Playing It My Way: My Autobiography (11 page)

India won by 43 runs

19th match. India v Zimbabwe at Hamilton. 7 March 1992

India 203–7 (32/32 ov); Zimbabwe 104–1 (19.1/19 ov, target: 159)

India won by 55 runs (revised target)

24th match. India v West Indies at Wellington. 10 March 1992

India 197 (49.4/50 ov); West Indies 195–5 (40.2/46 ov, target: 195)

West Indies won by 5 wickets (with 34 balls remaining) (revised target)

27th match. New Zealand v India at Dunedin. 12 March 1992

India 230–6 (50/50 ov); New Zealand 231–6 (47.1/50 ov)

New Zealand won by 4 wickets (with 17 balls remaining)

32nd match. India v South Africa at Adelaide. 15 March 1992

India 180–6 (30/30 ov); South Africa 181–4 (29.1/30 ov)

South Africa won by 6 wickets (with 5 balls remaining)

Final. England v Pakistan at Melbourne. 25 March 1992

Pakistan 249–6 (50/50 ov); England 227 (49.2/50 ov)

Pakistan won by 22 runs

As I was trying to establish myself as an international cricketer, my personal life changed dramatically in August 1990 when I met Anjali, my future wife. It was the beginning of by far the best partnership of my life.

I had just landed in Mumbai on our return from the 1990 tour of England and was waiting to pick up my bags when I first saw an extremely attractive woman looking down from the viewing gallery in the airport. Little did I know then that I had just seen my life partner. She was standing with a friend of hers, Dr Aparna Santhanam, now a well-known dermatologist in Mumbai. We had fleeting eye contact and then she disappeared.

The next I saw of the two of them was when I was making my way out of the airport. I spotted Anjali, dressed in an orange T-shirt and blue jeans, running out of the gate, apparently chasing after me. That was not all, because she soon started yelling, ‘He is sooooo cute!’ I felt awkward and started to blush, as I knew both Ajit and Nitin were waiting outside to take me home. My childhood friend Sunil Harshe was with me and he murmured in my ear that a very good-looking girl was calling my name and seemed keen to meet up with me. I had of course seen her and found her particularly attractive, but I told him there was no way I could speak to her at the time, not with Ajit and Nitin around.

Anjali and I courted each other for five years between 1990 and 1995, a commitment that led to engagement and finally marriage. It has to be said that the two of us come from very different backgrounds. Anjali is half Gujarati, half English and is a South Mumbai girl from a very well-to-do family. She went to St Xavier’s College and then studied medicine at JJ Hospital. She was well-spoken and had an upbringing fundamentally different from my own. In her family, wearing Western outfits was the norm. My situation was completely different. I had hardly ever been out of my colony and had always mingled with cricket friends. I had never gone out with a girl, let alone brought one home. Unlike most men of my age, who were able to meet girls at college, I had been playing for India from the age of sixteen and simply hadn’t had the opportunity.

While I first saw Anjali at Mumbai airport, it turns out that she had actually seen me a few weeks earlier on 14 August, when I got my first Test hundred at Old Trafford. At the time she was in England with her parents, and her father, Anand Mehta, a former national bridge champion and a serious cricket fan, had called her to catch a glimpse of the innings on television. However, she had no interest in cricket and didn’t watch at all. Soon afterwards she came back to India and it was when she went to the airport to receive her mother, Annabel, who is English but has worked in India tirelessly as a social worker for more than three decades, that we ran into each other for the first time.

The day after she saw me at the airport – and this is her version, by the way – she asked a friend of hers, Mufi Muffazal Lakdawala (who played club cricket and is now a very well-known surgeon), if he could get her my phone number. After coming home from the airport, she apparently jokingly declared to her parents that she had seen the man she wanted to marry.

