Meet the man who has honed cricketers in England. PIONEER SPORT spends an afternoon with Suleiman Adam at his tony Dewsbury home, popular as Solly Adam who brought Sachin Tendulkar to Yorkshire County Cricket Club, to bring you his journey with the game when Indian players would bunk in his house, work for him and enjoy his wife's kitchen delights to learn the art of the game
As in most relationships in away cricket, this one too kicked off with the craving for Indian food back in the 1970s when Rahul Mankad bumped into Suleiman Adam and got invited for some food at his place. Generations of players down the line have enjoyed the delicious Indian fare cooked up by his stunningly beautiful wife who is now a great grandmother recuperating from a debilitating illness but still not leaving a chance to watch the World Cup live from her bed.
It’s been quite a journey between a Dewsbury businessman and the Indian cricketers which has grown at many levels, over three decades and has ended up training the biggest and the best in the desi armoury to become leading Test cricketers. One of them have has even turned in the God of Cricket Sachin Tendulkar to the game’s pinnacle of glory.
At 66 now, the man famous for bringing Sachin Tendulkar to the Yorkshire County Cricket and more importantly opening the doors of the “only for Yorkshire” gates of the respected county, Solly, short for Suleiman, lives on those days when he was kingmaker, guide, father and the unofficial selector of players into the Indian team, especially those who came to him looking for some playing money in pound land, experience and the food of course!
“At the moment people only talk about how I introduced Sachin Tendulkar to Yorkshire. But my association goes back many years and cricketers back. I have introduced a lot of cricketers into league cricket well before Tendulkar,” he tells you from the tony back garden of one of his three houses in the posh nook of Dewsbury.
Ask any cab driver at the train station, and he knows the address and the man, taking you straight to his house where the entire family is there to welcome you and talk about cricket. It is the day VVS Laxman, who lived and worked for the family for two long years, has paid a visit to Solly’s ailing wife. Some days back, it was Sunil Gavaskar who came calling and recorded a thank you video for the doctor who operated upon the grand old lady of this household. Sachin Tendulkar’s wife has been calling up for updates but the little master is yet to come. “He is busy and I know he will be here the moment he gets free from his assignments,” Solly says with confidence.
Sounds true, considering Tendulkar’s only condition to join Yorkshire club after Gavaskar persuaded him to, had been that he lived next to Solly’s house. “I knew Sachin before he came to Yorkshire. Whoever used to come here to play from Bombay would talk about this talented cricketer, like Jatin Paranjpe who said ‘one is Sachin and the other Vinod Kambli’. So when Sachin came here to attend my son’s wedding, I asked him if he would like to play league cricket here. He asked for 100 pounds a match. Those days it was 20-25 pounds, so the club said they wouldn’t be able to afford him. Sachin we couldn’t afford but we signed Vinod Kambli and he played for my club for 25 pounds a match,” Solly tells you.
Sachin, meanwhile, became a Test player and it was while he was playing in Australia that Solly got his second opportunity. Those days, Yorkshire had a rule that anybody born outside of Yorkshire, be he White or Asian, could not play for the club. Suddenly, rules changed and the club signed overseas Australian fast bowler Craig McDermott. But he got injured and the contract fell through.
“The minute I heard that news, I called Yorkshire Cricket Committee (then headed by Geoffrey Boycott) and asked them If I could introduce an Asian to Yorkshire? That would open the door for all the Asians to come and play. ‘People reckon that Yorkshire is prejudiced so that will take the stump out of your name’, I told them. But they said, ‘we don’t want that’. I told them that was not right, and I would go to the Press with the story,” Solly recalls.
The committee members called him for a discussion. “Next day when I went to the committee, the late Fred Truman was outside. He said, ‘Solly I am not happy. We have won so many championships without any overseas player. Up to me, I will not sign’. Indeed, the committee was unhappy. I argued and argued and argued. So, they said ok, if you so insist give me the name. I said, what about Sachin Tendulkar. They said, ‘but he is only a young kid’. But have you seen today’s news. Don Bradman has said to his wife: ‘I watched him play and he reminds me of me playing cricket’. If Bradman says Sachin is as a good as him then he should come and play for Yorkshire’,” he told the members who finally agreed.
