There was something special, also magical, about Farokh Maneksha Engineer. Picture this. His handsome face, his Brylcream-dotted mane, his aristocratic, yet well-grounded face, his conspicuous sideburns, the walk with great aplomb, the riveting style he embraced and diffused, the transcendent poise he echoed, the commitment, flair and flamboyance with which he draped his electrifying batsmanship, juxtaposed by his exciting wicket-keeping abilities. To top it all, Engineer had a sublime sense of cricketing intelligence — which was, paradoxically, masked by the debonair-centric, swashbuckling charisma of his external personality.
The ancient Greeks postulated that the atom was the fundamental building block of reality. Other thinkers refuted that such a reality was infinitely divisible, or continuous. Although neither school of philosophy could prove its premise, Farokh, cricket’s first Engineer, believed that the two viewpoints couldn’t be right. He reckoned that the nature of his cricketing talent couldn’t have a smallest part and yet not have just one element — a possibility that began to assert itself in the sciences in the 20th century. This is now referred to as wave-particle duality.
For anyone who watched Engineer bat, it would have been far too simplistic to appreciate his fine wisdom, or scale, of wave-particle duality — one that unravelled each concept, wave and particle, not just philosophically, but also scientifically in the cricketing sense. In other words, Engineer’s cricket existed in its own right — even if one were to filch it, with wily chicanery, it would still be there. This was primarily because Engineer’s cricket had a precise location and clear-cut, well-defined frontiers, as also precincts. Most importantly, when thinking of particles, Engineer’s batting and wicket-keeping attributes reflexively coalesced material and spiritual entities. This wasn’t all. Particles have mass; they are physical things and Engineer’s cricket had them in full measure — with a heightened sense of physiological, functional, or kinetic vitality.
Flashback: Third Test, Madras [now Chennai], against the mighty West Indies, led by the incomparable Sir Garfield Sobers, 1966-67. Engineer opened the batting with Dilip Sardesai. There was abundant expectancy in the air — a festive atmosphere at Chepauk, as was the norm. Engineer was in great touch, right from the word go. The ferocity of Wes Hall, or the brutal dimension of Charlie Griffith, at their furious best, nor Lance Gibbs’ or Sobers’ ‘Chinaman,’ could make any impression on Engineer, whose willow, like the consummate virtuoso on the violin, was in full flow. Had Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the noted psychologist, who coined the inventive expression, ‘the flow experience,’ or ‘being in the zone,’ known cricket and was witness to Farokh’s re-engineering, or inner engineering, on the field of play, he would have certainly had his ‘eureka’ moment — but, without Archimedes’ portent.
It was a fabulous innings. The best part: Engineer would have become the first Test batsman to score a century before lunch. Blame it on certain factors, other than cricket, that deprived him of such a stupendous distinction. He got his well-deserved hundred [109] soon after lunch in just 46 balls — a ‘record’ — albeit the irony was Wisden did not place emphasis, those days, on the balls faced. This, of course, does not detract anything from Engineer’s terrific innings — where he dispatched Hall, Griffith, Gibbs and Sobers with supreme ease and transcendent panache. He pulled, hooked, square-cut, drove and flicked with regal grace and gay abandon. Put simply, he was ‘on song,’ manning his own 64-piece one-man orchestra — it was, in a manner born, Engineer’s day, and nothing could stop him. This writer, who was in convent school, and glued to the radio, became a Farokh Engineer fan, pronto. There was, from there, no question of changing loyalties, anytime, to the man who inspired my cricket, right up to my college days — when I’d try to walk and sport sideburns, just like him — or, so I thought. There were a few strokes too that I ‘plagiarised’ with the Engineer ‘stamp’ on them, although I was nowhere close to his sheer luminosity — to hold a candle, as it were, to him, the cricketing cutlass.
Engineer would have, doubtless, played relatively much more than the number of Test matches that he figured in [46] — if only the selectors were consistent, notwithstanding the musical chairs they indulged in with the likes of Budhi Kunderan, who was, of course, a worthy rival, and some wannabes like Indrajitsinhji, a nephew of Ranjitsinhji and Duleepsinhji, and certain ‘claimants,’ like P Krishnamurthy, who toured the West Indies, under Ajit Wadekar, and played in all the five Tests, with absolutely no distinction, during the historic series [1970-71] that India won, for the first time in its history. To be fair, it was a quirk of fate that Engineer and Kunderan were contemporaries — this was somewhat akin to Bishen Singh Bedi vis-à-vis the likes of Rajinder Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar et al — who could, as luck would have it, never sport the India Test cap. That Engineer could keep wickets for India’s greatest spin quartet — Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Bishen Singh Bedi — with exemplary facility, anticipation, poise and élan — while being ‘equal’ to their every guile, nuance, and crafty deception, that foxed the best of batsmen, on any surface, stands testimony to his excellent skills. His earnest ‘successor,’ S M H Kirmani, did an equally great job of it, all right. This was, indeed, a blessing for Indian cricket.
