Amiss reminisces about how Bedi helped him tackle spin

Dennis Amiss begins with an apology.

“I have a funeral to attend, so I am afraid I have to leave at 11 o’clock,” he says at the picturesque Edgbaston Golf Club in Birmingham on a slightly windy, but glorious early English summer morning.

It is only 10. There is plenty of time, then.

Some 45 minutes and a nice cup of English tea later, time isn’t enough, actually. The 83-year-old has so much to tell. So many fascinating tales and insights into cricket.

After all, he is the first batter to score an ODI hundred. He is the first batter to wear a helmet. He was part of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket that revolutionised cricket. He scored double hundreds against ferocious fast bowlers, got lessons from Bishan Singh Bedi on playing spin, and was an England selector.

Bedi helped him out on England’s tour of India in 1972-73. “It happened on our first tour with Tony Lewis as captain and you had the four great spinners — Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan — and the wickets turned and we had not come across pitches like that against such great bowlers,” Amiss, who scored 3612 runs from 50 Tests with 11 hundreds and as many fifties, tells The Hindu. “And we were going to Pakistan after the Indian tour. I was left out for the last Test.”

Bedi came up to him at Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium, the venue of the last Test. “Why were you not batting well, he asked me,” recalls Amiss. “At the beginning of the season, we thought you would be the main batter. And I said, ‘Well, you know, you bowl well at me and you have got me out. The only thing is I can’t practice because the nets are in the middle’.”

Bedi asked Amiss to leave it to him. “I will tell you what to do,” says Amiss. “He came back later and said, ‘Pras, Venkat, and I will bowl at you, but not Chandrasekhar.’ It was very kind of Bish, but I think that he was chastised for that.”

How did he get the idea of wearing a helmet while batting?

“At Packer’s World Series, there were 16 bowlers who could all bowl at 90 miles an hour and I was at a shop while talking to Tony Greig,” says Amiss. “There were motorcycle helmets which were adapted for cricket. Tony told me that Packer approved the idea”.