Chetan Chauhan Wasn't a Cricketing 'Superstar', But There's Much He Should Be Remembered For

Statistics can never capture the essence of cricketers like Chetan Chauhan, who passed away earlier this week due to health complications caused by COVID-19. As a regular opening batsman for India, he played 40 test matches averaging 31.57 runs and scored 16 half centuries. Chauhan and Sunil Gavaskar were a formidable opening pair for a considerable period. Together they scored 3,000 runs at an average of 53.75, in an era when fast bowling was perhaps at its very best.

The batsman’s finest hour was undoubtedly the 1981 tour of Australia, when India managed to draw the series, and Chauhan’s contributions were key to countering the fast bowling of Dennis Lillee and Lenny Pascoe. He scored a gutsy 97 in the second test at Adelaide to help secure a draw. He followed it up with an equally determined 85 in the next test in Melbourne, to set up some kind of a total for India. Kapil Dev then wreaked havoc with the ball, claiming 5-28, as Australia collapsed for 83 chasing 143.

Numerous are the occasions when Chauhan provided a solid start to the Indian innings. Not least among them was his 80 at the Oval in 1979. Gavaskar and he put on 213 for the first wicket against the legendary English bowling pair of Bob Willis and Ian Botham. With their  heroic efforts, India almost chased down 438 runs in the fourth innings of the match. Gavaskar scored a memorable 221, but the game was eventually drawn with the Indian batting collapsing after he got out. Indian finished at 429/9, just 9 runs short of the target.

Despite these invaluable efforts, Chauhan may, unfortunately, end up being  remembered for never scoring a century in test cricket. He did come close on multiple occasions, with five scores in the 80s and two in the 90s.

Also read: A Dream Indian Cricket Team Made Up of Only Test Match Players

There is an endearing quality to Chauhan’s statistics. They highlight a reasonable consistency (roughly, he passed 50 once every four innings), while also highlighting his limitations. They signify Chauhan’s determination, while gently (and cruelly) reminding one that it takes so much more than stoicism to truly succeed.

A deeper examination will show that 13 of his 50s came when India drew or won a test match and India only lost nine of his 40 test matches, indicating that his runs were critical. Playing at a time when the Indian batting, save Gavaskar, was prone to imploding, Chauhan’s contributions seem even more important.

Supplying the tragic element to his consistency, these figures only serve to make Chauhan more endearing. In all those matches he helped save or win, he never took centre stage. His scores are emblematic of the ‘minor’ contribution which goes somewhat unnoticed, especially as the years pass. Not unlike a stagehand who tosses the crucial prop to the actor before the latter recites an iconic monologue, his efforts lend themselves more to forgetting than memory.

Chetan Chauhan. Photo: ICC

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In an era when India is blessed with genuinely quick bowlers in Jasprit Bumrah, Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Shami, and destructive batsmen such as Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and K.L. Rahul, the quietness of effort is not what stands out. The images these names evoke are of extravagant passion and pride. There is no minority element to their contribution. Their performances seem to leave a mark that is unlikely to be forgotten.

One might even say that their personalities are reflective of the country today at large – a penchant for wearing one’s pride on one’s sleeve. And again, much like the country, there is a forgetfulness about the endless little contributions that made it possible to build such pride and extravagance.

Kohli, in a post-match talk last year, gave ample evidence of this. He essentially claimed that the Indian team’s desire for winning and being a world-beating side only began under Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy at the start of millennium.

Gavaskar, rightly, took offence to this, pointing out how the Indian team of the 1970s and ’80s won and performed admirably too. It is precisely this sort of forgetting that ignores what batsmen like Chauhan meant for the Indian team and its ability to compete abroad.

More often than not, his runs were necessary just to salvage a draw, so that the team could walk away with its head unbowed. On rare occasions like at the Oval in 1979, or inMelbourne in 1981, the thought of converting the draw or a likely loss to a win, was only entertained because batsmen like him played well above their capacity. Popular history may not remember them for it, but it certainly remembers the events.

At the end of the fourth day’s play of the Oval match, with India at 76 for no loss, the English newspaper Daily Mirror teased a potential chase and wrote, “[G]avaskar, a superbly combative cricketer, with 19 test hundreds to his credit, scored 42 while Chauhan, a trier who may prove better than he looks, scored 32.” Chauhan was better than he looked. He had the ability to do enough at the right time, so that a hope could be ignited.

For all its flamboyance, ‘talent’ and the hunger for winning that they supposedly inherited from Ganguly’s team, the current Indian batting line-up has shown little ballast facing tough oppositions abroad. It has repeatedly squandered opportunities created by arguably the country’s best ever bowling attack.

This is not to disparage the current team, and go on a nostalgic trip of a time when I was not even born. The current team has great value. For one thing, there is an expectation that it will win wherever it goes, that the teams Chauhan was a part of never really had. However, it is precisely those little contributions from the past that have built up the belief that we can win today, with batting and bowling that is far more capable.

Also read: Mahendra Singh Dhoni – The Last Superstar of His Kind

In a tribute to Chauhan, Gavaskar recalls an anecdote about when the batsman bravely faced a fiery spell from Aussie quick Jeff Thomson. After edging a ball that he tried to cut over the slips for four, Chauhan broke into a laughter, in reaction to his teammates in the dressing room guffawing at the batsman’s propensity to cut. Gavaskar states that the joke was that Chauhan would cut any ball bowled short, and even if he didn’t middle it, the edge would take the ball to the boundary. The reaction riled up Thomson who subsequently bowled as fast as he could. He even managed to break one of Chauhan’s fingers, but the batsman courageously continued to play. That courage still lingers in today’s Indian batsmen who are unawed by pace, and pull and cut with elegance and ease.

Chauhan’s legacy also goes beyond his dogged batting. In a separate piece, Gavaskar notes that Chauhan was instrumental in getting tax exemption on players’ match fees, not just for cricketers but all sportsmen. In those days sportsmen did not make the sort of exorbitant amounts that they do today. They often also had to finance their equipment, travel and coaches. The financial security provided to the players through these exemptions undoubtedly meant that they could focus more on their cricket, and worry less about how to make ends meet. Can one quantify the runs scored and wickets taken by all those unburdened players?

Chauhan’s passing should be taken as a reminder that India did not produce its superstars out of thin air. It did so because players much less supported and skilful than the current lot displayed pluck, and built belief and infrastructure, brick by brick. Chauhan may not have a hundred, but forgetting his ‘minor’ contributions would mean forgetting the men who produced the highlights of India’s cricketing history.

True to his batting nature, Chauhan found a way to be second fiddle even in his passing. He died the same weekend that M.S. Dhoni retired from international cricket. The latter, deservedly, will have superlatives showered upon him. However, Chauhan did just enough for Indian cricket that a few should be saved for him.

Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal is a doctoral student in film history at St Andrews University.