Steve Smith in doubt for Australia's West Indies tour
LONDON, June 15 (Reuters) - Steve Smith will miss Australia's first test against the West Indies in Barbados later this month and could sit out the entire three-test series with a finger injury, captain Pat Cummins said.
Smith, one of the mainstays of the Australian team, suffered a compound dislocation of his right little finger fielding on the third day of the World Test Championship final against South Africa at Lord's on Friday, missing the rest of the match.
He was taken to hospital for x-rays but no surgery was required. However, he faces some time on the sidelines.
"I'd say first test maybe unlikely, and then go from there, but it's a bit early to tell," Cummins said after Australia's surprise defeat against a South Africa team that wrapped up their five-wicket victory on Saturday.
The 36-year-old Smith was standing far closer to the stumps than normal when he dropped South Africa captain Temba Bavuma, who had scored two runs but went on to hit 66 in a significant contribution to his team's success.
Australia begin their three-test series in the Caribbean in Bridgetown over June 25-29 and play the other two tests in Grenada and Jamaica.
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The difficult part about writing up an interview with Farokh Engineer is choosing where to start. Do you go with one of his stories about George Best, Denis Compton, Sir Donald Bradman, Muhammad Ali or Sir Alex Ferguson, to name just a few of the sporting legends we chat about? Or how about this one. 'You know Pele once slept in that room?' he says pointing at an upstairs window of his detached house in Cheshire. 'I met him at a dinner in Stoke organised by Gordon Banks. He was playing Mere Golf Club the next day, which is right next to my house, so I said: 'Come over and stay.' 'My wife took him up a cup of tea in the morning, he was very nice. Then we played golf with Bobby.' With Bobby? 'Yes, Bobby Charlton.' 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Indian players were paid 50 rupees a day back then for facing Hall and Charlie Griffith. The mind boggles at what Engineer, the first Indian poster boy of cricket who oozed flair and panache, would earn now in the IPL as an opening bat and keeper. 'Sachin Tendulkar once told me: 'If you were playing today, you would be by far the highest earner.'' 'George Best was Rogue No 1, I was Rogue No 2' Engineer played 46 Tests between 1961 and 1975 and appeared twice in the Rest of the World XI series against England in 1970 that later had Test status withdrawn. He was at Lancashire between 1968 and 1976, signing alongside his great friend Clive Lloyd. In a golden era of domestic one-day cricket, Engineer won the Gillette Cup four times and the Sunday League twice. 'I recommended a player called Clive Hubert Lloyd, actually I was talking to him only yesterday, and Cyril Washbrook was the chairman of cricket at Lancashire and he said: 'But Farokh, he wears glasses.' I just said: 'Mr Washbrook, I know he wears glasses but you sign him and you won't regret it.' And he was my room-mate for over 10 years and we had a great partnership. We travelled everywhere together and, oh, gosh, I don't know how we're still alive; we were both party animals. 'My friendship with George Best grew at that time too because he had just come over from Ireland.' George Best, was he a star by then? 'No, nor was I really. Time and again I used to leave him at midnight and say, 'George, come on, time to go' and he would say 'Rooky', that was my nickname because Farokh was too difficult for an Irishman to say. He would say: 'No, you go home.' He would go to bed at 2-3am and the next day score goals; genius. 'My best story with him was that I had this car sponsored by Quicks, a Ford garage near Old Trafford. I had a red Ford Escort – Lancashire colours. After training, I said: 'Come on, George, I will give you a lift in my new car.' We were passing through Stretford and stopped at the traffic lights. George started chatting up this blonde next to the traffic lights. He was Rogue No 1, I was Rogue No 2. We were having a giggle and then I started the car and went straight up the arse of the car in front. I had taken my eyes off the road. I said to the driver: 'Sorry my fault, but after all you don't see many blondes in Bombay.'' A hearty laugh follows that one. Despite the stories of a life that belongs to a different era, you just know Engineer would love playing now. Not once does he imply it was better in his day and he is hugely complimentary towards the current India team, now in England and preparing for the first Test at Headingley on June 20. But despite his allegiance to India, Lancashire is in his blood, and he speaks with as much pride about the Red Rose as playing for his country of birth. 