Revision as of 01:12, 13 March 2015

Vinod Kambli with second wife, the model Andrea Hewitt

Vinod Kambli with first wife, Noella, an Anglo-Indian

The authors of this page…

i) Former India batsman Sachin Tendulkar takes different path to old team-mate Vinod Kambli

Sachin Tendulkar and his school friend Vinod Kambli burst onto the scene together in India but then went their separate ways

Steve James Telegraph.co.uk 02 Dec 2013

ii) Kambli the rising star who ran himself out

Fallen idol: Vinod Kambli had all the promise of a cricketing great

Derek Pringle Telegraph.co.uk 08 Aug 2007

iii) Linus Fernandes, Analyst, Bleacher Report, Nov 20, 2011

iv) Vinod Kambli: A gifted cricketer who lost his way in life's possibilities NDTV

v) David Mutton | December 2012 Vinod Kambli: The Other Prodigy CricketWeb

Shardashram Vidyamandir School against St Xavier's College in 1988

Steve James recalls:

The best batsmen just want to bat and bat. And schoolboys are hardly known for their obedience. These two schoolboy batsmen were going rather well. So well in fact that they had both passed their double centuries.

On the boundary’s edge their assistant coach was waving his arms furiously. He was demanding their attention. It was time to declare. The team total had surpassed 500 after all.

But the batsmen were having none of it. This was too much fun. They carried on batting. And batting a bit more.

By lunch of what was the second day of this three-day Harris Shield semi-final in Mumbai in 1988, one had 349 not out and his friend 326 not out.

But they knew they had disobeyed instructions. Their coach, Ramakant Achrekar, a man they both respected hugely, was not present, as he had to work that day. Instead it was his assistant, Laxman Chavan, whose instructions had been disregarded.

At the interval Chavan told the pair of youngsters that they should phone Achrekar. Their coach asked the score. Over 700 came the reply. “Declare!” screamed Achrekar, according to Vaibhav Purandare, an Indian author. [Vaibhav Purandare was part of the opposite team (St Xavier's School)]

“Sir, I’m batting on 349,” said the one young man by the name of Vinod Kambli, before the phone was passed to the other, the captain.

Sachin Tendulkar was his name. You may have heard of him. “Sir, Vinod needs one run to complete his 350, we’ll declare as soon as he gets out,” he said.

“Declare!” shouted Achrekar, and for once Tendulkar was in trouble.

But he and Kambli had already put on an unbeaten 664 for the third wicket for Shardashram School against St Xavier’s College, and two stars of Indian cricket had been born.

[Lest we form the opinion that Achrekar was biased, David Mutton (CricketWeb) reminds us that Kambli ‘was spotted playing in the nets by Ramakant Achrekar, a well known coach in Mumbai. Achrekar encouraged him to move to the cricket obsessed Sharadashram High School, where he met Tendulkar, another of Achrekar’s prodigies.’

[Kambli’s father worked as a mechanic and the family struggled with the grim realities of life in the crowded tenements of South Mumbai. Food was often scarce and Achrekar paid for Kambli’s tuition and cricket kit. In return Kambli got up at 5am, returned home after midnight, and played dozens of matches every month.]

India-baiters like Stevenson need to note that the 'upper-caste' Achrekar--a Bhandary--sought out the fisherman-caste Kambli, mentored him and passed on his own knowledge and skills to Kambli.

In any case, the 664-run record brought acclaim and with it money. A clothing company paid for [Sachin and Kambli’s] education and cricket expenses, which was especially important for Kambli.

A world-beating initial career

In 1989, England had a warm-up game for the Nehru Cup in Delhi, and both played. So did Angus Fraser, Phil DeFreitas, Eddie Hemmings and me. Thankfully, it was a 50-over match and we managed to win, but if memory serves both made unbeaten half-centuries - remarkable given Tendulkar was just 16 and Kambli 17.

Within a month, Tendulkar was making his Test debut against Pakistan, a rough baptism that saw him struck on the head. Kambli had to wait another three years to join him in the Test team, a gap that caused him to later quip that "while Sachin had taken the elevator, he'd taken the stairs." It seemed a neat soundbite, though some saw it as a coded barb over the way caste dictates opportunity in India - Tendulkar coming from lofty stock, Kambli from lower-middle.

Kambli soon made up for lost time, carving England's confused bowling attack for a double hundred in his third Test. In the team meeting beforehand, one of England's pace bowlers had piped up that he could get him out with an orange. When Kambli reached 200 in front of an ecstatic home crowd in Mumbai, Robin Smith turned to the bowler in question and said - "don't you think it's time you pulled out that bloody orange."

