* He was an amazingly friendly guy, and had no traces of any ego. Before he moved with his wife and kid to his new house, he used to live by the beach in Besant Nagar, Madras, where a whole bunch of us used to hang out. He was a common sight at the local cigarette shop and on the beach sands, and never had any problems taking time off to chat with any fan who accosted him. I remember he brought azhar along once , and a big crowd gathered. Azhar seemed a bit miffed,but Cheeka went right on, quizzing us about the local chick-scene and the new movies in town. * He, of course, smoked like a veritable chimney, and so did his dad. I remember the time he had gone to australia to play : his dad used to get hyper whenever cheeka came to the crease, and would rush out to the pan shop to buy smokes, transistor in hand. The story was that his dad would pace the room, chain smoking un- til cheeka went back to the pavilion, (typically either in the first over, of after two or three hours of great batting). * He never minced any words. It was hilarious to watch his local (madras) TV show in Tamil. He used to refer to every player, great or small as "avan", which is NOT normally used to describe people you greatly respect, in tamil. Thus Gavaskar or anyone else would be "avan" and not "avar"(the more respectful term). This was funny, because typically in TV and public appearances, a Tamilian would normally always use the more respectful term, especially while referring to an older and/or respected person. But not for Cheeka, apparently ! * In his very early career, he would be in and out of the indian team. I have a relative who used to play club cricket with him, and the relative once told him "Cheeka, you're wasting your chances by not taking your game very seriously. " and Cheeka told him "Oh, don't worry about that, they dont have too many decent openers in this country, so they'll have to fall back upon me." !
This Page was contributed by Mr Balasubramanian.My thanks to him.