. If capability is unequally distributed, then the leader has to extract the best out of the players. It is not a mechanical process.” 

From Cricket to The Hindu

For a decade, from 1990, he went away from The Hindu and played the role of a consultant in the media industry. At the turn of the century, he rejoined The Hindu and anchored a number of technological initiatives in the group. Earlier this decade, he was the Managing Director of The Hindu for a few years before retiring in 2017, It has been his long standing view that old people should make way for the new gen. Since then he has been on the committee of VHS and the Palkhiwala Foundation and on the Board of Cognizant Foundation. Over the last two decades, Balaji has also spent time visiting the 108 Divya Desams (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2016/08/ezhuthurai-nathar-temple-innambur.html) and has completed over a 100 of them. He is hoping to complete the balance sometime in the future when the COVID scenario improves. He has also been supporting ancient and remote temples in the state.

Given the fine start he had to his Ranji career, Balaji was well poised to climb the cricketing ladder and should have figured in the TN squad of the 1980s but he chose family business over cricket and became the only cricketer of the era to quit state cricket as early as he did at 24, after fighting in vain to improve the cricketing system. In Cricket, the responsibility to have a Wholistic Picture is of the Selection Committee’s and the Captain’s. That was the reason he chose to go to the Chairman of the Selection Committee but it proved a futile exercise for no one in the TN cricketing system then was strong enough to take on Venkat. The feeling in him that things would not change was so strong that he decided to give up despite the form and the future beckoning in cricket.

For all the disappointments around cricket, it did teach him a big lesson - In a team game, one individual alone is not important. The role of team sport in building individual personalities and overall development is often not driven home. He counts those cricketing years as having provided him with a great learning experience for life.