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India’s first Oxford Blue

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Eric Prabhakar.

Bangalore: “Wait a minute, let me wear my Oxford blazer,” says Eric Prabhakar changing into his Christ Church blazer and settling a comfortable chair in his study for a photo shoot. “Yes, that photograph was taken in Madras while I was in still in college,” he says looking at a photograph of a young man with fire in his eyes crouched and waiting for the shot that will set him on his trajectory.

And an illustrious trajectory it has been. The wiry, tall all-rounder, whose 10.6-minute record in the 100 metre sprint in 1945 (in undivided India) remained unbroken for several decades, went on to represent India for the 100 m sprint in the London Olympics of 1948. An outstanding athlete and student right from his student days in Baldwin Boys School in Bangalore, young Eric won the 200 m in the Inter State games in 1946, and the 100 m and 200 m in 1948.

In 1949, he became the first Indian to get an athletic Blue at Oxford, from none other than the famous sprinter Roger Bannister, who was president of the Oxford Athletics Team at the time.

He recalls the excitement felt by that large contingent of young Indians — full teams in hockey, soccer and water polo; wrestlers, boxers, weightlifters, cyclists, and seven track and field athletes — as they sailed to England that summer. They were after all representing a just-independent India and were determined to show their former colonial masters what they were capable of.

“We had great hopes in Henry Ribello, our triple jump champion, also an old Baldwin school boy,” he said. Ribello, however, was made to stand for 40 minutes in the cold waiting for the results of the previous event to be announced. “All of a sudden, the organisers told him to take the first jump. We were all so used to taking orders from the British in those days, you know. He jumped without warming up and tore his muscle.”

Eric qualified in the quarter finals, and finished fifth in the semi-finals. In fact, he did not return with the Indian contingent as by then he had already been chosen for a Rhodes Fellowship.

He read Economics at Christ Church.

Eric Prabhakar returned to India to join Burma Shell. He later worked for the Carborundum Universal Ltd, finally joining UNESCO as head of its education unit for Asia till his retirement in 1985.He became president of the Tamil Nadu Athletic Association and vice-president of the All India Athletic Association.

He has written four books — his autobiography, a historical novel set in the three decades prior to the 1857 Rebellion, a training manual on athletics for the National Book Trust, and a biography of his mother.

An occasion he warmly remembers is his interview with Jesse Owens, the legendary American athlete, on All India Radio in 1955.

“No more books. I have given away my computer to my grand-daughter,” says the active 83-year-old former sportsman and administrator, who moved with his wife recently to Bangalore from Chennai. Competitive sport, however, remains his “abiding interest”.

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India’s first Oxford Blue

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