It's part of the romance of Hyderabad cricket

The Moin-ud-Dowlah Gold Cup of today is about as similar to the tournament it was even a couple of decades ago, as McDonald's is to Udipi Sukha Nivas. The very idea that this lazy tribute to the late Nawab after whom it is named can be played in the one-day limited overs format ­ as it is this year - is preposterous to anyone who had anything to do with it in its glorious past. The only event of the current edition that had a touch of deja-vu about it was the bursting of a piece of plumbing in the middle that cut short a match involving the New Zealand team. Matthew Bell and his men may not know that India drew a Test match it was about to lose to Graham Dowling's Kiwis back in the sixties on the very same Fateh Maidan, because the ground drying brigade took unduly long to warm up after a shower, and Dowling and his men were not allowed to lend a helping hand, even though they were willing to mop up without pay.

The Gold Cup is part of the romance of Hyderabad cricket. The first edition was out in the 1920s, but even in the late seventies, the matches in the tournament were played at a leisurely pace, over three days. Almost all the top players of the country would congregate at the Lal Bahadur Stadium, staying in the rooms in the stadium that had balconies with a lovely view of the cricket. When your side won a match and waited for its next encounter, you had all of three days of cricket-watching before you, sitting on the balcony with fellow cricketers, swapping cricket stories, pulling one another's legs. This is where you heard the fabulous yarns spun by Hanumant Singh and Pataudi, Salim Durrani and Ashok Mankad. This is where you absorbed the cricket wisdom around you by osmosis.

The New Zealand XI is not the first overseas team to take part in the tournament. The Ceylon Tobacco Board XI in the seventies was as good as the national team. There was also the Hindustan Breweries XI led by Tiger Pataudi which had Budhi Kunderan, by then settled in Scotland, Rohan Kanhai, still a couple of years shy of his masterly Prudential Cup final knock, Duleep Mendis, Anura Tennekoon, David Heyn, Russell Hamer and Tony Opatha. This star-studded side was beaten by State Bank of India, which had its own stars in G R Viswanath, Abid Ali, Ambar Roy, Syed Kirmani and Rajinder Goel. I had the unusual experience of originally being included in the Breweries XI and getting drafted into the bank team on the eve of the match.

It was in this tournament that I, an unknown, bowled my first ball in first class cricket to Rohan Kanhai in 1973. It was my eight-wicket haul in the 1975 final against the Pataudi-led JK XI, which had batsmen of the calibre of Salim Durrani and the Amarnath brothers in it, that made me a Ranji Trophy player at the ripe old age of 28. Ironically, it was in this very tournament that I bit the dust too, when I was sacked along with every other member of the Hyderabad XI on the morning of the opening day of the tournament a few years later, in what came to be known as the tracksuit incident.