Roger Binny’s all-round legacy gets its due at BCCI Awards

India all-rounder Roger Binny during India’s victorious 1983 World Cup campaign in England. PIC/GETTY IMAGES

Another edition of the BCCI Awards is over and done with. Going by social media posts from the television rights holders (the BCCI no longer invites the media) it's getting grander by the year.

This year, Rahul Dravid was conferred the CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement award along with 1983 World Cup-winning team member Roger Binny. Mithali Raj earned a lifetime honour in the women's section.

A lot is known about the feats of Dravid and Mithali Raj, but Binny's sporting career is less publicised. How many of us know that the handsome Anglo-Indian chose cricket over hockey and athletics? In the early 1970s, he broke the javelin record with 45.80 metres; the difference between the former record holder and Binny being 5.50 metres at the All India Open Athletic Meet in Coimbatore. He also excelled in discus throw. On the hockey field, he was, according to Sportsweek magazine's (June 2, 1974) Spotlight on Youth column, "a very reliable and almost unbeatable right-back". He's a keen golfer as well.

On Sunday night, Binny acknowledged his coaches, two of whom being Keki Tarapore (who also coached fellow Lifetime awardee Rahul Dravid) and Hemu Adhikari, whose National camps Binny was a part of.

When Binny (born 1955) was Indian Cricket 1983 annual's Cricketers of the Year, PR Viswanathan, the writer of Binny's profile, spoke about his subject's presence at Adhikari's 1974 camp in Bangalore being some sort of a breakthrough. His Ranji Trophy debut for Karnataka followed.

Two seasons later, Binny lit up the first day of the 1977-78 Ranji Trophy season with a hundred against Kerala at Chikmagalur. He went on to score an unbeaten 211 in a record first-wicket partnership of 451 with Sanjay Desai, who carved 218 not out with regulars like EAS Prasanna, BS Chandrasekhar, GR Vishwanath, Brijesh Patel, and Syed Kirmani on India duty in Australia. When the stars returned, they helped Karnataka bag the national championships for the second time in five seasons with Binny opening the batting and bowling.

In November 1979, he made his Test debut against Pakistan in his hometown of Bangalore, coming on first change after Kapil Dev and Karsan Ghavri in five of the six Tests he played in that series. In the Mumbai Test, his three strikes that sent back Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, and Javed Miandad reduced Pakistan to 53-3. They were all out 120 runs later and eventually succumbed to their first loss of the series.

Binny was dropped from the Test team after the twin tours to Australia and New Zealand in 1980-81 but played four ODIs before the 1983 World Cup, where he topped the wicket-takers chart with 18 scalps.

Australia's Trevor Chappell who took a hundred off India at Nottingham, told me on Wednesday: "Roger wasn't overly quick, but had enough pace. He swung away, mostly from right handers and had good control of his line and length. Nottingham was a very good batting wicket, one of the bigger outfields in England, but also a fast outfield. Fortunately for me, Roger didn't hold onto the return catch I hit him."

Binny gave a good account of himself in the 1985 World Championship of Cricket in Australia which he began with a four-wicket return against Pakistan. On March 3, we woke up to television footage of him disrupting the furniture of left-handers Graeme Wood and Border before he bowled No. 11 Terry Alderman as well. He was blue over missing the final against Pakistan.

Across 1986 and 1987, Binny helped himself to his Test career's two fifers. The first one (5-40) was at Leeds where India won; the second, 6-56 in the drawn Calcutta Test vs Pakistan. "On the afternoon of the third day, 80,000 addicts had elbowed their way through the turnstiles (a figure of speech - there are no turnstiles at the Eden Gardens!) but now they were too bored to boo. Spectacularly, there was electricity in the air once more," wrote David McMahon in Sportsworld magazine, referring to the dismissals of Miandad, Salim Malik, Imran Khan, and Wasim Akram.

Of his 12 wickets in three Tests on the 1986 England tour, Wisden said that Binny, "put his back into his work more as the tour progressed and gained an extra half yard of pace without any loss of accuracy. He saved his best for the Test matches, as indeed he seemed to save his best catches for his own bowling."

He fancied his chances for the 1989 tour of the West Indies and hit out in an interview with Sportsworld when he didn't make it. "I'm sure that the whole selection was changed at the last minute. On the morning of the selection I knew I was making the trip. Everybody was cocksure. Suddenly within half an hour I knew I was going to stay back," he said.

Apart from giving it his all on the field, Binny has been a successful U-19 World Cup coach, a selector, and president of the BCCI. That the establishment decided to honour him the other night was a nice way of saying thank you.

mid-day's Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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