Born on 17 May 1945, at Mysore in Karnataka, India.
A freak leg spin-googly bowler, Chandrasekhar had a withered right arm from a childhood attack of polio. This helped him bowl at a lively pace and riddle the best of batsmen with his top-spinners, wrong ‘uns and the occasional leg break. No batsman in the world could say that he had mastered the bowling of this unpredictable genius.
‘Chandra’ won many test matches off his own bowling for India, the most memorable ones being the match against England at the Oval in 1971, against Australia at Melbourne in 1977-78 and of course, the test against the West Indies at Calcutta in 1974-75.
‘Chandra’ made his debut in tests in 1963-64 against England at Bombay and played 58 test matches during which he claimed 242 wickets at 29.74 apiece. He claimed five wickets in an innings 16 times and had best bowling figures of 8-79. He played only one one day international claiming 3 wickets for 36 in 9.2 overs. He was nominated Wisden’s Cricketer of the Year in 1972.
Chandrasekhar met with an unfortunate road accident in his hometown of Bangalore a few years ago and is now partially crippled.
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