File photo of former Indian captain and legendary spinner Bishan Singh Bedi.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Murali Kartik remembers the question, and the answer, from Bishan Singh Bedi, on his first day with the legendary spinner. “Who is a spinner?” Bedi asked. He gave the answer himself: “A spinner is somebody who spins the ball.”
Kartik, a talented left-arm spinner who probably deserved to play more than the eight Tests or 37 ODIs that he played for India, told The Hindu that he would not have become a left spinner at all if not for Bedi.
“I must have done a lot of good deeds to get him as my guru” said Kartik of the Bedi, who passed away on Monday. “I am what I am because of all that time he spent with me, making a non-left arm spinner into a left-arm spinner. I was a medium-pacer before I met him. Shirdi Sai Bab gave up his life on a Dashami and my guru gave up his mortal remains on a Navami and created on a Dashami.”
He said everything he learnt about left-arm spin, he learned from him. “When Wisden asked me to write on the occasion of his induction into the Hall of Fame, I was more than humbled,” he said. “He was straightforward. He called a spade a spade, and that is another thing I have learnt from my guru.”