CD Gopinath, India's oldest Test cricketer and 1952 hero, dies at 96

India's oldest living Test cricketer CD Gopinath died at the age of 96 here on Thursday, ending the last human link to the nation's first Test-winning team. Gopinath, who was the second oldest cricketer in the world after Australian legend Neil Harvey (97), is survived by his wife, children and grand-children.

Following his demise, Mumbai's 95-year-old Chandrakant Patankar has become the country's oldest cricketer. He played one Test, against New Zealand in 1955. In the death of Gopinath, India has lost not just its oldest living Test cricketer but also the last personal link to a glorious chapter in the country's rich cricketing history. Four years back, Gopinath had a twinkle in his eye while recounting India's first-ever Test triumph, an innings and eight-run win over England at Chepauk in 1952. "See! That's the benefit of a long life. You can keep adding and rewriting the story. Everyone will give me the age's benefit, but you know, the benefit of doubt always goes to the batsman, doesn't it?" he had quipped. Even at 92 then, Gopinath remained a brilliant raconteur, who would narrate amusing stories about his brief eight-Test stint in India whites. Of course, the brightest of them would be about those four glorious days in erstwhile Madras, now Chennai. In the statistician's book, Gopinath's numbers will always remain modest — eight Tests, that yielded 242 runs with one fifty. But, typically of him, Gopinath never felt bitter about a short career that started on a promising note with a 50 and 42 against England at the Brabourne in 1951.

However, a rather modest subsequent trip to England later in 1952 had its own unpleasant ramifications, keeping him more out of the team than in. But Gopinath remained a significant figure in domestic cricket, scoring heavily and captaining Madras often. He ended up with 4259 runs from 83 matches at an average of 42. He also tallied nine hundreds. A notable moment in his career came when he made a brilliant, stroke-filled 175 in the second innings while visiting New Zealand for South Zone. The Kiwis had some fine players in its ranks such as Bert Sutcliffe, John Reid, John Alabaster and Parke Zinzan Harris, father of former NZ all-rounder Chris Harris. Even though South lost the match, Gopinath's innings earned him a lot of admirers from the Antipodeans. "Reid and Sutcliffe later met me in the dressing room and we had a good chat about the game then. The competition lasted only till the last ball of the day, after that we just wanted to get to know each other a little bit better and share some good time," he had said. After his playing days, Gopinath served as chief of national selectors and the manager of the Indian team that toured England in 1979. The tour became famous for India's daring chase of 438 under the guidance of Sunil Gavaskar's monumental 221. But India could only make 429 for eight as the Oval Test ended in a draw. The match always had a special place in Gopinath's memory and he would never be short of words while revering about Gavaskar's technical purity. But Gopinath was not a man happy to live in nostalgia. He keenly followed contemporary cricket and took a liking for IPL and the Chennai Super Kings. "Everything changes with the team, cricket is not exception," Gopinath would say, and he remained an ardent Mahendra Singh Dhoni fan.

"I pick CSK mainly because of MSD -- not because of his cricketing brain but because of how he plays. He does not go strutting around the field jumping 10 feet high. "He does not make obscene gestures. It makes me very uncomfortable when I see some of that," Gopinath said last year during a CSK function. The words carried the essence of Gopinath -- a keenly competitive cricketer on the field and a thorough gentleman off it.