'The club have been great to me. They have named a suite at the ground after me, what an honour. The people of Lancashire have been so kind, too. I was caught speeding twice by this young cop, and both times he let me go. 'My dad would kill me if I gave you a ticket,' he said. 'I'm feeling great for 87 but so many of my colleagues have been dropping like ninepins. Peter Lever just died and so I'm very grateful to God for life. I've always lived my life. I've always enjoyed my life. I've never just existed, and even at this age I'm active.' 'Coming to England, I met all my heroes' Engineer ran a textile business in Manchester after retirement and was an ICC match referee for a while and briefly worked for Test Match Special, where he thinks he encountered racism for the only time in his long life in England. 'I thought I was doing well. Fred Trueman, Brian Johnston and Christopher Martin-Jenkins were really for me but there was one person who always put me down. And I just wondered, was it racism? I never experienced any racism on the field. 'I don't know the ins and outs of what happened at Yorkshire but Bumble [David Lloyd] was accused of being a racist in all that. I'm telling you, there's not a racist bone in Bumble's body. I know, because he was my team-mate for many years.' Engineer is an ambassador for Veterans Cricket India, run by his businessman friend Anand Nair, that holds tournaments all over the world for age groups from over-40s upwards. The Brylcreem boy of India in the 1960s can still pull in a commercial deal. 'They used to like it because I batted in a cap and so my hair was out. Palmolive and other companies offered much better money, but my contract was with Brylcreem and it was prestigious because of its history with Compton and Keith Miller.' There is a symmetry to the Compton association. A seven-year-old Engineer was in the stands at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai when Compton played in a Ranji Trophy match in 1945. 'He had just taken a fresh pack of chewing gum out and he saw me among the huge crowd, and he said: 'Would you like a chewing gum?' I was too nervous to say yes or no, and he just tossed it to me, and I caught it. 'Oh', he said, 'good catch.' And when I got to know Compo later, I said: 'I used to worship you.' That was one of the advantages of coming to England and playing county cricket. I met all my heroes. I was a voracious reader of cricket books and I used to read all their life stories – Compton, Godfrey Evans, Len Hutton.' 'I was a bloody lunatic' Engineer was a keeper who would go for every catch, and dive around despite his size, which was bigger than the average keeper at the time. He kept to the great Indian spin quartet of Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan, and to Brian Statham at Lancashire. 'I was a bloody lunatic. I used to go for second-slip catches. I just thought, whatever a wicket-keeper can reach with his gloves on is the wicket-keeper's catch. When Jack Bond was captain at Lancs, the first slip was called Butlin's, you know, you go to Butlin's for a holiday because you never got a ball. 'I covered a huge area, and I enjoyed it. That was my domain. I wanted to keep wicket to Brian Statham, such a nice man. He said publicly if I was behind the stumps throughout his career he would have finished with twice as many victims. I said: 'George [Statham's nickname], you must have been drunk when you said that.' Because he had Godfrey Evans, who was my hero. 'In those days English bowlers used to pick the seam, it was almost allowed, with the result that Statham's inswinger when it pitched middle and off, coming in, I used to charge down the leg side because I would get so many leg-slip catches which were four runs before that. I got a couple of stumpings off him down the leg side. When the ball was not carrying I would stand up to the stumps. 'We were in the Cayman Islands once with Fred Trueman. It was past his time.' Engineer now breaks into his very good Trueman impression. ''I'm the quickest bowler in t'world.' And anyway I got a couple of stumpings off him. 'Stop it', Fred said. 'People will think I'm a slow bowler'. 'These people, just legends of the game. I'm so lucky… Chandrasekhar, Prasanna, Bedi, Venkat. The other three were pretty easy to keep to but Chandrasekhar was very interesting to keep to because he bowled about 62mph. Normally he spun the ball viciously both ways, without knowing himself which way the ball was going three quarters of the time because he was a polio victim, his wrist bent a bit further. 