The former TN opener was a perfectionist

One of the characteristic features of VB was his impeccable behaviour and his sincerity in his job when he was selector and coach at different levels. He loved challenges and his love for cricket took him even to spot talent by owning a team (Kanchi Veerans) in Tamil Nadu Premier League.

My first association with VB was way back in the 1990s when he was almost at the end of his Ranji career with Tamil Nadu. He used to meet us over coffee as captain of TN before its match against Kerala and talk about his team and other cricket matters. This practice continued even when he took charge of Goa in Ranji Trophy and we used to talk freely in Margao and Panaji. In fact, he even took J Gokulakrishnan along with him when he moved to Goa and the all-rounder played a key role for the team in one of the rare Ranji Trophy wins.

He was a perfectionist: he always used measured words in English and his diction was without blemish. I had watched him play for India only on TV, but he played a fantastic innings of 200-plus for Goa with his characteristic lofted shots that used to clear the straight boundary by quite a distance. So perfect was he when he came down the track to loft the spinners.

When he was at his prime, he was devastating as an opener. He made Srikkanth look ordinary, even outscored him when the two opened for Tamil Nadu. In the 1988-89 Irani Trophy game against the Rest of India at Chennai, VB outshone Srikkanth and reached his 100 off just 56 balls, then the fastest hundred in first-class cricket by an Indian. That was the innings that opened the door for him to get selected to the Indian team.

Later, VB was a selector both for TN and India. He was also in the original Chennai Super Kings team as mentor. As former TN left-arm spinner Sunil Subramaniam said from the West Indies on hearing his death, “he was an entertaining batsman and an intense cricketer with a shrewd cricketing brain.”