In this week’s edition of In Search of West Indies Cricket, Roger Seymour, in the first of two parts, looks at the early star-crossed life of cricket’s first Superstar.
It was a chance remark heard en passant which got me thinking about the Nawab of Pataudi Jr. Someone was raving about some T20 player being a superstar, a precursory glance revealed the face of one who had just become eligible to vote. I guessed he hadn’t heard about Garry, Viv or the Nawab.
The Nawab of Pataudi Jr. could well have been a character in one of M. M. Kaye’s historical fiction novels about the British Raj in India, The Far Pavilions or Shadow of the Moon.
However, I associate him with Enid Blyton’s The Circus of Adventure. The seventh book in the Adventure series, which involves four kids Philip, Jack, Dinah, and Lucy-Ann, Kiki- Jack’s pet cockatoo, and an adult, Bill Smugs who works for some mysterious organization and is looking after the son of a friend, Gustavus ‘Gus’ Barmilevo for the holidays. The boy is actually in hiding, when suddenly one day; “Gus drew himself up to his last inch, threw back his hair once more and blurted out. ‘I am a prince!’ he said,dramatically. ‘I am the Prince Aloysius Gramondie Racemolie Torquinel of Tauri-Hessia.
……………..
”Third Test, West Indies versus India, Kensington Oval, Barbados, first day, 26th March, 1962. The two Captains descend the steps of the Pickwick pavilion and head out on to the pitch to spin the toss. Frank Worrell, the West Indian skipper flips the coin into the air, the Indian Captain calls…
…………..
To the Manor born
Mohammad Mansur Ali Khan of Pataudi was born into a life of privilege and luxury. Iftikhar Ali Khan, the Eighth Nawab of Pataudi, his father ruled over the state of Pataudi, one of 350 princely states formed by the British in India. Pataudi, with a population of 25,000 was only about the size of the English county Rutland, was located in the Punjab, in Northern India, about 30 miles south-west of Delhi.
The Pataudi heir was born in Bhopal where his maternal grandfather was the Nawab. Young Khan grew up in a 150 room white-walled palace, attended by a hundred servants, eight of whom were assigned to him. Pataudi Jr. and his three sisters were home schooled in the early years and lived a routine life of breakfast, study time, play sessions, lunch and so forth.