The spirit of the Vikings was to be seen in his cricket. The pioneering and intrepid seafarers of the world must have been the most daring of men. To go out and face the fury of the seas was a challenge they lived up to and they did so first simply because the sea was there. Krish Srikkanth was a bit like them. He trysted with danger when he took on the new ball simply because he knew no other way to play it than to hit it. There have been far more successful openers, in Indian cricket too. But he was different. He did not play the game by the book. He defied the odds, bucked the system and was reasonably succesful at it. The spirit of the Vikings was certainly in him. What other motive force could have driven one to take up the challenge in this manner? It is not as if he did not know the dangers. Still, Srikkanth took up the challenge with an entirely different approach. He left the game with a touch of the Viking, too. Not for him the self-pitying ways of the cricketer leaving the scene that he grew to love. He left the game with a sense of gratitude for the happiness it gave him. And he was realistic enough to openly ac- cept that he would miss the glamour and the glitz. He said so at a press conference in which the sense of happiness at having been associated with international cricket shone through clearer than the regret over quitting the scene. He took the decision to retire impulsively, he said. Natural- ly, because the feeling that ruled his life and his game was im- pulse. Who else would have had the audacity to sweep frontline West Indian pace bowlers when they were steaming in with the aim of knocking down everyone who dared to stand in their way? Those more bent upon survival may have managed to keep out of the way of danger. Strong and silent men took punishment upon on the body when it came to do the same job of coming between an express fast bowler and the stumps. Srikkanth seemed to thrive on thr thrill of daring to take on the same pace bowlers with the aim of driving them out of the park. He was not always successful, in fact he can be counted only as a qualified success in the Test arena. It was in the threatre of limited-overs game that he had a more wholesome right to feel at home. He seemed to convert every ball into a life- or-death situation, much as the Vikings must have felt every time they sailed close to the wind. His philosophy was relatively simple. It has been said for a long time in cricket that the ball is there to be hit. Srikkanth took it upon himself to prove the efficacy or otherwise of this axiom. He was prone to failures when he took chance too many. When he succeeded, the team prospered. In the days of his grand success, as in India's best known triumphs in one-day cricket, it was difficult to tell whether Srikkanth was more happy about his own success or that of the team. He also changed. He was a mere shadow of his former self in the last World Cup in which he played as selfishly as anyone else, his eyes more on his own score, his thoughts more his own success and his designs not going beyond what he could make off his own bat. It had been different in the days when his confi- dence had been nurtured by the encouragement his talent boasting of an unusual modus operandi, gained from officialdom. They even made him captain of the team of the land. He was somewhat suc- cessful at a task for which he may not have been technically qualified. He came away unbeaten in four Tests out of a tour of Pakistan even though personally there were few runs for him. He withstood an attack from a zealot in his first Test. There would have been a proper uproar had this happened to any other Indian captain. He took it in his stride, so also frequent incidents of trouble from a crowd somewhat worried about their team being beaten in a one-day international at the National Stadium in Karachi. But then they sacked him, maybe because they were afraid of such success for a cricketer whom they did not want to see succeed. Such are the mysteries of Indian cricket! The point is that he took it all with dignity. He did not speak a word out of place despite the torment of being denied sustained chances to correct the imbalance in his own batting form. The time of come- backs is always one of uncertainty and self doubt. He did well enough at that time, too, as in winning match awards in Aus- tralia. His contributions tended to dissolve into the background because the team was so clearly in the doldrums. But when the march of time led to the very ordinary trying to replace the sub- lime or the unusual, the time had come to quit. And he went. No more comebacks. The things to savour are, of course, his achievements, the first of which was his to enchant the public with his extraordi- anry approach to the matter of batting. All the world seemed to love a batsman who could go for it, even against the likes of Pa- trick Patterson, on whom he was particularly severe in a rare double of half centuries in a Test in Bombay, and of Imran Khan and Wasim Akram on whom he launched a blazing counterattack in a Test at his home ground in Madras. In launching many a limited overs international innings in the buccaneering style of the Vik- ings, he gave his side every chance to win the match. He was a matchwinner in the best style of the aggressive batsmen of modern cricket. He scored more than 4000 runs for the country in this form of the game. Having takend a leding hand in both of India's major one-day triumphs - the World Cup of '83 and the World Cham- pionship of Cricket in '85 - he had a right to believe there was a place for him in the match winners' list, if not quite in a mythical cricket's Hall of Fame. He brought joy to the specta- tors whenever he brought off extravagant strokes. With him, at- tack was not the best form of defence, perhaps the only form of defence though to say so would be to oversimplify the complex world of opening batsmen. Despite being in and out of the side for nearly four seasons, he became the second most successful partner to Sunil Gavaskar while being in a class of his own when it came to batting in one-day cricket. While he seemed to mock the percentages in his success, he cer- tainly looked very ordinary in failure. But then who can look good in failure except the extremely gifted who by thought asso- ciation would at least have made the bowler or that particular ball seem unplayable? The remarkable thing about Srikkanth is that he succeeded often enough to capture the imagination of the public. But then he had the spirit of the Vikings. About the time when he was saying his good-byes, a prominent basketball player and an important politician also bade farewells. While the politician's retirement lasted about a day, there was a value threat or promise from Michael Jordan that he may come back. Srikkanth is the only one who bade good bye with a finality. Not for him the hankering for another chance. But then he was one of a kind who might not have been able to repeat his daring acts in a cricket world that has changed.Contributed by Shash (sshah@*.acns.nwu.edu).My thanks to Sshah