Doshi, the ‘Prince’ who ruled cricket in his own way

Kolkata: If cricket is a gentleman's game, then Dilip Doshi, who passed away at the age of 77 in England on Monday night, was its truest son. He was born in Rajkot, but except for one season with Saurashtra right at the end of his career, Doshi played all his cricket in Kolkata representing Sporting Union Club in the Cricket Association of Bengal's local league matches. He also played for Calcutta University, Bengal and the East Zone sides.Long before Geoffrey Boycott called Sourav Ganguly the ‘Prince of Kolkata', Doshi was known as the ‘Prince', among his contemporaries for his impeccable and smart dressing sense. It was for Bengal he achieved the remarkable figures of 6 wickets for 6 runs against Assam in 1974. Overall, he picked 318 wickets in his long Ranji Trophy career, 16 seasons of which were spent with Bengal.Staying in the Bhowanipore area at the heart of Kolkata, always a soft-spoken Doshi was a Bengali ‘bhadrolok' in the truest sense of the term. No wonder he had friends across society like Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.Playing at a time when spinning legends of Bishan Sigh Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and Bhagwat Chandrasekhar were ruling the roost, Doshi got to debut for India under Sunil Gavaskar's captaincy against Australia in Chennai in 1979 as late as age 32. He would, however, go on to pick 114 wickets in 33 Test matches. "The statistics speak about his ability. Tell me how many bowlers have claimed 100 wickets in just 30-odd matches?" former India pacer Karsan Ghavri told TOI on Tuesday.Ghavri still remembers Doshi's contribution in scripting India's famous victory against Australia in Melbourne in 1981. Nursing a toe injury, Doshi picked three and two wickets in the first and second innings respectively, while Ghavri claimed two wickets each in both innings. "I would say that Doshi and I laid the foundation for Kapil (Dev) to finish off with five wickets in the second innings," Ghavri said.The former left-arm pacer remembers Doshi as a thinking cricketer. "It was a pleasure talking to him as he had immense knowledge about the game which he gathered while playing the county (for Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire) games alongside Gary Sobers, Gordon Greenidge, Imran Khan and others," he said. "He had the hunger to do well and followed the game closely even after retirement," Ghavri said.Doshi watched the World Test Championship (WTC) final between Australia and South Africa at Lord's and was planning to come to the venue for India's third Test against England next month."Doshi was an orthodox left-arm spinner and could generate bounce from the pitch," former Bengal skipper Sambaran Banerjee, who had kept to Doshi in a number of matches, said."He had the ability to spin the ball on any surface," Palash Nandy, another of Doshi's Bengal teammates, stated. "Standing at non-striker's end during club matches, I could actually hear the seam cutting through the air when Doshi bowled," Nandy said.Not a great fan of improvisation, Doshi used to say "Ninety-eight per cent of spin bowling is your stock ball. So master your stock ball first."This was quite an advice to bowlers living in today's world of T20 cricket.