Kolkata: It was an era when cricket and Bollywood were far from enjoying the synergy of today. Lata Mangeshkar, the Nightingale of India who left the nation in mourning on Sunday, was always a diehard cricket fan who never failed to make time to be present at the Brabourne Stadium - be it to watch India figure in a Test match or Bombay (yes, far from being Mumbai) play a Ranji Trophy match.
In a life of unmatched simplicity, music and cricket were the two well-known passions for her. It’s a subject of folklore as to how she volunteered to a do a concert for then a cash-strapped Indian cricket board to raise funds to felicitate Kapil Dev’s team for winning the 1983 World Cup. Or in recent times, how Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s T20 World Cup winning team’s motorcade halted for a brief while below her Peddar Road residence so that she could wave at them.
The icon’s personal bond with Little Master Sachin Tendulkar, whom he called ‘Aai’ (mother in Marathi) is too well known and it was no surprise that Tendulkar and his wife Anjali were present at the last rites on Sunday.
What, however, always prompts a discreet silence is that cricket was also the source of her special friendship with Raj Singh Dungarpur - a cricket romantic with a royal lineage from the princely state of Dungarpur in Rajasthan who ruled the roost in Indian cricket in the Eighties and Nineties.
Was Raj Singh, ‘Raj bhai’ to the cricket fraternity - the man in her life? The question had been a sensitive topic in Indian cricket community but it was common knowledge that their friendship was a special one which could not be solemnized apparently with the royal lineage of the former proving to be an impediment of sorts.
The Lord's, Mecca of cricket, in London faces a row of apartment buildings across the main gate and it is believed that they had an apartment there and were often spotted watching matches at the historic venue. Raj Singh had once opened up about their relationship: ''We came from different backgrounds. The '60s was very different. Both were attached to their respective families. It was one of those things that just didn't happen.''
A former President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and chairman of selectors who made the Cricket Club of India (CCI) pavilion at the Brabourne his home in Mumbai so that he could stay close to cricket, Raj never got married while Lata had maintained a dignified silence about her personal life.
There is almost a historical context to what could have gone behind her interest in cricket more than skin deep. The Mangeshkars, as a family, had more than a casual interest in cricket while she enjoyed a family relationship with Vinoo Mankad, arguably India’s greatest allrounder in the pre-Kapil Dev era.
Speaking to Gulf News over phone, Shishir Hattangadi, a former Mumbai cricketer of the Eighties and former Head of Cricket Operations of Mumbai Indians, tried to put things in perspective. ‘‘It was a different Bombay in the ‘50s and ‘60s where music, films and cricket combined to give the city it’s cultural identity and Lata didi was very passionate about cricket. Her admiration for the ‘Master’ Mulvantrai Vinoo Mankad culminated into a brother-sister bonding and story has it that Mankad tied her a ‘rakhi’ (an Indian ritual to formalise a sistely relationship).’’
The ethos of those times were different and in what would be an unthinkable proposition today, stalwarts of the then Indian cricket team like Mankad, Vijay Manjrekar were great connoisseurs of Hindustani classic music and could be seen nodding in appreciation at the concert of a Pandit Bhimsen Joshi or Faiaz Khan at a corner.
‘‘I had once met her at a dinner at the CCI and was mightily impressed by her knowledge of the sport. While she followed the likes of Mankad, Manjrekar or the allrounder Dattu Phadkar, Lata didi was a big fan of Tiger Pataudi and of course, Sunil Gavaskar, after his debut in 1971 series. She admired the West Indies cricketers a lot while Sir Garfield Sobers was a particular favourite,’’ recalled Hattangadi.
During her tribute at one of the TV channels on Sunday, Sharmila Tagore, the legendary actor and wife of late Tiger reminisced how Lata once politely chided her for ignorance of about certain facets of the sport. ‘‘She was a person who knew her cricket. She was fond of Tiger and once told me that being the wife of Indian captain, I should be updating myself more on the game,’’ she fondly recalled.
‘‘We can never forget how she came forward and supported the cause of the cricketers and stood by the BCCI when there weren’t much resources available to the Board. We paid our respects to the Nightingle of India by keeping our flag half mast. She has left a vaccum that will not be filled,” said Avishek Dalmiya, President of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB).
If the Nightingale of India had done the BCCI a favour by performing in that concert in 1983 to raise funds, the Indian board returned the favours by facilitating a charity match between the Indian XI and the Sri Lankan XI in 1998 at Wankhede Stadium to help her raise funds for a hospital in Pune that the family has founded.
The practice of naming stands in cricket stadia is usually reserved for legends of the game. Can there be an exception this time at the CCI, given her almost childlike passion for the sport and what she brought to the table?
