Satyajit Ray is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers to grace the face of the Earth. A music composer, lyricist, art director, calligrapher, creative writer, film critic and graphic designer, he has done everything in the discipline of creative and cultural expressions. But not many are aware of his connections with the gentlemen’s game.
Ray represented Calcutta University as a slow spinner and he passed these attributes to his character Feluda which incidentally completes its 50 years today. These elements are poignantly chronicled in Ray’s first full-length novel, Badshahi Angti.
In Khelowar Tarinikhuro, the lead character Tarinikhuro obtains an old Ranji bat, which magically boosts his skills to superhuman levels. In his movie Kanchenjunga, Indranath recites his cricketing fables to Ashok, when he scored 96 runs against a British leg-spinner named Griggs. “I never liked football, it hurts my aesthetic sense. But look at cricket: it has polish, it has elegance,” Ray described the scene after the game.
In another novel Aranyer Dinratri too, Ray doesn’t shy away from cricket references and establishes the scene with a game scene.
Ray’s connections with cricket run deep. His uncle Sarada Ranjan was the founder of Dacca College Cricket Club and Town Club in Calcutta. He also compiled a law book on the game in Bengali. His father Sukumar Ray, an accomplished club cricketer, was the first author to introduce the game in his writings. In Bombagorer Raja, he wrote the story of a pishi (aunt in Bengali) play cricket with the King using a pumpkin.