'Time and again he bowled a batsman with a googly and I said: 'Chandra, you tried to bowl a leg-spinner there, didn't you?' And he'd say: 'Yeah, yeah.' He was a very humble man. And I think he was the greatest spinner in the world. I could read him because I saw him grip the ball and saw the way it left his fingers. I saw it in the air and off the pitch. For me, it was like a split-second computerised effect because I could read him.' Engineer feels that '99 per cent' of modern keepers have technical problems. 'In T20 you can get away with a batsman who can keep but not in Test cricket. You've got to have a proper keeper, not a backstop. I've watched modern keepers and they get up too soon. They snatch the ball, which is OK standing back. Some people only half-squat. I found you had to be right down, so it was much easier to stay low to go for diving catches or catches that don't carry. It is much easier to come up than to come up and go down again – you lose a fraction of a second. So when they are playing [in the] sub-continent and the ball is lower and slower, they struggle.' Keeping was in Engineer's blood. He describes his childhood growing up in Bombay with his older brother Darius, who was a good club cricketer, and how keeping to him for the first time opened up his path in life. In the evenings after school he would throw a soft ball against a corrugated wall so it could bounce in any direction, and try to catch it. 'I went to Don Bosco School and my best friend was Shashi Kapoor, who would go on to be one of the great Bollywood actors. We were sitting on a bench in class yapping away one day when suddenly I saw this huge wooden duster hurled 100 miles per hour at us by the teacher. I'm telling you, he should have been a cover point for India. I think he would have hit the stumps every time. 'Anyway, I saw this duster hurtling straight toward his [Kapoor's] face, and suddenly my sixth sense kicked in, I just stretched my hand out and caught the duster literally an inch from his face. I used to tease him that instead of getting the hero roles in films he would have ended up in horror movies if I hadn't caught that duster.' 'I stood up Miss Adelaide for Don Bradman' Engineer is still celebrated when he goes back to India every year, often when a birthday party is held in his honour. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the BCCI during the first England Test in Hyderabad last year but his links to Mumbai have faded. He sold his house on trendy Cuffe Parade years ago. 'I sold it for tuppence, and today it is probably worth about £40 million. The Ambanis live next door. I never imagined property would just go sky high all of a sudden. So, yeah, whenever I see that property, I feel a bit sick.' While we are chatting, Engineer's wife is searching for a Baggy Green cap given to him as a gift by Bradman, which excites the photographer but is somewhere in storage. Instead he poses with a silver bat awarded for being top run scorer in a series against England. There is a quote from Bradman on the back of Engineer's autobiography that describes him as one of the 'game's great ambassadors on and off the field'. The respect was formed during a tour to Australia. 'We were playing in Adelaide and I slipped over wearing rubber-soled shoes. Sir Don Bradman came into our dressing room and gave me a big telling off but invited me to his house for dinner. I had a date with Miss Adelaide that night, so I gave her number to one of my team-mates and told him to have a good time. 'I went to the Bradmans' house and just wanted a beer and a steak but they gave me carrot juice and a vegetarian meal, thinking that's what Indians ate and drank. Anyway, Sir Don gets out a projector and we start watching films of his innings. It is a bit odd, but he's Don Bradman. What do you say? He told me about this shot and that shot he played and said I was too flamboyant. As I left I gave him a gift and he went away and came back with a cap, his baggy green.' Engineer will be at Old Trafford for the India Test match in July. The struggles of his club this summer – coach and captain sacked and the team languishing in division two – have upset him. 'My heart bleeds. I can't bear to even open the papers. There is something radically wrong that needs to be rectified because Lancs are a great club. Bottom of the second division, I just can't believe it.' He thinks the retirement of Virat Kohli will help England but describes this India team as among the best to tour this country. 'They could probably pick two teams that would give England a run for their money.' A couple of weeks after our interview, I call to check on how the heart operation went. 'Yes, all good,' he laughs. 'I'm still alive and kicking.' The storyteller still has more tales to tell.
