By Bhisham Ojha
When Kanhai came out to bat there was that sudden, expectant, almost fearful, silence that tells you that you are in the presence of some extraordinary phenomenon… – Ian McDonald.
In the early 1970’s when I was at primary school in Guyana, there was a story going around about a great West Indian cricketer. It was a tall tale, an anecdote intended for juvenile consumption, it told of Rohan Kanhai batting at the Bourda cricket ground in Georgetown and how he hit a ball to Berbice, some sixty miles away. There was a non-glamorous and straight version of this event; Rohan launched a ball over the Regent Road side-screen, and it landed in the tray of a passing lorry, which went all the way to Berbice. However, to the enthralled youths of that era, some of us blessed with naivety, the fabled version was preferable, to them Kanhai was indeed capable of such superhuman feats.