Test cricketer who went missing forever!

One of India’s double-international in sports was Cota Ramaswami from Chennai. Prosperous, articulate, confident, Cota Ramaswami was an amateur sportsman in the most authentic sense of the term. For him sport was certainly not the first priority.

 

Educated at Cambridge University, on his return accepted a highly responsible post in the Madras Agricultural Services. In the midst of his various activities Ramaswamy found the time to lay bare his outstanding sporting qualities.

 

At Cambridge University he was denied a chance even to appear in the cricket trials!

Promptly the Telegu-speaking Cota switched allegiance to tennis and volleyed his way to a Cambridge ‘Tennis-Blue' in the early 1920s. A decade later he was representing India in Davis Cup encounters.

 

Cota Ramaswami was a gifted timer of the ball. In his youth, the graceful left hander would use all his propensities for stroke-play with gay abandon. A delightful mix of academics and sports, his was a commanding figure for the big occasion.

 

When selected to play for Madras Presidency in 1935-36 against Ryder's Australians, Ramaswami was nearly 40, and well past his prime. But the gifts of timing and application were still very much in evidence. He scored 48 not out and 82 with utmost ease and utter disdain.

 

Then within months the India team for the tour of England was announced. Finding his name in the team, Ramaswami was said to have remarked that he “was chosen for reasons other than cricket”!

 

Actually he was being far too modest and unnecessarily self-critical. Probably he said so because he knew that his salad days were behind him and that his physical condition did not measure up to his own high ideals.

 

The 40-plus man made his debut at Old Trafford with 40 and 60. Followed with 29 and unbeaten 41 at Oval. Thus with an average of 56.66 his debut and swansong series coincided. Rejected by Cambridge University cricket team, the sophisticated old man quietly showed England Test team his actual worth as a batter.

 

Ramaswami was the most respected personality in the Indian team on that dreadful tour of England in 1936. His impeccable bearing, his academic credentials, his manner of speech and conduct earned the admiration of his team mates. He was the man who was the perpetual mediator between the warring groups.

 

When the impetuous youngster Lala Amarnath was being sent back from UK in 1936 on disciplinary grounds by captain Vizzy and manager Brittain-Jones, it was the sensible Cota Ramaswamy who pleaded with the administration to keep the talented Lala Amarnath back with a caution. That matured view was not kept, but frowned upon.

 

 One fine morning in 1990 at Chennai the 94-year old Cota Ramaswamy – double international in tennis and cricket – tottered out of his house and drifted away into the unknown…his body was never found!