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VOL. XXIV NO. 1, April 16-30, 2014
A.F. Wensley and other coaches
(by V. Ramnarayan)

Albert Frederick Wensley.

The hiring of foreign coaches by India and other cricket playing countries has been the subject of much debate in the last decade or so, but English and other coaches from abroad have done duty in India, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies at the first class and other levels of domestic cricket for well over fifty years.

Albert Frederick Wensley (1898-1970), a veteran Sussex all-rounder, was among the earliest to coach in India, after he came to assist Nawanagar in the Ranji Trophy in the 1936-37 season. He played a stellar role in Nawanagar’s title triumph that season, with eight wickets in the final against Bengal. He also played an equally crucial role scoring 67 in the second innings of the final against Hyderabad next year, which Nawanagar lost by one wicket, with Hyderabad succeeding in a thrilling 310-run chase. Eddie Aibara, another coach of repute post-retirement, made an unbeaten 137 for Hyderabad. Wensley took 2 for 38 and 1 for 48 in the match. Amar Singh and Vinoo Mankad were among his Nawanagar teammates in what were perhaps the sunrise years of professional cricket in India.

Bert Wensley was the Sussex professional from 1922 to 1936, taking 1,135 wickets and scoring 10,735 runs. He achieved the cricketer’s double in 1929, scoring 1,057 runs and dismissing 113 batsmen. In each of four other years he took 100 wickets and performed the hat-trick against Middlesex at Lord’s in 1935. As a professional in New Zealand, he returned the best bowling analysis of his career with nine Otago wickets for 36 for Auckland in 1929-30.

The highest of his five centuries in county cricket was his 140 against Glamorgan. Three times he completed 1,000 runs in a summer for the county. Strong in driving and pulling, he hit 120 in 110 minutes against Derbyshire at Horsham in 1930, when he and H.W. Parks added 178 for the ninth wicket, a Sussex record. A reliable close-in fieldsman, he twice held five catches in an innings and in the second Warwickshire innings at Edgbaston in 1932 he had a hand in the dismissal of nine of the ten batsmen, returning bowling figures of six wickets for 73 runs. This was the player who came out to coach in Madras in the 1940s.

Organised coaching in Madras was first arranged in the BS Nets, a facility the Madras Cricket Association established in 1944 in memory of B. Subramaniam, Buchi Babu’s faithful lieutenant. The much loved ‘Pattu”, V. Pattabhiraman, and the respected cricket writer S.K. Gurunathan were the two-member committee entrusted with the task.

Very soon, BS Nets, which opened at the northeastern corner of Chepauk, and later expanded to include such branches as the Bhat Nets at MUC, became the hub of official coaching activity in the city. Wensley was imported by the Madras Cricket Association largely through the efforts of Pattu, and he was instrumental in the development along proper lines of many a promising Madras cricketer.

Wensley made quite a few trips to Madras, even into the 1950s, when many young cricketers enjoyed his benevolent guidance.

A direct beneficiary of Wensley’s coaching skills was A.G. Ram Singh, who, first assisted him and, in time, became a much-respected coach himself. In turn, Ram Singh was assisted by such devoted coaches as K.S. Kannan and N.J. Venkatesan, who served Tamil Nadu cricket very well for years.

Another veteran coach to distinguish himself was S.E. Audhi Chetty, while the much younger P.K. Dharmalingam was a fixture in official TNCA coaching efforts for many years. Dharma, in addition to coaching State teams at various levels, also had the distinction of assisting in coaching camps for the Indian team, besides being a pioneer in coaching women cricketers.

To go back to ‘MCA’ days, the BCCI-constituted Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur scheme enabled the association to avail itself of the services of many coaches under the scheme. Some of them were Ram Singh, Hemu Adhikari, C.K. Nayudu, and M. Rehmat Baig. There were a few English coaches as well, coming to India during their winter to run short camps. Frank Tyson, Eddie Paynter and Mike Goodwin were some of the more prominent imports. Goodwin and T.S. Worthington, a very popular figure in the early 1960s, coached in Madras.

An unforgettable foreign coach was the West Indies fast bowler Roy Gilchrist who was in Madras in the 1960s under a special dispensation of the Board, coaching our young fast bowling prospects and also playing for South Zone in the Duleep Trophy. Known for his unorthodox, even eccentric ways, Gilchrist was a tough taskmaster, and sure enough some of the fast bowlers in his camp started playing truant after the first few days of his camp. Some of us were witness to the spectacular sight of Gilchrist chasing a recalcitrant young paceman on Mount Road when he caught him trying to slip away, while watching a cricket match at the Government Arts College.

Syed Mushtaq Ali, the most exciting Indian batsman of the pre-War era, Ramnath Kenny and Joe Kamath were some of the coaches from other States to do duty in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu has also been an important contributor of coaches to the National and Zonal Cricket Academies of the BCCI. An impressive number of Tamil Nadu coaches have qualified as Level I, II and III coaches. Today, every district of the TNCA has a coaching programme run by qualified coaches.

The MRF Pace Foundation was started by the tyre major MRF Limited two decades ago. The Foundation’s coaching programme to unearth and train fast bowlers was spearheaded by Australian fast bowling guru Dennis Lillee, assisted by Tamil Nadu and India fast bowler T.A. Sekar. Today, Glen McGrath and M. Senthilnathan have taken Lillee’s and Sekar’s places.

Another premier coaching establishment of Madras was the MAC Foundation’s Spin Academy, supported by the AC Muthiah-led MAC group of companies. The first spin bowler of calibre to head the academy was V.V. Kumar.

Private enterprise has also been responsible for a veritable boom in coaching activity in Chennai, with coaching schools and clinics galore being established. There is certainly no dearth of coaches and coaching in Tamil Nadu, though the skeptics may ask to what effect, going by the poor performance of the State team in recent years!

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In this issue

An insensitivity everywhere
Madras Landmarks
Of 'official' slums and 'unofficial' ones
Save Our Heritage
Seeing Scenes in Perspective
The Multi faceted Edward Balfour
The Principal from the Punjab
A.F.Wensley and other Coaches

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Short 'N' Snappy
Dates for Your Diary
Readers Write
Quizzin' With Ram'nan
Madras Eye

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