Former India cricketer Dilip Sardesai, 67, died of multiple organ failure on Monday evening. He was admitted to Bombay Hospital late last month. His funeral will be held at Chandanwadi Crematorium, near Charni Road, at 11 am on Tuesday.
MUMBAI: In the summer of 1971, the Indian cricket team could do little wrong — winning their first ever Test series’ in West Indies and England. In the centre of it all were two diverse individuals from Mumbai, 22-year-old Sunil Gavaskar and 31-year-old Sardesai.
For the young Gavaskar it had been a superb start to his career; for Sardesai, it was a comeback that many thought impossible after he had been dumped out of the Indian team in 1969 after a run of low scores.
During the West Indies tour, Sardesai was asked at the airport whether he had anything to declare. ‘I have come here with runs’, he replied, ‘and I’ll go back with more.’ He scored 642 runs, with two single hundreds and a double century, 212, after India were 75 for the loss of five wickets.
His batting was of such great quality that great Vijay Merchant said he was ‘the man responsible for the Renaissance of Indian cricket.’ The tag stuck and for the rest of his life, Sardesai was fondly referred to as the ‘Renaissance Man.’
Ajit Wadekar, who was India’s skipper during that series, recalls how the selectors weren’t too keen on picking him in the first place.
“The selectors were not so keen on selecting him because they thought he was over the hill. He wasn’t getting too many runs in domestic cricket either; in and out of the Indian team. But I had a lot of faith in him, having played with him for so many years. I think his double century also gave us a lot of confidence. Not only to Sunil Gavaskar, but the rest of the batsmen too. We now knew that we could play the fast bowlers too. We were five down in the first Test match and that double century was just fabulous. I haven’t seen a knock like that,” he said.
A technically correct player, the solid, wristy Sardesai was said to be especially strong against against spin, but in West Indies he showed that he could take the battle to the pace bowlers once he set his mind to it.
He is survived by wife, Nandini, a sociologist and a member of the Indian Censor Board (for motion pictures). His son Rajdeep is the CEO of the TV channel CNN-IBN. His daughter, Shonali, works on conflict-related issues at the World Bank in Washington DC.