After seven Tests, Kambli had scored 773 runs at an average of 113.2, including a washed-out match in which he did not bat. Only cricketing icons Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar, Everton Weekes, George Headley and Frank Worrell have scored more. Suddenly Little Lord Sachin was not the only deity in town.

Kambli makes 224, then 227

Steve James adds:

By 1993 Kambli and Tendulkar were on the top floor together in the Indian Test team, with Kambli at three and Tendulkar at four in a series at home to England. In the third Test in Mumbai, Kambli made 224, still the highest Test score by an Indian against England.

In his next Test against Zimbabwe, the left-handed Kambli made 227. Tendulkar was not to score his first Test double-hundred for another six years.

In his next two Tests against Sri Lanka Kambli made two centuries.

February 1993, vs. England

David Mutton (CricketWeb) recalls the details:

February 1993, third and final test against England: Batting first, England scored 347. After a stolid century opening stand, the 21 year old Vinod Kambli strides to the crease. Although this is Kambli’s debut series his flamboyant reputation, both on and off the field, is already well known throughout the country.

Kambli bats England out of the game. He reaches his century with a late cut for four off the persevering but ineffective Hick. His childhood friend, Sachin Tendulkar, is batting with him and firmly shakes his hand. England’s bowlers all but give up as he moves inexorably onwards, reaching 200 from 347 balls. By the time he is finally out, caught at gully from a tired drive off Chris Lewis, his score of 224 is the highest by an Indian against England.

March 1993, vs. Zimbabwe

David Mutton (CricketWeb)

That innings started a purple patch almost unmatched in international cricket. The following month India hosted Zimbabwe in a one-off test in Delhi. The Zimbabweans found no way past Kambli’s bat and he dominated the first day, ending on 176. Play was delayed until 3pm the following day because of overnight rain and what Wisden termed “primitive covers.” Kambli appeared nervous and ran out his captain, Mohammad Azharuddin, but reached his second successive double century which allowed India to complete another innings victory. Usually an impetuous and aggressive batsman, Kambli had not hit a six in either of his epic innings.

Vs. Sri Lanka

Although Kambli failed in the warm-up games, and rain ruined the first test, his form returned when it mattered. In the second test Kambli scored yet another century that helped India to their first ever win in Sri Lanka and their first victory in an overseas test match in 27 attempts. Despite the hundred a hint of Kambli’s vulnerability was evident in the second innings. He was dubiously adjudged caught behind and, in Wisden’s words, demonstrated a “tearful reluctance to leave the crease.” This brought a reprimand from match referee Peter Burge but would not be the last time Kambli was seen crying while batting for India.

Another century in the third test match meant that Kambli had scored two double centuries and two centuries in five innings.

The fall

Steve James adds:

But after another 10 Tests he was dropped. That was in 1995, and he was aged just 23. Despite averaging 54.2, he never played another Test.

But even though he was still playing international one-day cricket in 2000, and indeed Indian first-class cricket until 2004, it was his lax attitude, not a susceptibility to the short ball, that scuppered his career.

International career

NDTV writes:

Kambli had a flamboyant style of batting and the left-hander soon became the fastest Indian to complete 1000 Test runs. Such was his rise that he even breached the 200-run barrier well before Tendulkar, hitting 227 against Zimbabwe in 1993. In fact, Kambli hit two double-centuries and two hundreds in his first eight Test innings! The fact that he also had a safe pair of hands increased his value.

Interestingly though, Kambli played all his 17 Tests before the age of 24 but loss of form in the last few outings meant that he could never make a comeback and finished with 1084 runs at an average of 54.20.

His journey in ODIs though was longer with 104 appearances in which he hit two centuries and 14 fifties. As in Tests though, his form began eluding him in the 50-over format as well towards the turn of the millennium. There was emphasis on youngsters and Kambli began to get overshadowed by the likes of Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif. The year 2000 spelled doom for the batsman as he played in what became his final ODI against Sri Lanka, scoring just three.

Running himself out

Derek Pringle on Kambli:

A rough diamond called Vinod Kambli was a batsman who started out every bit as gifted as the little master Sachin Tendulkar.

Sport is littered with tales of what might have been, of talent flushed down the gurgler. But Kambli's story, particularly when placed beside that of his childhood friend, Tendulkar, is a modern tale of how quickly sport's shining paths can lead to a dead end once the small details are ignored.