Engineer was quite impressive during India’s first-ever Test series win against England, at home, in 1960-61] — which marked his debut too — and, subsequently against the West Indies in the Caribbean [1961-62]. He did consistently well during India’s twin-tour of Australia and New Zealand — where ‘Tiger’ Pataudi, the Prince Charming of Indian Cricket, created history by beating the latter for the first time on their soil [1967-68]. Engineer also played a well-structured, defining role in India’s Test series victory, for the first time, in England, under Wadekar [1970-71]. He did well too during England’s tour of India [1972-73] — his own highpoint being a dazzling 121 in the Fifth and Final Test — and, India’s disastrous tour of England [1973-74]. He figured in what turned out to be his final Test series [1974-75] against Clive Lloyd’s Windies’ side, quietly bidding adieu with a ‘pair,’ in the Fifth and Final Test, in Bombay [now Mumbai].
Engineer had had his halcyon days in the sun, as also ups and downs in his career — the ‘song’ of every cricketer’s burden. He came close to having the honour of captaining India in Tests, which he richly deserved — when the powers-that-be put the incongruous spoke in the wheel at the last moment. Likewise, there were more than a brace of instances when he was ‘cold-shouldered’ on flimsy grounds. This included Vijay Merchant’s lopsided, if ‘unwitting,’ logic, or selectors’ famous gaffe, the long-standing emblematic ‘always right; never wrong’ maxim in Indian cricket. Yet, whatever there was, or wasn’t, to life’s vicissitudes, or quirks and turns, Engineer has always been forthright and straight, while calling a spade a spade. That he’s been, oft and on, at the wrong end of the ‘stump’ is passé. He once called the selectors ‘Mickey Mouse Committee’ — just like Mohinder Amarnath, the admirable son of the legendary Lala Amarnath, labelled them ‘jokers.’ That’s Engineer — without which he’d not be the Engineer we always knew, or know. His veritable list of ‘monikers’ are also no less unique — “Rooky,” “Engelbert Humperdinck, but only with his mouth shut,” the “Gay Cavalier,” “Farokh Mechanic,” and the “Pied Piper of Cricket.”
Engineer played Tests almost like one-day cricket. Yes, he played with distinction in the Gillette Cup and John Player League, the precursor of modern one-day cricket, in England, and just a few one-day games for India. He would have been a huge hit had he played instant cricket, such as T20, today — maybe, he would have commanded the highest bid, or fee, in IPL too. This was not what he played for — he played cricket in the best manner possible, for the love of it, without fear, or favour. The best part: Engineer had it in him to dance down the wicket to the spinners, just as much as fast bowlers — nonchalantly. He was once taken to hospital while playing in England — being ‘hit’ as he marched down the pitch to ‘post’ one from a quickie, with blasé aplomb, to the ropes,
There was to Engineer’s cricket a rare elegance and beauty. His cricket was a beautiful sight, received through the ears, and the mind, by the dexterous mix of the bat hitting, or caressing, the ball, a catch held out of nowhere, a stumping at the speed of thought and the symphonic resonance of spectators’ applause. There’s was to Engineer’s every cricketing expression a wavy harmony, where beauty resided in sepia-tone and rainbow fusion. If ever the philosopher Plotinus was, by far-flung imagination, a cricket fan — the great man obviously did not have a ghost of an idea about the willow game — he would have written this critique on Engineer in purple prose: “Let us reflect, what most powerfully attracts the eyes of beholders, or spectators, or one glued to the radio or TV, or seizes the spectator with rapturous delight — for if we can find what this is, we may perhaps use it as a ladder, enabling us to ascend into the region of beauty and survey its immeasurable extent. It is a universal opinion that a certain commensuration of parts to each other, and to the whole, with the addition of colour generates that beauty is the object of sight; and, that in the commensurate and the reasonable is the beauty of everything. While it is agreed that from the compound alone, and not the simple, can beauty reflect its own allure, the single part, the cricket bat, in Engineer’s hands, always had a hypnotic exquisiteness — one that merited that appellation by conferring on it the beauty of the whole.”
That Engineer distinguished himself in English cricket with Lancashire, while settling down, with family, in the picture-postcard county, is as well-known as the evergreen melodies of the one and the only Beatles and/or the legendary Hindi film music duo, Shankar-Jaikishan, on this and the other side of the Suez. As John Arlott, the ‘Voice of Cricket,’ summarised, “His [Engineer’s] cricket is spontaneous; he plays it as he does because it is his nature to enjoy the game and he sees no reason to conceal that enjoyment… I watched many of his performances for Lancashire from 1968 to 1976 and he had the ability to lighten up the gloomiest Manchester day, whether on the pitch or off it…” Well, the most roseate thing is — even after 50 years following his retirement from the game, Engineer continues to be warmly and affectionately welcomed across the globe, not only as the good, old Ambassador, but also the Mercedes Benz, for cricket.
It epitomises Engineer, the entertainer extraordinaire and a champion in his own right.
— First published in Madras Courier
