Obituary

[Plum]

TE Srinivasan

Flamboyant might have been a word invented for bored Domestic Cricket correspondents to describe the likes of TE, who lit up many a boring domestic match routine for lowly cricketing correspondents. His bat spoke as much as his tongue. It is the latter that is of interest to us, a generation or two later. We can speak of his 112 under pressure against North zone, but inevitably, that the bowling attack consisted of the threatening Madan Lal would tend to obscure that discussion.
His tongue, On the other hand, produced memorable salvos.

"Tell Lillee that TE is here" - that is what it is said to have conjured up when he landed in Australia for a tour!
One doesnt know what happened in the tour but one sure salutes a domestic batsman with the guts to say that.

"That's not how you play it, Sunil" - another memorable alleged advice given to the greatest Indian batsman of his times. It is alleged to have caused a rift, and become a key reason for him to be out of national call-up but what of that?

Another memorable quote that TE spawned allegedly is a ripper:

"He didnt get much chances for the national team because they are low caste or something" - Sunny's said to have remarked when a county stalwart expressed wonder to him that such a talented batsman didnt play for India often. The "they" here allegedly is how he bunched South Indians together as a group.

TE fought cancer bravely as former Ranji Cricketer V Ramnarayanan, brother of V Sivaramakrishnan, wrote poignantly in his blog. Ramnarayanan played for Hyderabad mostly against TE's and Sivaramakrishnan's Tamilnadu.

All these are from my memory of reading THE HINDU in the 80's and V Ramanarayanan's blog a few years back.

Just read in THE HINDU that TE succumbed finally yesterday.