A year older than Tendulkar, Kambli was every bit as much the schoolboy prodigy as his fluffy-haired chum. When the pair played for Shardashram Vidyamandir School against St Xavier's College in 1988, they shared an unbeaten stand of 664.

In terms of run-making talent, there wasn't much between them, though Kambli's left-handedness suggested a flashiness of which the right-handed and right-minded Tendulkar could never be accused.

Tendulkar was always the model professional; Kambli was always the classic larrikin, with his golden earrings, funky haircuts (although the pate is now bald) and extravagant lifestyle.

Maybe Kambli was before his time because he might have fitted in nicely in the indulgent excesses of the Indian Premier League now. He has a fashion model wife [having had another glamorous wife before that]

Success and the adoration that breeds can bring unimaginable riches in India. But you can play the game two ways. Be aloof but businesslike and watch the money roll in, as Tendulkar has, or get sucked into the fame game, something Kambli, with his sudden passion for bling and booze, did rather too enthusiastically for those running Indian cricket.

When it came, his fall was sudden and permanent. A weakness against short-pitched fast bowling (he kept flashing catches to gully), played its part, but his off-the-field lifestyle clearly irked those in charge. Most batsmen sporting an average of 54.2 - especially ones good enough to cane Shane Warne for 22 in an over - are given the chance to iron out any flaws. Not Kambli, and while his one-day career stuttered on until the 2000 ICC Trophy in Nairobi, he never played another Test.

Kambli continues to play cricket for Mumbai, though an acting career in Bollywood - he once played a mechanic in a film called Annarth - appears to have stalled. India was still a conservative place when he first announced himself all gilt and flash in the early Nineties. Fifteen years on and the country, with its burgeoning economy, has caught him up and attitudes have changed, though too late to salvage his cricket career.

A nice, emotional, self-destructive man

Prem Panicker/ Rediff

Kambli's first brush with notoriety came in 1992, when he made part of the Indian team for the World Cup co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. India was to play Sri Lanka in the Australian town of McKay, but rain interfered. By way of keeping the spectators in good humour, a group of showgirls came out on the pitch and danced to piped music. And pretty soon, they were joined by the curly-headed Kambli, whose natural ebullience rebelled at the thought of sitting in the dressing room while there was fun to be had outside.

The photographers had a field day. And back home, the traditionalists raised their eyebrows at the sight of an Indian cricketer surrounded by a bevy of beauties, shaking a nifty leg when he should by rights have been in the team dressing room, sombre faced and staring out at the rain.

There was definitely nothing disreputable in Kambli's dancing with a group of girls and keeping the spectators entertained.

However, when we make allowances for Kambli, it is with one proviso - that he does not do anything to bring himself or the team to disrepute. And it is that proviso he went against four years later, during the Wills World Cup on Indian soil.

Prior to the World Cup, Kambli had married his long-time sweetheart - but the path of young love did not, apparently, run too smooth at the time. The result – public squabbles between husband and wife in the lobby of the hotel where the Indian team was staying, numerous instances of Kambli going out alone in the evening, getting drunk, then returning to the hotel to bang on room doors, disturb his team-mates and indulge in behaviour that was by any yardstick unacceptable.

Even with all this going against him, Kambli did have a fine run in the Wills World Cup, his flat out assault against the West Indian quicks Ambrose and Walsh in the league match at Gwalior being particularly outstanding. And the most enduring memory of that tournament was the sight of Kambli, sobbing bitterly as he returned to the pavilion after match referee Clive Lloyd had conceded the semifinal to Sri Lanka following incidents of stone throwing at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta.

Those tears were the mirror images of the ones he shed when, during the earlier tour of Sri Lanka, he took on the Lankan spinners on their home turf to slam two good centuries. On the second occasion, in the second innings of the second Test, he was given out off a dubious decision and again left the ground in tears.

An exemplary attitude, that - but not enough to convince the team management to go with him for the tours of Singapore, Sharjah, Sri Lanka, Canada (versus Pakistan) et al. And if his dropping [from the Indian team] seemed harsh, then everyone who was closely involved with the Indian team during the World Cup will concede that his behaviour warranted no less.

Kambli himself was to admit as much, in private conversation.

How did he plan to make a comeback? "I have worked on my attitude problems, and can assure you that those days are gone. Now I just have to get on with it and make runs everytime I go out to bat," Kambli said then.

