On birth anniversary, cricket fans pay tribute to Vivekananda’s cricketing feat

Shubhadeep Choudhury

New Delhi, January 12

What is common between Swami Vivekananda, whose 159th birth anniversary is being celebrated today, and Mohammed Shami, the ace fast bowler who is the highest wicket-taker (11 wickets) for India (till now) in the ongoing South Africa tour?

Joy Bhattacharjya, quizmaster, who was also manager of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) team that plays in IPL, threw light on the lesser-known side of Vivekananda on the occasion of the birth anniversary of the Hindu monk.

“On his 159th birth anniversary, what connects Swami Vivekananda and Mohammed Shami? Ans: Both opened the bowling for Town Club, Vivekananda once taking 7 wickets in an innings. Incidentally, the man who started the club was Saradaranjan Ray, the grand uncle of Satyajit Ray,” Bhattacharjya wrote in tweet posted this morning.

According to cricket writer Abhishek Mukherjee, Hemachandra Ghose, revolutionary freedom fighter, who was associated with Town Club (Kolkata), hadspotted a strapping youth when Town Club was having a practice session. Ghoshtrained him to bowl overarm. This boy, Narendranath Datta,who later became famous as Swami Vivekananda,took 7/20 against Calcutta Club, whose team members were Englishmen who lived in Kolkata then.

This could be the first five-wicket haul in the history of club cricket in Kolkata, wrote Mukherjee, writer of the book “Sachin and Azhar at Cape Town: Indian and South African Cricket Through the Prism of a Partnership” (with a foreword by the popular cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle).

Mukherjee posted on social media a clipping from a newspaper report of the match. The report says that the English cricketers were curious to know about the young Indian bowler. Hemchandra Ghosh told the curious Englishmen, “This young spark is our discovery. One day he will master your English game”.

After a pause, Ghosh said, “He is Narendranath Dutta, comes from the Datta family of Simla” (Simla is the name of the Kolkata neighbourhood where the Datta family lived).

In all likelihood, the match was played in 1881. Vivekananda was then 18 years of age. The clipping posted by Mukherjee, however, does not show the date of the issue of the publication or the name of the paper.