Sachin was playing a Test series in Australia at that time, but Solly did not waste a minute in calling him. He, however, refused. “I would love to but no Solly bhai but I am playing a lot of cricket. This year I have applied for Ranji and I am playing Test cricket too so it will be too much for me,” he told Solly.
“I said, come on Sachin it is not for you. It is for all the Asians. They will come and play for Yorkshire. It will be an honour, people will remember you for it. So, he said ‘give me a couple of days I will get back to you on this’. As soon as I put the phone down, I called Sunil Gavaskar who was in the same hotel as Sachin and asked him to persuade him to come here. He said it was a good idea, ‘I played for Somerset and it helped me as well. Let me talk to him’. He spoke to him and when two days later I rang up Sachin he said yes but on one condition. ‘Only if I will live nearby you’. I found the house nearby mine and he moved there. Rest is history,” Solly says after completing in oft-repeated Sachin story. Sachin made an 86 in his maiden appearance for Yorkshire after being scalped by the searing pace of Hampshire’s Malcom Marshall just 14 runs short of a ton, and unhappy he did not get his century in his first outing!
Sachin’s wife Anjali is in touch with his daughter. Sachin is yet to come and meet him during this tour as he has a packed commentating schedule but Solly is confident he would be at his doorstep the moment he gets time, especially now that his wife has had a brush with death and is battling the loss of a leg from a very rare muscle eating disease, the wife who has been like a mother to cricket’s God. Sachin’s son Arjun has not come either.
“But I am sure when he is ready to play some good cricket, Sachin will ring me up and say fix him up in a good cricket club. I know he will not be another Tendulkar, but I am sure he will become a good cricketer, half as good as his dad and he will be a world beater,” Solly rules.
Today, however, it has become different ball game altogether and Solly rues those syrupy old days when cricketers were gentlemen and England the place to be for good money and playing acumen. From Imran Khan who has slept the nights on Solly’s living room couch (his girlfriends were not allowed in by the way), to Iqbal Qasim, and Mohammad Kaif have all worked and played league and county cricket, thanks to this businessman who has a sports goods shop staring over a closed petrol pump which he owned earlier, in Dewsbury.
Cricket has always been the first priority for Solly who is known widely in English circles too, so much so that his wife and he get Buckingham Palace invites frequently. “I played cricket for 15 years. I like watching cricket. I love meeting youngsters, cricket is in my body. It is because of cricket that lot of people come to see me. I am a businessman but everybody knows me because I am a cricketer,” says Solly who was the first Asian skipper of Bradford League and also captained the Yorkshire Council team in his youth.
Today, he travels to India every year to pick up bats from Punjab, shop from Karol Bagh and visit Mumbai on holidays, not so much to look for new talent. Not many come to him asking for jobs today, not many cricketers that is. “There was no money involved anywhere else but in England back then. Only in Yorkshire they used to pay and paying those days was just 20-30 pounds a match. I introduced cricketers from early 70s plus I have business, a few petrol pumps here. So, they used to play cricket Saturday and Sunday and work for me during the week to get some extra money to take back home. Besides, there were no restaurants or Indian takeaways back then, so my wife used to cook for them and feed them Indian food plus if there was any restaurant they would not have been able to afford eating out as money was very tight for them. It is not just Sachin, Sunil Gavaskar is like a brother to me now, we know each other from the 1970s. Then there were Rahul Mankad, the late Ashok Mankad, Bishen Singh Bedi, Raju Kulkarni, Kuruvella — cricketers not only from India but a lot of them from Pakistan too who I introduced here, including Imran Khan, Abdul Qadir, Iqbal Qasim to league cricket,” he says.
“Those days people loved to come to England, especially to play cricket. It was an honour for them. I remember, before one season I had 10 to 12 first class Indian cricketers sleeping at my place for around two to three weeks before I fixed them in various clubs around here. They became better players once they go back from here,” he says, adding that today with big money pouring in from all matches in India, no one wants to spend a hard, cold winter playing cricket in unfriendly conditions at Yorkshire.
