The Greatest Spinner, The World Never Had

In a discussion about cricket in the present time, when we discuss the best spin bowlers across generations, we usually stumble-upon 3 names. Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, and Anil Kumble were perhaps the best spinners to grace the game in terms of impact and stats. In India alone, when we talk about our greatest spinners, we have Harbhajan Singh and Ravichandran Ashwin along with Kumble and the legendary spin quartet (Bedi, Prasanna, Chandra, and Venkataraghavan).

Subhash Gupte

Unfortunately, no millennial talks or knows a lot of Subhash Gupte, maybe because he played back in the 50s, or maybe India never gave him the respect he deserved. A little biography before diving deep. Subhash Gupte was born on 11th December 1929 in Mumbai and his full name was Subhashchandra Pandharinath Gupte. He also had a brother Baloo who played 3 tests for India. Now coming back to Gupte, he played a total of 36 test matches between 1951 and 1961 and ended with 149 wickets. He averaged 29.55 with the ball and retired with the best figures of 9/102 (1958, Kanpur), the 14th best ever bowling stat in tests. He even claimed 530 wickets in 115 First-Class matches playing for a number of teams including Trinidad. He is one of the few Subcontinent spinners who had a better bowling average playing abroad. But after achieving all of it, why don't we talk a lot about him. The greats of that generation call Gupte the best spinner they played with and against, but life was perhaps too harsh on him.

Starting with his 9/102 could have been 10/102 if Naren Tamhane hadn't dropped Lance Gibbs off his bowling. He could have been the 2nd man to claim all 10 wickets in an innings 2 years after Jim Laker achieved the feat in 1956. 3 years later, a 31/32-year-old Gupte fell into a controversy that ended his international career. Quoting Wikipedia, ""Gupte's international career ended under controversial circumstances during England's 1961–62 tour of India. During the Third Test at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, the team stayed at the Imperial Hotel, where Gupte was housed in room number 7 along with teammate A. G. Kripal Singh. During the stay, a receptionist at the hotel lodged a complaint with the India team manager against inmates of that room accusing them of calling her over after her shift finished. The pair denied the allegation, with Gupte, who was married at the time, explaining that Singh had merely called and asked for drinks to be brought up.

The matter was taken up by the authorities seriously before both were suspended from the team. Gupte later recollected that M. A. Chidambaram, the President of the BCCI during the time, did not give him a hearing in Calcutta, the venue of the Fourth Test, as promised. The hearing was eventually held in Madras where the selectors and the BCCI met to pick the squad for the tour of the Caribbean. Gupte was reprimanded by the BCCI secretary A. N. Ghosh for having not stopped Singh from making the call, to which he replied, "He is a big man. How can I stop him?". Both players were dropped from the squad for the tour and Gupte never played for India again.""

Gupte with his Wife Carol

Such a sad ending and mismanaged ending to such a promising career. After Gupte was dropped, India went on and hosted a number of tours in the coming few days and one could easily imagine what could Gupte's stats have been if this controversy was handled properly. For his later life, Gupte settled in the West Indies with his Caribbean wife Carol and passed away in June 2002 when and he and his wife were preparing to receive the Indian cricket team in Trinidad, who were on their tour of West Indies. When Carol finally met them, she told Sourav Ganguly that maybe Subhash’s spirit wanted to return to his home country along with his team.

Gupte inspired the likes of Mankad and Bedi who further inspired the next generation of some excellent spinners and made spin bowling perhaps India's greatest asset in tests.