Mufi did get her my number but it was pure chance that I happened to pick up her call. There were no mobile phones then and I was hardly ever at home to pick up the land line. The stars, I can say in hindsight, were aligned. She said she was the girl from the airport and asked if we could meet. While not trying to sound too eager, I told her that I remembered her and could meet with her at the Cricket Club of India, where I was playing. At first she did not believe me and asked if I could remember what she was wearing on the day I had first seen her. When I mentioned the orange T-shirt and blue jeans, she was impressed.

She came along to the CCI, as we’d arranged, but we couldn’t really meet up and talk properly with so many people around. Being discreet was the best thing under the circumstances. All we did was exchange numbers and after that we started talking on the phone fairly regularly. It wasn’t long before my sister-in-law Meena began to suspect that something was cooking between the two of us. She often asked me about this girl who kept on calling me but I tried to avoid answering. I wasn’t used to discussing private things with my family and felt distinctly uncomfortable.

Our first proper meeting finally happened at my house when we came up with the idea that Anjali should come over posing as a reporter wanting an interview. That was her first and last foray into journalism. A female reporter had never come to my home for an interview before and, in light of all the phone calls, my sister-in-law was particularly suspicious about who this special reporter was.

For that first visit, I was keen to offer Anjali something to eat and was disappointed to see that hardly any of the chocolates I had brought back from England remained. In fact, there were only two left and in my keenness to salvage the situation I carefully cut them up and set a plate of chocolate pieces in front of her. She couldn’t stay for long, however, and our first meeting was much too brief for my liking.

Despite being brief, it left a lasting impression. I simply felt happy in her presence. I can’t really pinpoint what I liked about her but what I can say is that I was able to relax and be myself with her from the very first day. I had intentionally spoken very little because I was worried about embarrassing myself by saying something stupid. She did most of the talking and that was fine with me. In any case, at the time I wasn’t as fluent with my English, which was the language of conversation. It was perhaps a defensive act, but Anjali never made me feel self-conscious. She was just the most ideal soulmate I could have asked for.

While we continued to speak for long periods on the phone after our first meeting, we hardly ever got a chance to meet. On some occasions we did plan to meet at around 8.30 p.m. and go for a drive. However, it turned out that Anjali’s parents, who were unaware of the relationship then, were watching television and so, despite wanting to meet, Anjali was unable to leave the house without arousing suspicion. For my part, I drove all the way from Bandra to Warden Road, a journey of about forty minutes, and waited in the car until I was finally forced to turn back. Because of the risk of people recognizing me, I couldn’t even call her from the public phone close to her house (there were no mobiles then) and had to go all the way back to Bandra to find out what had gone wrong, then I’d ask her to try again and drive all the way back. Needless to say, I am now an ardent advocate of mobile technology!

The second time we met was when Anjali suggested I pick her up from her house and we go for a drive in her Maruti 800, India’s most affordable small car in the early 1990s. She wanted to have coconut water along Marine Drive and it was the only time in our lives that we have sat on the bench opposite the Air India building in Mumbai drinking coconut water. In my eagerness to please her, I had agreed, despite knowing that there was a possibility of people spotting me and coming up to speak to me. The century in England had made me a household name and people had started to ask for autographs. I did not mention this to her in case she thought I was pompous. Because Anjali knew nothing about cricket, it had never occurred to her that people might recognize me. She simply wasn’t aware of how public a cricketer’s life in India can be. It is true that there is hardly any privacy, which means that we’ve never been able to do the things couples normally do – watch a film, stop at roadside eateries in the evening, take a walk along the beach and the like. It was an adjustment Anjali and I had to make very early on in our lives together. The one time we tried to defy the odds was when a few of us – Anjali, her father Anand and some of our friends – went to see the film
Roja
in Worli in South Mumbai in 1993. We planned the outing meticulously and I put on a wig, a false moustache and glasses in an attempt to hide my identity. Things went smoothly till the interval, when I dropped my glasses and broke one of the lenses. My friends asked me not to put the broken spectacles back on just in case something went into my eye, but in my panic the moustache came off too and soon people recognized me, causing us all a lot of embarrassment. There was such pandemonium that we had to flee from the cinema halfway through the film.

