K. S. Ranjitsinhji

RANJITSINHJI popularly known among cricket lovers as Ranji, was the first batsman in the history of the game to score over 3000 runs in just one season – in 1899. The intrepid cricketer repeated the feat the following year. What’s more, he was also the first batsman in the world to score 1000 runs twice during the same season – in August 1899. Earlier, in 1896, at Yorkshire he scored a century in each innings of the match on the same day. And in 1900, Ranji scored five double centuries, but narrowly missed the sixth century by only eight runs for Sussex against Kent, making this a record that stood unchallenged for 30 years until Bradman scored six double centuries on his first trip to England in 1930.
The master of the leg-glance, Ranji scored 24,696 runs in 500 innings and remained not out 62 times at an average of 56.37 runs. He notched up 72 centuries of which 14 were double centuries. Said Sir Edwin Arnold:“Ranji adopted cricket and turned it into an oriental poem of action.” Ranji has been immortalized in history as the inventor of the leg-glide, and as one of his contemporaries remarked: “He flicked lightning fours off his eyebrows and left ear”. The legendary cricket writer C. B. Fry wrote: “Not only was Ranji a beautiful driver on both sides of the wicket in the classical sense, he could drive, if he liked, hard and high just like a professional Hitler.”
In 1915, Ranji lost his right eye due to a careless shot fired by “a companion” while they were out on a shoot. But he concealed the identity of the person who shot at him.
Born on September 10, 1872 in the village of Sarodar, Ranji not only changed the entire style and technique of cricket but also authored what came to be regarded as a classic in cricket literature. This was his Jubilee Book Of Cricket which was thus reviewed by Francis Thompson: “The author has subjected everything in fielding, bowling and batting to an unprecedented process of analysis, which for the first time provides us with a textbook at all points corresponding to modern needs.”
Duleepsinhji, the nephew of Ranji, wrote: “There is no doubt that any success I have enjoyed at cricket is largely due to my uncle. He coached me and said to me: ‘If you want to play cricket I will give you every help you need.”
Ranji, like most batsman of his time, displayed a vast repertoire of strokes and this compelled C. B. fry to write: “He is more supple in his joints, especially in the wrist, than any English cricketer, and is appreciably quicker.”
Ranji died on April2, 1933 and in 1934 the Ranji Trophy was established to perpetuate the memory of this great Indian cricketer. The first match of the Ranji tournament was played in November 1934 between Mysore and Madras, and Madras won the golden Grecian-urn-shaped trophy.