Doshi’s city of dreams

Dilip Doshi (1947-2025), the former India spinner, who passed away at the age of 77 in London on Monday evening, played first-class cricket for Bengal and Saurashtra, but Mumbai was where he laboured away to perfect his craft.

The departed left-arm spinner spent several months of the year in Mumbai a little before and after he made his first-class debut for Bengal in 1968-69.
On the advice of his father, young Dilip came over to be a standby in the Cricket Club of India team that participated in the Kanga League.

Former India left-arm spinner Dilip Doshi at the Mont Blanc store at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Colaba in 2014. Pic/Shadab Khan

Suresh Shastri, who like Doshi, was a successful left-arm spinner at the domestic level, told mid-day on Tuesday: “I remember seeing Dilip Doshi bowl at the LR Tairsee nets which the late Vinoo Mankad used to conduct for us schoolboys way back then. Dilip had such an easy side-on action and used to soak in whatever Vinoobhai suggested.” In his book Spin Punch, Doshi revealed that he had no regrets of being a standby in the CCI team .

“I would hang around the picturesque premises on the Marine Drive and hope someone would default and I would get a game. These were friendly matches, but they featured big time players, I got to bowl to such stalwarts as Dilip Sardesai, Hanumant Singh and Ashok Mankad and my confidence grew.

It is a fact of cricket, indeed of life, that at different stages in your career someone helps you and it is when you chronicle the high points in your life that you feel the compulsion to acknowledge this help. Well, my days in CCI were thanks to the Mankad brothers — Ashok and Atul — who were members. They extended to me their hospitality and companionship and I remember it gratefully.”

More recently, Mumbai was home for Doshi when he was not in the United Kingdom. He once had a business which involved Mont Blanc pens and was often seen at the Taj Mahal Hotel outlet. 

This article first appeared on Mid Day