Over to Lala

Indian cricket in the 1930s was a princely playground. Anglophilic rajas and maharajas plotted to put together rival teams, invite English and Australian professionals to coach and play here, provide patronage to talented young natives. Lala himself was employed by the Maharaja of Patiala.

If today’s cricket is often capitalism gone mad, in those formative years it was feudalism gone bananas. Sample Lala’s delightful story of the Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup of 1934, sponsored by the aristocracy of Hyderabad. Nawab Moin-ud-Dowla didn’t want the team of the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram (Vizzy) to win because it had won in 1932 and 1933 and would, as per the rules, get to keep the cup. ‘‘The worried Nawab … sent an SOS to Maharaja Bhupinder Singh’’, knowing Patiala and Vizzy were rivals in the cricket establishment.

Both royals went about collecting players, Vizzy even hiring Learie ‘Electric Heels’ Constantine. ‘‘Just four days before the big fight, four main players from Nawanagar who were in Vizianagram’s team were asked to withdraw by the Jamsaheb. It was a clever ploy orchestrated by the Maharaja to weaken’’ Vizzy.

While the confusion is sometimes forgivable, central to cricket is not conspiracy but class. Eventually Patiala won not because of cloak and dagger but, simply, Lala and swagger. Playing what he later said was one of his two greatest innings, Amarnath fought back after Constantine — getting the ball to lift sharply on a matting wicket — had reduced his team to 30 for five, counter-attacked to 104 not out out of 179 — and victory.

The only other innings Amarnath recalled with as much satisfaction was his century on Test debut in Bombay, 1933. Facilitated by Douglas Jardine — who refused to run out non-striker C.K. Nayudu even though the latter had walked off to congratulate Lala while the ball was ‘‘live’’ — this achievement electrified India. It made Lala a national hero, winning him numerous prizes.

‘‘After the Test match,’’ Lala tells us on page 23, ‘‘I was packing my bags when Dulan Mehta, the young daughter of a famous jeweller, entered my room with a bag full of diamond jewellery and asked me to elope with her. I knew the consequences and the adverse publicity it would draw. Somehow I convinced her to wait till we finished the series.’’

The Patiala-Vizzy rivalry reached boiling point on the 1936 tour of England. As team financier Vizzy had bought himself the captaincy. Inarguably, history’s worst Test cricketer — he wouldn’t have made it to 12th man for Bangladesh’s third XI — the frustrated younger son of a Telugu Rajput sent Amarnath home midway through the tour for alleged insubordination.

Chapter three details the controversy. Almost as juicy is chapter eight, where Lala recounts his running battle with Anthony de Mello, BCCI president in the 1940s, who accused the then Indian captain of selling places in the national side.

There’s also the story of the conquest of Australia in 1947-48 — Bradman won the series but Lala won the hearts. Straightforward to the end, Lala even tells us of how he contrived to get the great George Headley out LBW twice in the Lancashire League, by provoking the ‘‘Black Bradman’’ to call the umpire ‘‘bloody blind’’ and then, disingenuously, reporting the conversation to the very umpire. It was ‘‘mental disintegration’’ before Steve Waugh invented the term.

Lala’s book — Rajender is only the medium, Lala is the message — is rivetting stuff. Read it if you treasure cricket — or even if you only love a good yarn.