Farewell, Rajinder Goel - the crown jewel of India’s golden spin history
The moment Rajinder Goel looked up to the ceiling and then started walking towards the podium, there felt something surreal. He then joined Padmakar Shivalkar, one of his contemporaries, as Chirag Khanna handed over the Lifetime Achievement Award. The moment made for a great poster.
The BCCI Awards Function, Naman 2017, was a wonderfully moderated and brilliantly executed one, with the vibe hitting the roof of the posh hotel in Bengaluru. The current cricketers, in between a demanding Test series against Australia, and the golden stars of the past gathered together to celebrate Indian cricket. When the function resumed, the new-age superstars had taken a backseat to allow the grandees to take over the moment, and it was truly one juxtaposition of past and present, of history and modernism. Indian cricket was being celebrated but Rajinder Goel, never for a moment, looked out of place.
On June 21, Sunday, when Goel Saab, as he is popularly known, breathed his last, it was hardly surprising that almost all active Indian cricketers and most of the past superstars found the good will to reminisce the achievements of one of the greats of the game. Goel held his own when the country had a surfeit of spin bowlers and was the marker for many superstars of that particular era. A generational toiler, a grandee, an icon and a dazzling reminder of the cut-throat competition India had much before the IPL came along.
750 first-class wickets at an average of 18.58 in a career that spanned over an incredible 28 years is no mean feat but the quirk of fate saw him never being picked for the national side, with the team having stalwarts like Bishan Singh Bedi, BS Chandrashekhar, EAS Prasanna, and S Venkataraghavan. Goel and his great contemporary Shivalkar - two of the finest left-arm spinners going around - were down the pecking order with Bedi around, but it was just ironic that when the young Delhite was bursting onto the scene, the question that was often asked, "Is he as good as Goel?" It is sad that we are now talking of Goel in the past tense. Indian cricket is indeed poorer today.
Understanding Goel’s legacy through the numbers alone and just putting him under the bracket of a domestic stalwart would be a severely wrong one, for he was way ahead of his time. Initially, he was never fazed by the national selection and the perks that came with it. Bringing that cliche out, Goel was a tireless student of the game, who just wanted to bowl - day in and day out. “I was lucky to have played the amount of cricket I did. For me, the greatest joy was to play a match. It did not matter what level the match was. If I did not bowl (in nets or a match) I could not sleep,” he had told Sportstar.
The closest that Goel got to don an India jersey was during an unofficial Test match against Ceylon in 1964-65 but in 1974-75 came another chance, this time it was against Clive Lloyd's West Indies, as Bedi was dropped for the Bengaluru Test on the ground of disciplinary reasons. Goel was an automatic choice but in the modicum of Indian cricket, things changed within a flash. Unfortunately, it did that day with the Indian side picking two off-spinners and a leg-spinner. No place for Goel again.
"On the eve of the Test one of the selectors informed me that I was playing but when the team was announced after dinner, I wasn't in. I thought, this was the only chance and it has gone. Hum to aapni kismat ko hi dosh denge (I will just blame my fate),” he would recount later.
It was not only the Golden Quartet alone, who blocked his path, but Indian cricket had also been blessed with many spinners who parked the bus right at the centre. Subhash Gupte, Ghulam Ahmed, Salim Durani, Vinoo Mankad, Chandu Borde, AG Kripal Singh, VV Kumar, and Bapu Nadkarni all had a penchant to trivialize the art, which they did with utmost distinction. Goel, however, always looked at it from a close distance but never received the premium ticket.
That disappointment of not being able to make it to the great side forever stayed with him but that was only a part of the personality because he deeply cared about domestic cricket where he was one half of a glorious partnership with Sarkar Talwar. Later joining forces with Kapil Dev, Chetan Sharma, and Talwar, Goel pushed Haryana to the limit in their bid to bring the elusive silverware to Rohtak. It never materialised during his tenure as a player but when the side consigned the Dilip Vengasarkar-led Mumbai to a one-run loss in the 1991-92 final - possibly the greatest Ranji Trophy final ever - there were tears in the eyes of Goel, who was the chairman of the Haryana selection committee that season.
“Goely was a tireless workhorse, day in and day out just kept on pegging away without moaning or complaining. He was any captain's delight: never asked for any particular end, never asked for any field placement. Bas ball pakda, phekana shooru kar diya (just held the ball and bowled). You have to remember that both of us bowled for teams which, if we could count ourselves lucky, would score 225-250,” Bedi paid tributes to the man.
India might have woken up to Virat Kohli’s mantra of being fit, but back in the 60s, it was Goel who actually brought in a revolution of sorts. Even at 43, when he played his last first-class game, his training sessions would involve 3500 skips of a rope and a long run. He then would bowl to at least 10 batsmen in the nets, making life tough for them before weaving the magic against the opposition. With a flat trajectory, Goel would scamper and then bring in the ultimate resonance to push the batsmen to the limit.
Sunil Gavaskar spoke about the challenges of moving down the track to face Goel because the ultimate ripple effect saw the ball shooting in with an angle to catch the batsman dead in their tracks. "I have never been able to feel comfortable against his left-hand spinners. Although he is not a Test cricketer, to me he is one of the greatest I have played against and it has been a privilege.”
Now that all of it is over, it is time for us, the millenial and Gen Y cricket fans, to pause for a moment and relive a glorious chapter in Indian cricket history that should have donned many pages. Goel Saab is gone but the numbers, folktales and stories will have its own special place in the annals of the game as a slow-burning transcendence. A hope, over triumph. Toil over celebration. And that will be the ultimate validation that man ever needs.