Chandrasekhar

Bhagwat Subramanya Chandrasekhar bowled Test cricket's most improbable leg spin with an arm that childhood polio had left withered — not his other arm, but the very one he bowled with. The whip-like, hard-to-read action it produced made him, through the 1960s and 70s, one of the most feared bowlers in the world and the strike weapon of India's celebrated spin quartet.

A withered arm, an unrepeatable action

Chandrasekhar was born in Mysore on 17 May 1945 and contracted polio at the age of six, which withered his right arm. He did not switch arms to compensate: he bowled leg breaks and googlies with that same thin, unusually supple right arm, whipping it through so fast that batsmen often could not read which way the ball was turning until it was too late. He idolised Australia's Richie Benaud as a boy, but Benaud bowled leg spin the orthodox way; Chandrasekhar's action was something else entirely, and even his own teammates found him close to unplayable in the nets.

The spin quartet and The Oval, 1971

Alongside Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, Chandrasekhar formed the Indian spin quartet that dominated world cricket through the 1960s and 70s. His signature moment came on 23 August 1971 at The Oval, where his 6 for 38 skittled England and set up India's first-ever Test series win on English soil — a spell Wisden named the best Indian bowling performance of the 20th century in a 2002 retrospective, describing him as "wonderfully accurate for a bowler of his type." He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1972. He played a leading role again in India's near-triumphant tour of Australia in 1977–78, and in 1976 combined with Prasanna to take 19 wickets in a Test win over New Zealand.

"I know he's bowled, but is he out?"

Chandrasekhar did not settle on leg spin until 1963, after trying his hand as a fast bowler on the streets of Bangalore, where his family had moved after his primary schooling in Mysore; the switch got him noticed almost immediately and into the Indian side within a year. His unpredictability produced as much frustration as wonder among umpires and opponents alike — during a tour of New Zealand marked by a string of turned-down lbw appeals, he is remembered for the deadpan complaint: "I know he is bowled, but is he out?" On India's 1977-78 tour of Australia he produced one of the most unusual lines in the record books, becoming the first bowler in Test history to take identical figures — 6 for 52 — in both innings of the same match.

242 wickets, a Test average of 4.07

Chandrasekhar played 58 Tests between 1964 and 1979, taking 242 wickets at 29.74 — a strike rate that ranks among the best of any spinner in the sport's history. His batting was the flip side of the same withered arm: he averaged just 4.07 and finished with 23 Test ducks, scoring fewer career runs (167) than wickets he took, a distinction shared with only one other Test cricketer in history, New Zealand's Chris Martin. On the 1977–78 tour of Australia, teammates presented him with a Gray-Nicholls bat with a hole cut in it to commemorate the four ducks he scored that series. He considered England's Ken Barrington the hardest batsman he ever bowled to.

Legacy

Chandrasekhar received the Padma Shri and the Arjuna Award in 1972 and the BCCI's C.K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004. More than half a century after his retirement, he is still cited as cricket's clearest proof that there is no single correct way to bowl — only whatever an unrepeatable body and action can be made to do better than anyone else has managed.

For Chandrasekhar's full statistical record, see his player profile. India's next great wicket-taking spinner, Anil Kumble, has spoken of watching Chandrasekhar bowl as a formative early influence.