There are some Indian cricketers who are looked upon with awe, like Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, and others who are worshipped, specifically Sachin Tendulkar, aka the God of Cricket. But there are only two in my estimation in 60 years of following cricket who, I can say with some degree of authority, are loved by Indian cricket fans—Salim Durani and GR Vishwanath. All these, mind you, had their careers before the explosion of social media with their corrosive fan clubs and obsessive fanboys.

What a pity then that Durani, that genius of an all-rounder, is now back in the news two-and-a-half years after his passing and for all the wrong reasons. The video purportedly showing his ex-wife Rekha in a pitiably poor state has gone viral, leading to gossip, innuendo and speculation raging like wildfire. As the biographer of the late cricketer, I have been fielding calls and queries from concerned ex-cricketers and contemporaries, journalists, and cricket fans online ever since the release of the disturbing video. For the record, my book Salim Durani: The Prince of Indian Cricket, which was released in April 2024, a year after his passing, briefly mentions his marriage to his first wife, Rekha, from whom he was divorced, and his subsequent marriage to a doctor who died in the early 1990s. By all accounts, her death left Durani broken, and his life spiralled out of control till his own passing on April 2, 2023, in Jamnagar, where he spent his last years living with his brother and family.

Durani’s life had an........

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