Willow tales of another kind

Neither a borrower nor a lender berdquo This obviously doesnrsquot hold good for things other than money Further manifestation of this came through when Indiarsquos latest T20I centurion Abhishek Sharma revealed that he had used teammate Shubman Gillrsquos bat to crack a century against Zimbabwe at Harare on SundayIndian cricket is littered with instances of sparkling performances made possible with borrowed gear especially bats across eras The earliest example I stumbled upon was 1964 when prolific domestic batsman Vijay Bhosale returned from his English league commitments with a GrayNicolls long handle bat which he lent to his Maharashtra teammate Chandu BordeBy then Borde had travelled the world and was an established player in MAK Pataudirsquos Indian team Bhosale told me on Wednesday from New Zealand that Borde used his bat in the second Test against Australia at Mumbai where his invaluable 30 not out helped India clinch the Test against Bob Simpsonrsquos team in thrilling fashionThe twowicket victory caused big celebrations and in the melee Borde lost the bat The Brabourne Stadium Test was Pataudirsquos first win as captain of India Nawab as he was called by some of his teammates was not fussy over his bats In fact he admitted to Ian Chappell during the 196768 series in Australia that he hadnrsquot brought along a bat for the fourTest series in which India were whitewashed The most memorable of the four Tests for India was the second Test at Melbourne where Pataudi batted with one fit leg for scores of 75 and 85 This attracted admiration from Sir Donald BradmanChappell revealed at a function in Mumbai in 2011 that each time Pataudi walked out to bat in that rainaffected Test he took with him the bat closest to the dressing room door So not only did Pataudi play with one eye and one leg he also did so with a borrowed bat against a topclass Australian attackKarsan Ghavri who made his Test debut under the captaincy of Pataudi against the West Indies in 197475 recalled how his Mumbai captain Sunil Gavaskar lent him his bat in the 197677 Ranji Trophy final against Delhi in the CapitalGhavri scored 48 in 73 minutes with three fours and the same number of maximums in Mumbairsquos first innings total of 317 He was not done with the bat In the second innings in response to Delhirsquos 291 Ghavri stayed unbeaten on a topscore of 70 which included five fours and four sixes ldquoGhavri literally hit Bedi off his length when he took four sixes off the Delhi captain in a hectic unbeaten knock Ghavrirsquos knock really tilted the scales and it was a splendid display of calculated aggressionrdquo Sportsweek magazine reported Gavaskar in a piece for the same magazine knew what he was talking about when he wrote ldquoHe Ghavri will pick up any bat and play There was no wild slogging he showed great judgment in choosing the right ones to beltrdquo If there was a playerofthefinal award the flamboyant allrounder would have got it because he also claimed eight wickets in the matchSandeep Patil who was in the reserves for that 197677 final told me earlier this week that Kapil Dev and Rajesh Chouhan who he led at Madhya Pradesh used his bats Patil also recalled batting with Chandrakant Panditrsquos blade borrowed from the yettobecapped wicketkeeperbatsman before the 1984 Asia Cup Patil smashed the Pakistani bowling around and remembered clubbing Sarfaraz Nawaz for a six towards the end of the India innings on April 13 when India claimed the Cup His 43 off 50 balls 5x4 1x6 helped India score 1884 which turned out to be beyond the reach of Zaheer Abbasrsquos side at SharjahMore recently when Mumbairsquos Tushar Deshpande became only the second player to score a Ranji Trophy century as a No 11 batsman Tamil Nadursquos Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan came up with a revelationSivaramakrishnan the first to do so against Delhi in 2001 said he smashed his century with a bat which once belonged to Sachin Tendulkar Apparently the bat was presented by the batting icon to his India teammate Sadagoppan Ramesh whose brother Mahesh lent it to Sivaramakrishnan during the matchThere are similar instances in local cricket too Singaporebased former Podar College batsman Shailendra Kirtikar told me on Wednesday how he agreed to lend his GrayNicolls Double Scoop bat to teammate Shishir Hattangadi for Podarrsquos senior intercollegiate final against Jhunjhunwala at the Wankhede Stadium in 1978 ldquoHe was batting superbly as an opener and I walked in with one of the college bats I clearly remember Shishir offering to switch bats I knew how settled he was and asked him to continue I got out early and Shishir went on to score a triple centuryrdquo Kirtikar revealedHattangadi hasnrsquot forgotten that gesture and knockJudging by the success cricketers have enjoyed over the years with borrowed bats a book on cricketing guidelines could say ldquoA borrower or lender one can berdquomiddayrsquos group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stanceHe tweets ClaytonMurzello Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper