Didn’t you used to be…Dilip Doshi

From SPIN magazine, June 2007

Halfway through SPIN’s audience with Dilip Doshi in his office in Hampstead, I check who he will be supporting in the forthcoming series. “India. India of course,” he says. But he has just been referring to England as ‘we’… “Yeah, yeah, I’m very happy to belong to this country, I am British. I owe a lot of things to this great country. But at the same time I am very much Indian – I live in India as well.”

When he retired from cricket in 1984, Doshi set up a business in England which trades in steel: spare parts, equipment and machinery. Ten years later, he formed another one in India to distribute luxury brands from Europe. 

Business is booming. “But I am very passionate about the game still. Whenever I am in London I watch my son [Nayan] play for Surrey,” he says. His office paperweight is a gold bat and on the shelf above his head there’s a picture of him being presented to the Queen at Lord’s. 

Is it hard to watch Nayan; do you get nervous? “No, no. The way I look at is that
he should enjoy doing what he is doing – which he does – and then your natural talent will come through if you have the dedication and the focus. We’re very similar bowlers, even our actions are similar. He is honing his talent and doing everything properly.”

Though he would play county cricket for Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, the young Dilip Doshi was always a Surrey fan, thanks to Peter May: in Calcutta, Doshi would listen to radio commentaries when May was captain of Surrey and England in the late 1950s. 

Doshi’s love for the Rolling Stones, though, is in a different league. “Theirs is the only music I have listened to for the past 43 years,” he says. “I mean that literally. They have a huge repertoire so I don’t need to look elsewhere. I have seen them in concert 213 times. I first heard them on the radio when I was a schoolboy in Calcutta. I had problems finding the right station for the cricket commentary and that is how I first heard the Stones. I was hooked. I put on two Rolling Stones concerts in India in 2003 and, God willing, will do so again the end of this year.”

His enthusiasm for the Stones and cricket may be undimmed but his views on modern spin bowling are more mixed. “In the 1980s, when I played county cricket, almost every good county had both a left-armer and an off-spinner who would be good enough to get close to an England call today. 

“And the doosra is the most overrated delivery. A waste of time. Ninety-eight per cent of your bowling is your stock ball. But for the doosra the wrist and shoulder action is so different that it interferes with your in-built muscle memory.

“Off-spinners have lost the art of spinning the ball and stretching the batsmen forward and hitting his pads, which is what all great off spin bowlers did. Unfortunately, many coaches have encouraged the doosra and you’ll see the result in years to come.”

Doshi also complains that captains have lost the ability to understand spin bowling:
“One-day internationals and Twenty20 means that the spinner’s role is more important than ever. But if a spinner is hit for six and four in an over, he’s taken off, but a pace bowler who is hit for two a ball is kept on. To hit a good spinner, the batsman has to take a risk. It’s harder to get that 10 from a spinner than it is 12 from a pace bowler.”

Doshi knows a thing or two about one-day bowling – he once got through his full complement of eight overs in a John Player League game for Notts with figures of 1/1. Does he remember how the run was scored? “Like it was yesterday! It was a snick that [wicket-keeper] Bruce French dropped, and Wayne Larkins took a single.” 

Has he forgiven French yet? He laughs: “I was never upset. Just to be playing cricket was a bonus, to be doing the thing you most loved in the world. But it should have been 2/0.”

Is it true you were dropped for the
next one-day game? He laughs: “No. I wasn’t dropped for the next game. I was dropped for the next 10! They thought
they had to find room for Kenny Watson, a South African fast bowler, to justify him having a contract as he wasn’t in the championship side. That was the unprofessional side of county cricket. 

“I even played in games for Notts when senior players would not be going all out because they wouldn’t want the credit going to the captain, Mike Smedley. They wanted to see him dismissed. I couldn’t believe the way wickets were being thrown away.”  

To cricket followers in this country, however, Dilip Doshi is perhaps best known for his part in perhaps the dullest Test series of all, when England, under Keith Fletcher, toured India in 1981/82. Five of the six Tests were drawn. “Fletch was a boring captain and a boring batsman and Sunil [Gavaskar, India captain] wasn’t willing to take any sort of initiative after we won the first Test. England would win the toss and bat slowly for two days. Plus, the series was played on shirt-front wickets and my captain instructed me to bowl a very slow over rate. I wanted to bowl the overs quicker, but I was told if I did I would be taken off. But he didn’t back me up when I took flack over this. He kept quiet.

“Gavaskar and I didn’t see eye-to-eye.
I don’t harbour any bitterness, but if you are a batsmen once you’re in the middle you’re the master and the captain can’t do anything about it. But if you have bowled 20 overs and taken three wickets you can still be taken off and not bowl again in the innings. That happened to me a lot.”

Doshi made his Test debut at 32, reaching 100 wickets in 28 Tests. Only Aussie leggie Clarrie Grimmett has reached the 100-wicket landmark after debuting over 30. 

“I always felt I could bowl to the best players in the world on any surface and get them out, which I was doing at all the levels I was playing at. I was dismayed many times when, despite India losing, they never changed the bowlers. When finally my turn came I was delighted, and I enjoyed every minute of playing for India.” 

 

quick singles

PLAYED FOR: India (1979-1984);
Bengal (1968-1985); Nottinghamshire (1973-1978); Warwickshire (1980-1981); Saurashtra (1985/86).

TESTS: 33 - 114 wkts @ 30.71; 129 runs @ 4.60. 

ODIs: 15 - 22 wkts @ 22.31, economy rate
of 3.96 runs/over; 9 runs @ 3.00.

FINEST HOUR: v Australia, Melbourne Test, 1981. “We should have won that series – we lost the first Test in less than three days because we were stupid enough to bat on a Sydney pitch. In all the previous games in the past 10-15 years the sides batting first had lost.  The second Test at Adelaide was drawn. Then I fractured a metatarsal. I thought we’d win at Melbourne, so I kept my injury from everyone. I bowled 74 overs in the match and we won to square the series.”