We had a similar experience in Switzerland just a few years ago, when we were holidaying as a family. I had suggested we stay in a chalet rather than in a hotel and do our own cooking. Things were going to plan till the day we decided to visit Interlaken, now famous for Indian tourists as the location of the hit Bollywood musical
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
. We had planned to leave early in the morning and walk to the site. A few of our friends had advised us not to do so in case people recognized me on the way, so instead we hired a horse and carriage. Just as we were setting out, a few of the other Indian tourists spotted me. Within minutes they started following us and even when I told the carriage driver to go faster, they kept running behind us, trying to catch up. It was only when they realized that they couldn’t keep pace that they finally gave up.

Such intrusion meant that Anjali and I could hardly meet in public and after our second meeting we weren’t in touch at all for a period of six months. I was away on tours, while Anjali was busy preparing for her medical finals. I knew how hard she had worked and was sure she’d do well in the exam. On the day of the exam I rang her from Australia very early in the morning to wish her luck. I must say I was delighted to hear her voice after so long. She was panicking and was worried that she’d fail the exam. Knowing that was impossible, I said to her that if she failed the examination, so would everyone else in Mumbai. She had always come top and there was no way it would be different this time round. I also said that the number of hours she studied in a day equalled the total number of hours I used to study in a whole month! It was only much later that she told me that my call made a big difference to her. She felt I must have really cared to have called from Australia after six months. It was far more than care, as far as I was concerned.

As expected, she topped the examination and wanted to go ahead with pursuing an MD in paediatrics. I was extremely proud of her achievement and encouraged her to do so, which resulted in her getting posted to a hospital at Palghar, on the outskirts of Mumbai, as an intern. Luckily for us both, her friend Mufi was also posted in the same hospital. Palghar was such a small town that Anjali had to take a train to Boisar, some twenty minutes away, to find a phone to call me, and Mufi was her partner during these trips.

It was while studying for the MD that she began to take more of an interest in cricket. We had started talking about the game on the phone and she even bought a book of rules. Often she’d come up with questions like: where’s cow corner, or is the wicketkeeper right- or left-handed? But she picked up the game quickly and I would ask her questions from time to time to keep her interest going. The first tournament she watched on television was the 1992 World Cup and she was heartbroken to see me get out cheaply against the West Indies after I had edged a ball from Curtly Ambrose. So much so that Mufi had to console her, saying the ball was so good that others wouldn’t have come near it and it was because of my exceptional batting prowess that I had managed to somehow get an edge. If only that were the truth!

In the absence of mobile phones and text messages at the time, Anjali and I wrote a series of letters to each other. Because I was not stationed in a particular city for more than a few days when on tour, Anjali would have to work out where I would be in two or three weeks’ time and post the letters accordingly. These letters remain prized possessions and when I look at them again one thing that stands out is Anjali’s handwriting. Compared to mine, hers was wonderful to look at. I also have to confess that writing did not come naturally to me. I would often take a very long time thinking through each word that I would write for my beloved.

After coming back from the World Cup in March 1992, I visited Anjali in her family’s house for the first time. Once again Mufi played a crucial role. Anjali’s parents were told that it was our first meeting and that Mufi had orchestrated the visit. It was carefully stage-managed and was quite a performance. In fact, it was only after we decided to get engaged that we told her parents the real story. I must say I was extremely thankful to Mufi for all the help.

We weren’t comfortable with the fact that the relationship was still a secret and decided it was time we let our families know that we were serious about each other. So I asked my childhood friend Sunil Harshe to arrange for Ajit and Anjali to meet, and the three of them got together at the Willingdon Club in South Mumbai. Waiting at home, I was anxious the whole time the meeting was on. It wasn’t that I was looking for approval as such from Ajit, but it meant a lot to me to see my friends and family like Anjali as much as I did. I remember waiting for what seemed like an age, but when I finally saw Sunil and Ajit coming back, Sunil, who was walking one step behind Ajit, gave me a quick thumbs up to indicate the meeting had gone well. I was delighted to know that Ajit too thought Anjali was the right person for me.