Had Shastri signed the dotted line, he would have become the first Indian Test player to figure in the Sheffield Shield after all-rounder Rusi Surti, who settled in Queensland and played for them from 1968-69 to 1972-73.

Surti, whose only domestic game in India during his Queensland stint was the West Zone v North Zone Duleep Trophy final in 1969-70, played the last of his 26 Tests against the Australians at Mumbai in 1969.

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On Tuesday, India-born Sydney-based cricket historian Kersi Meher-Homji enlightened me about one of Surti’s most memorable Sheffield Shield performances: “Against Western Australia in Perth in 1969, he scored 63 and took five wickets, including the hat-trick. It was the first hat-trick taken by a Queensland bowler in the Sheffield Shield.” Surti helped Queensland win that game at the WACA ground by one wicket.

Surti was known as a poor man’s Garry Sobers. The great West Indian too played Sheffield Shield cricket—for South Australia from 1961-62 to 1963-64. It is believed that the party-loving Sobers used to catch up on his lost sleep in the South Australia dressing room while his team’s openers walked out to bat. Several times, Sobers used to be woken up by Sir Donald Bradman (a key functionary of the South Australia Cricket Association then) with the words, “South Australia needs a hundred from you today.” And often Sobers went out and got that century.

Ian Chappell, who was Sobers’s teammate during his South Australia stints, told David Evans on his With The Greatest Respect podcast a story about Sobers wearing a West Indies cap when he batted for South Australia against the visiting South Africans in 1963-64. Sobers sought captain Les Favell’s permission to do so since Favell was particularly keen on players wearing their South Australian cap. Permission granted, Sobers smashed 155. Nearly three decades later, Chappell, while having a drink with the greatest living cricketer in Barbados, thought of asking him the reason for wearing that West Indies cap way back in 1963-64. And Sobers said, “Ian, at that stage, the South Africans had never seen a West Indies cap and I thought it was time they had a good long look at one.”

Sobers’s West Indies teammate Rohan Kanhai played a season for Western Australia in 1961-62. In 1976-77, Viv Richards opened the batting for Queensland, while fellow Antiguan Andy Roberts played two games for New South Wales before both returned home early to prepare for the home series against Pakistan.

Richards got hauled up by a cop for speeding in his “big car on hire” (as he described it in a 1979 book written by David Foot). The policeman recognised him and said that he’d have to book him. When Richards told him that it was his last day in Australia, the cop put away his receipt book, grinned and said, “Not much I can do then.”

Alvin Kallicharran played for Queensland the following season, with his most memorable performance being a match-impacting hundred against New South Wales at Sydney in December 1977.

A few Pakistanis enjoyed the Sheffield Shield cricket experience as well. It started with Duncan Sharpe representing South Australia in 1961-62, 1964-65 and 1965-66. Younis Ahmed, the left-handed batsman, turned out for South Australia in 1972-73 and opener Majid Khan for Queensland in 1973-74.

Imran Khan’s season with New South Wales was fulfilling in 1984-85. He helped them win the Sheffield Shield and McDonald’s Cup one-day competition, brushing aside his shin injury worries and a troubled mind caused by his mother’s cancer diagnosis at the start of the Australian season.

The season helped Imran in no small measure. In All Round View, he dwelled on the fierce competition that prevailed in the Australian domestic set up and how it was so different from the “tranquillity of the three-day” game in England.

Fellow fast bowlers like West Indians Michael Holding, Wayne Daniel, Joel Garner, Winston Davis, Patrick Patterson, NZ’s Richard Hadlee, England’s Ian Botham, Richard Ellison and Gladstone Small were also Sheffield Shield players in the 1980s.

My friend Mark Ray, who played the Sheffield Shield for New South Wales and Tasmania, remembered how young West Indian pace terror Patrick Patterson declined a spell in Tasmania’s game against the touring West Indies on a bitterly cold day in December 1984. He had dismissed Richards for 16 and forced Larry Gomes to retire hurt. He was asked to bowl again when skipper Clive Lloyd came in. He then got Lloyd for 30 as the tourists were dismissed for 184 in a drawn match at Devonport.

“Patto [Patterson] was young and inexperienced and he underestimated Australian state cricket,” Ray told me on Wednesday.

Another giant, Garner, who was part of that West Indies squad, stood out for South Australia with 55 scalps in the 1982-83 season. The late David Hookes wrote in Hookesy how Garner wanted Rodney Hogg to have the choice of ends. When captain Hookes reminded him that he was the best bowler in the world, Garner said, “Hoggy is trying to play for Australia. He is the Australian. You give him whichever end he wants—for the whole season.”

Who said fast bowlers don’t have a heart?

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello

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