My son Rahul often asks me, “ Was it always Tendulkar”? And I tell him no- there was someone before that, someone who made my heart thump and gave me sleepless nights and endless joy- and, of course, searing pain for what is sporting love without the despair of a thousand deaths when your hero fails. And Vishwanath failed more than most, for a metronome he was not- he was the quintessential mercurial stylist, whose bat flashed like a sword and led often to his untimely demise.

The dulcet toned Dicky Rutnagar once intoned,” If Gavaskar is the artisan of the Indian innings, then Vishwanath is the artist.”

For me, GR Vishwanath will always be defined by the 1974-75 home series against the Clive Lloyd led West Indies. The first test was played at the new Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore and it was the first game of cricket I was seeing live. I was all of eight years old and Vishy made a couple of twenties but the memory there was of Alwyn Kallicharan’s sublime hundred. Sunil Gavaskar got injured which means that he missed the next three tests. This meant that the weight of making runs fell entirely on the slight shoulders of the diminutive Vishy.

The second test at Delhi was a rout and we went into Calcutta 0-2 down. It needed something special and Vishy made 139 and 52 and India won easily, the spinners for once having enough runs to bowl with. The Madras Test that followed is the stuff of folklore. Chepauk could be fast and bouncy and Andy Roberts was an irresistible force, bowling at tremendous pace and with real hostility. Fire had to be met with fire. Legend has it that on the previous evening, Vishwanath imbibed a little more beer than he strictly should have and had to be helped into bed. Those were the days of no curfew and a very relaxed attitude to training, when a yo yo was just a child’s toy. He must have had a sore head when he walked out into the blazing sun of Chepauk after two early wickets.

I listened to the whole thing on my Grundig transistor radio as Vishy cut, drove and flicked his way to 97 not out as India folded for 190. Lloyd had four slips, a gully and short leg throughout so all the shots had value. Vishwanath struck an incredible 21 fours in that 97. When the ninth wicket fell, BS Chandrasekhar walked in. The last wicket produced 21 runs and Chandra made none of them. When he was finally out leaving Vishy stranded three short of a hundred, Tony Cozier said that it was hard to see who was more crestfallen- Chandra or the great man. Knowing Vishy, he would have been the one consoling Chandra, telling him that it didn’t matter!

There are several innings after that that I remember- the double hundred against England, the terrific 145 against Pakistan at Faisalabad on our first tour there in almost three decades and the superlative match winning hundred against Australia at Melbourne, that test more remembered for Gavaskar trying to take the team off after he got a poor decision and Kapil Dev’s great spell that knocked over Australia for 81 on the last day. Lillee was so impressed by that innings that he said about Vishy,” You bowl him your quickest one and he has time to yawn and still cut you for four!”

Yes- the cut- square, late or any which way- was what defined this pint sized genius. Kirmani once said that he would literally cut spinners out of the keepers gloves, so late was his late cut. He was peerless square of the wicket and pace never bothered him- when in his pomp, the fastest bowlers disappeared with even greater pace to the point boundary. His love of the amber fluid and his genteel nature only endeared him more to us. It was a gentler time and he was a perfect counter point to his hard nosed brother in law, Sunil Gavaskar, who was the ultimate professional. Somehow they both would never score heavily together and I used to hope for Sunny to fall cheaply so that my favourite could get runs. After all, I reasoned, Gavaskar would definitely end up making many more hundreds, so he could afford the odd failure!

Vishy was captain only once, for the Golden Jubilee Test against England. On a spicy track, England were struggling when ther keeper Taylor got a poor decision. True to nature, Vishy called him back to continue batting- a turning point, as he and Botham had a large partnership and batted us out of the game. But that didn’t matter to Viswanath- it was after all a game and what was a game if it wasn’t played in the right spirit?

Vishy made “only” 14 Test hundreds- by today’s standards, perhaps a modest return for an indubitably great player. But we don’t care how many paintings Michelangelo did, only that he lit up the Sistine chapel with his art. In the same way it isn’t the number of runs Vishy made but the manner in which he made them, with his quicksilver feet and strong wrists, his floppy white hat and his shy smile- that is what I shall remember. And because every run was heard on the radio and not seen on television, it is somehow more vivid in the corners of my mind. After 1989, Sachin Tendulkar owned my life but the heart of this impressionable cricket obsessed 8 year old boy was Vishy’s. After all, who can forget their first love.....