On, off-field anecdotes liven up launch of Sandeep Patil’s ‘Beyond Boundaries'

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When sports columnist Ayaz Memon visited Sandeep Patil in the 1980s, it was the former’s first time interviewing the cricketer, Memon remembers.

Patil had made his Test debut in 1980, was this exciting, swashbuckling batter from Mumbai taking the world’s best bowling attacks apart. At Patil’s Shivaji Park residence, the cricketer told Memon that after the interview, they could have a drink on the plane.

While Memon wondered if he had misheard Patil, he was ushered to the terrace after the conversation. Sure enough, on the terrace, was an aircraft converted into a bar.

Also read: India's marathon men who completed six Majors in a year This was one of the many amusing anecdotes recounted during the launch of Patil’s book Beyond Boundaries, co-authored by the group sports editor of Mid Day, Clayton Murzello, at the C.K. Nayudu Hall of Mumbai’s Cricket Club of India on 6 November.

Attended by some of the stalwarts of Mumbai and Indian cricket, including Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Ravi Shastri, Sanjay Manjrekar, Milind Rege and former India coach John Wright, the event was as much about the book as it was about Patil’s eccentric and entertaining ways remembered by people who knew him best—his travelling teammates. “When I went to his terrace bar," said Vengsarkar soon after Memon’s account, “Patla (as Patil was referred to by fellow cricketers) said when he sits in the cockpit, after three-four drinks, the plane feels like it’s flying." The packed hall cracked up at every little story that flowed during the course of the evening, a testimony of not just Patil’s popularity as a person but also a tribute to a career that should have been longer than the 29 Test