“It is not that the BCCI is the richest cricket body. It is that Indian cricketers are very rich now. They do not want to come and play cricket here, even for 5, 10 or 15 thousand pounds because they can get that kind of money even in a Ranji trophy match. It is over a lakh of rupees per match. If they play 10 matches for their zone, it is Rs 10 lakh plus if they play IPL, money is pouring in left, right and centre so they are not interested. That is the reason these cricketers are not as good as old cricketers. Because they do not mature as county cricketers, league cricket made them better cricketers and better people. You never see old cricketers with tattoos and different colour of hair. These youngsters are a changed lot with big money. When I signed Kapil Dev and Imran Khan to play with a country cricket bat for an entire year, Kapil got 250 pounds and Imran Khan got 200 pounds for it. Can you imagine an Indian cricketer of today play or use a county cricket bat for just 250 pounds for the whole season,” Solly asks pertinently?
They like to come for holiday, rather than to play cricket. Only the odd ones ring him up, those who fail to get a Ranji or Test cricket call up. But those were the days when Mohammad Kaif worked in his shop. Even Laxman worked hard, slogging away nights at his petrol pump. Kulkarni worked in a mill, cleaning machines. “Nothing wrong with that. They all worked. They had nothing to do Monday to Friday so they did work for some extra money for back home,” he says. Solly feels money coming in for cricketers is a good thing, “provided it doesn’t go to their heads. As long as they keep their feet on the floor and respect everybody well and good,” he adds.
His opinion is relevant, not just about cricketing behaviour but also about the game. In the World Cup, he points out how the wickets have changed every half hour, something that made cricketers of yore better players and readers of. “In India, Pakistan or Australia that’s very rare. So playing county is a good experience but because there is no money here now, they are not taking the experience. That’s the reason why when India and Pakistan come into England, they struggle because they are not used to the conditions,” Solly points out.
He has laid his bets on an England-Australia Final but wishes fervently it is India-Australia at Lord’s. He was there when Kapil’s Devils won their first World Cup in 1983. “I would love to go and watch this Final again,” he says. If his favourite bowler Jaspirt Bumrah and favourite batting captain Virat Kohli fire away in the right direction, it would be Solly’s and the rest of 1.4 billion people’s dream come true.
He has never met Kohli but would love to. “Insha Allah,” he says before signing off and preparing for a get together with some Indian players coming to meet him the next day.
THE SACHIN STORY
Meticulous Sachin
For Sachin playing cricket is a challenge. He doesn’t like throwing his wicket away. He was a young kid. Staying in England for four months made him a different person altogether. Everything was earlier done by a servant or parent. Here he was by himself. It made him from boy to a man. He started washing, ironing, cleaning… it helped him a lot in 1991. He was dedicated to cricket. He would play cricket five days a week for the club. As soon as he would finish at 6’o clock he would be at my ground to practice more.
Son, not God
Everybody says he is God of Cricket but for us he was like our son. He treated my wife like a mother and me like a father. He would go out with my children for a pizza or a Kentucky chicken in the evenings. He is family. English people loved him. He was like a Yorkshireman. After a few days when Sachin settled down, 12 of us went to Blackpool and spent a whole day there, he enjoyed every moment of those four months. He would watch old movies on the video cassette, listen to music.
Sachin's mess-ups
Sachin loved my wife’s food. He never cooked. He made one or two mess ups in his house so from that day he never did anything. One day he rang my wife and asked how he should wash his clothes. My wife told him there are two machines, a washer and a dryer and how he should use it. In the evening, he called frantically and said his entire kitchen was a pool of soapy bubbles. My wife asked him how much soap he had put into the washing machine and he said: “The entire box”! So from that day all his clothes were washed and dried and ironed at my place.
Last day of Sachin in Yorkshire
Sachin knew that I went to bed early. But one night, he came at 11 pm, knocking my door and I wondered who it could be. When I opened the door, it was Sachin standing there. He said, “Solly bhai I have to go early tomorrow morning so I have come to touch your and aunty’s feet! It was very nice of him. I will remember that as long as I live.”
