Who was Vasant Raiji?

Vasant Raiji has left a big vacuum at Rockside, his seven-decade-old family home in South Mumbai’s posh Malabar Hill locality, as has he in Indian cricket, whose progress and evolution he witnessed with a keen and perceptive mind right from the country’s pre-Independence days — from the colossus that was C. K. Nayudu to giants like Lala Amarnath and Vijay Merchant and modern masters like Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. After celebrating his 100th birthday — a century, in the great game’s parlance — on January 26, Raiji, a walking compendium of Indian cricket, departed for the Elysian Fields on June 13. READ| When the aristocratic Rajsingh Dungarpur, the president of the Cricket Club of India at the turn of the new millennium, decided to found the Legends Club, he did not look beyond Raiji, who was instrumental in naming the first Legends of Indian Cricket — Vijay Merchant, Vijay Manjrekar and Vinoo Mankad. READ| Writing about Nayudu in Wisden Cricket Monthly and Mid-Day, Raiji felt that his batting was akin to “spreading loveliness and beauty as they move along the path of glory.” Describing Nayudu as the shahenshah of Indian cricket, Raiji further wrote: “Nayudu is the only Indian cricketer for whom the word majestic can be used without the fear of being accused of hero worship or exaggeration.