In the line of Cardus

"Cricket writing," wrote the late NS Ramaswami, "began as an elegant trifling, became a literary occupation and has now degenerated into an acrimonious industry." This, from an essay on Neville Cardus (whom Ramaswami venerated, to the extent of assuming the pen name "Cardusian" for a newspaper column he wrote), might read excessively cynical today, four decades later, but Ramaswami's slot in the middle phase of that evolution is assured.

It would be limiting to describe Ramaswami (or NSR as he was popularly known) as a cricket writer. He was a historian, social commentator, and an expert on temple architecture, and wrote books on each of these subjects. This is his centenary year; he was 79 when he died in February 1987.

By reputation and repetition it is KN Prabhu who is considered the leading Indian cricket writer, but NSR had a more felicitous turn of phrase and a wider reading to dip into. What he lacked was what some modern writers consider more important than style or flair - a harsh line in criticism. His writing was suggestive rather than brazen, his criticism based on larger principles rather than on passing trends.

When he toured Pakistan with the Indian team in 1978, he was more keen on visiting Mohenjo-daro, the site of the Indus Valley civilisation than on chasing Kerry Packer's men who were dangling money before the players. He was a traditionalist and had strong views on that revolution, however.

Yet in the television age he would still have been widely read. Matches revealed character, and he captured this joyously, even impishly, delighting in the unusual and shining a light on the apparently ordinary.

Of the batting of Jack Iverson, the mystery spinner, a tailender to the manner born, he wrote: "Iverson had none of the graces of a Hammond or a Hutton. But it is an error in aesthetics, as Browning has demonstrated, that only the pretty or the beautiful is style. Ugliness, if it is commanding and can impose itself on the imagination is no less to be prized."

NSR was prolific. From Porbandar to Wadekar is well researched and well written, but ultimately less than satisfying for the stories not told. Indian Willow, Winter of Content and Indian Cricket are excellent reads, but like a batsman without a defining innings, NSR was a writer without a defining cricket book.

He was a great character, though. He was at different times assistant editor with both of Chennai's leading newspapers, the Hindu and the Indian Express. By the time I joined the latter institution, he was retired and already in his seventies, yet he made his way to the office every Friday with his weekly column on cricket, "Different Strokes" - this one under his own name and with his photograph. He was a small man, with dancing eyes, and he spent the first few minutes on entering the office wiping the Chennai sweat off his brow.

A former colleague, the Hindu's hockey writer S Thyagarajan, told me of the time NSR once walked 40 kilometres to Kancheepuram. "He loved to read Pride and Prejudice every year," Thyagarajan said, trying to capture the many threads that made up the man. "He was also a keen chess player and spoke French fluently."

NSR's column as Cardusian, "In the Pavilion", on Chennai's league cricket, played on matting wickets in often primitive conditions, was rich in human drama and humour. Sometimes umpires did not turn up for matches and the two sides would appoint one reserve player each for the job. Of one dismissal in a game between two third-division teams, NSR wrote that "the batsman left the ground slowly and unwillingly. At least, I thought he did. It could have been his normal method of progression...

"... the few spectators were hoping that if further wickets fell, they would be bowled or caught without appeal. This did not happen. The boys (spectators) got above themselves and were hooting at every opportunity. There is something to be said for Herod (the reader will, of course, understand this is a mild joke)."

NSR ended his essay on Cardus quoted above with the hope that "world cricket will recover its health. When it does it will cherish all the more the memory of the writer who through his writings made cricket a way of life." It applies equally to "Cardusian" too.