And it seemed that Kambli was on the road to living up to that - the drinking bouts were a thing of the past, and the runs began coming again by the ton, no pun intended.

And just when the pundits began asking why Kambli had not been sent to South Africa, at least for the one-dayers, the enigmatic player messed up the copybook again. Despite repeated intimations, he failed to turn up for the practise sessions of the Bombay Ranji team, and as a result found himself axed by the Mumbai Cricket Association selection committee headed by Dilip Sardesai.

The grounds? Indiscipline.

At a private function recently, team captain Sanjay Manjrekar was asked whether he had any idea what Kambli's problem was. "I wish I knew," Manjrekar said then. "We've gone out of our way to help him out, it has even been suggested that if he has a problem coming over from Pune (a train commute of three hours) to Bombay for practise, then he begin playing for the Maharashtra team instead. Thus far, nothing has worked."

And that is the reason why Kambli continued to find himself out in the cold - for no team, especially one trying to get back on a winning track, can afford such behaviour.

Team coach Balwinder Singh Sandhu was vocal in support of his star. "Kambli is fine now, he has apologised for missing nets earlier and the association is happy with his statement, which it has accepted while reinstating him in the team," says Sandhu, the man who set India on the path of its most famous international win by bowling Gordon Greenidge with a huge inswinger in the 1983 World Cup final at Lords. "I am happy to report that he is now showing interest in the nets, and his attitude is just fine. I think he is too good a cricketer to be allowed to languish in the wilderness."

[But languish he did.]

The bias against Kambli

That there was a strong bias against Kambli is certain. Had it been because of his somewhat backward (but NOT scheduled) caste it would have been evident much before.

Linus Fernandes, Analyst, correctly argued in Bleacher Report, Nov 20, 2011 that India Cricket: Vinod Kambli's Allegations Make Him a Pariah.

That it were his allegations rather than his caste is obvious from the fact that Kambli rattled more Pakistanis and India’s Azharuddin than ‘caste-Hindus.’ Kambli, then 24 or 25 had a hunch that the 1996 semifinal could have been fixed. He expressed this view fifteen years later.

Mohammad Azharuddin hit back with a snide remark about Kambli’s ‘lack of background.' ICC President Sharad Pawar and BCCI Vice-President Rajiv Shukla heaped scorn on the southpaw. Mazhar Majeed’s "links" to Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh were rubbished by both parties. (Mr Anand and Mr Stevenson have darkly alleged caste-prejudice against Mr Kambli, though Mr Anand admits that Kambli was not a Dalit. See the debate in Caste, region, religion and Indian cricketOf Mr Kambli's detractors Azharuddin and Majeed are Indian and Pakistani Muslims respectively, Mr Pawar a Kunbi, and Mr Yuvraj and Mr Harbhajan Sikhs. Only Mr Shukla is a Brahmin.]

However, on both sides of the border there also were decent people who rallied in support of Kambli.

Vaibhav Purandare [a Deshastha Brahmin], in a hard-hitting article for the Hindustan Times, wrote, “To point to his ‘lack of background' is to ridicule his poverty and his struggle against the odds.”

Former Pakistan skipper, Rashid Latif and former BCCI vice president Sunil Dev supported Kambli.

Latif said: “I don’t see what’s wrong in holding a probe even if Kambli has come out with claims after 15 years. If there was no hanky panky, what has the BCCI or Pawar to fear?”

But this, rather than caste, made Kambli a pariah with the Indian cricketing establishment.

Tiffs with Sachin Tendulkar

Kambli’s inability to control himself on TV kept costing him friendships. NDTV writes:

Although they were close friends since their days in school and shared a symbiotic relationship on the cricket field - strengthening their game from each other's talents -- Kambli and Tendulkar slowly drifted apart through the years. According to Kambli, Tendulkar stopped communicating with him after a TV reality show in 2009. In that show, Kambli had said that Tendulkar didn't help him enough to overcome his self-destructive tendencies.

Life post-cricket

NDTV writes:

At the age of 28, after he lost his place in the Indian team, Kambli explored other avenues in life. TV shows came as a respite and Kambli made his debut on the small screen in a show called Miss India, in 2002. It was aired on DD National.

Unlike his international cricket career, Kambli's TV career hardly ever took off. He tried his luck in politics. Lok Bharati Party made him its vice-president but he lost the 2009 Vidhan Sabha elections from the Vikhroli (Mumbai) seat. A year later, he married model Andrea Hewitt and has a son named Jesus Christiano.

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