This Day, 1985: The Vanishing Act Of India's Second Oldest Test Debutant Who Was Also A Tennis Ace

It was a quiet Tuesday morning, 15 October 1985, when Cotah Ramaswamy, then the oldest living Test cricketer for India, walked out of his Adyar residence in Madras.

As it happened, nothing was heard from him after that, as he vanished without a trace. The abrupt and chilling disappearance of a man whose life was a brilliant mosaic of sport and academia remains one of Indian cricket’s most profound and poignant mysteries.

Ramaswamy’s disappearance, going by the news reports from those days, was not splashed across the papers. Rumours of sightings surfaced occasionally, but nothing concrete ever emerged. His fate became a haunting footnote in history.

So confused was the record that the venerable Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack listed him as “presumed dead” from 1988 to 1991. When doubts were raised, the entry was removed in 1992, only to be reinstated in 1996. In more recent editions, this sporting enigma is simply listed with a date of demise: January 1990. The man who made history on the field faded into the books with an asterisk attached to his name, as it were.

Before his dramatic exit from public life, Cotah Ramaswamy, or Ramu as he was widely known, built a life of phenomenal achievement. He earned the rare and glittering distinction of being a double India international. He represented the country not just in cricket but also in tennis. This elite club features only four Indians: the legendary hockey player and cricketer M. J. Gopalan, S. M. Hadi, who played for India in tennis and in an unofficial Test match in 1936 against Australia, and, curiously, cricketer Yuzvendra Chahal, who once represented India in the World Youth Chess Championship.

The Gentleman from the First Family of Madras Cricket

Cotah Ramaswamy was born in Madras on 16 June 1896, into a family whose story ran parallel to that of the city itself. His ancestors were among the early Dubashes, the powerful Indian intermediaries who served as translators, traders, and negotiators for the British East India Company in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over generations, the Cotah and Naidu families rose to prominence not merely through wealth, but through a cultivated blend of education, civic leadership, and patronage of sport.

By the time Ramaswamy was born, the family name carried an aura of both privilege and public service. His father, M. Buchi Babu Naidu, already a respected Dubash to the Parry Company, had channelled his influence towards nurturing native talent in cricket, a game that had until then been the preserve of the colonial elite.

The Buchi Babu household in Royapettah was a microcosm of early modern Madras: cultured, disciplined, and cosmopolitan. It entertained visiting Englishmen, employed private tutors in music and mathematics, and, in the courtyard, turned cricket into a civilisational calling.

Buchi Babu Naidu, later known reverently as the Father of South Indian Cricket, founded the Madras United Club (MUC) in the late nineteenth century as a defiant space for Indian cricketers who were barred from the white-only Madras Cricket Club. The annual Buchi Babu Tournament, still played, was his gift to Madras cricket, a carnival that continues to announce the arrival of a new season in these parts.

Ramaswamy’s brother, Balliah Naidu, was also a highly regarded cricketer. For some time, the two brothers were known as the Bhat Brothers. Adding a unique layer to his personal history, Ramaswamy was given in adoption to his maternal grandfather’s family, which is why his family name (Cotah) differed from that of his brothers.

Courts before Cricket

Before cricket became his signature, tennis was young Ramaswamy’s first calling. He picked up the racquet in his teens, learning the sport from British officers and returning servicemen who frequented the city’s colonial courts.

Madras, even in the 1910s, was a tennis stronghold. Its dry air, open verandas, and Anglo-Indian social life made the game a fashionable pursuit among the elite.

Ramaswamy’s elegant footwork and calm court demeanour soon set him apart, and his controlled serve-and-volley game was admired for its precision and grace. While studying at Cambridge University, he earned a “half blue” and then a full “Cambridge Blue” for tennis in 1921.

At Cambridge, he incidentally won a doubles tournament partnering S. M. Hadi, the other double international from India. Strange are the ways of destiny.

Ramaswamy’s international tennis career climaxed in 1922 when he represented India in the Davis Cup alongside the Fayzee brothers. India defeated Romania in the first round, and Ramaswamy played a pivotal role in the doubles, winning both his matches, including a formidable five-set victory against the Spanish pair of Comte de Gomar and Flaquer, who went on to be Wimbledon doubles finalists the following year.

That same year, he competed in the Wimbledon Championships, reaching the second round. His skills were recognised across England, and he won several tournaments there and in the United States, where he toured at the invitation of Yale University.

The Cricket Story

As mentioned earlier, Ramaswamy grew up in a household where cricket was not a pastime but an identity. The Naidu family’s Chepauk compound, with its home-built nets and verandah pitches, nurtured some of the earliest Indian cricketers. Playing the game was inevitable for him.

He turned out to be an elegant left-handed batsman, full of poise and panache.

His place in Indian cricket history rests on a brief but remarkable interlude. When India toured England in 1936, a crisis of injuries and logistics led to his sudden call-up. Ramaswamy, who happened to be on academic duty there, was conveniently co-opted into the team despite not being in the best phase of his sporting career.

There were also murmurs that the Telugu-origin captain, Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram, was impressed with a player who shared similar roots.

At 40 years and 9 months, he became the second-oldest Test debutant for India (after Rustomji Jamshedji), walking out in the Lord’s sunshine to face Gubby Allen’s England. Those who saw him play spoke of his classical footwork and unhurried grace, traits that belonged to an earlier aesthetic of cricket.

Ramaswamy played two Tests against England and scored 170 runs in four innings at an impressive average of 56.66. He made 60 in his debut innings at Manchester and followed it with a polished 40, proving that class knows no calendar. His debut was less about ambition and more about availability.

A bit earlier, in 1934, when the Ranji Trophy was inaugurated, Ramaswamy turned out for Madras in the first-ever match of the tournament’s history against Mysore. It was a single-day affair, and Madras triumphed by an innings and 23 runs. Ramaswamy was the top-scorer of the match with 26 in Madras’s total of 130.

The Man Who Belonged to Another Time

Later, as a manager and selector, he continued to shape Indian cricket from the sidelines. His insights carried both academic rigour and old-school modesty.

He was among the first to articulate the idea of “cricketing temperament” in print through his pioneering memoir Ramblings of a Cricket Addict (1967), one of the earliest autobiographies by an Indian cricketer. In its pages, he wrote with self-deprecation and restraint, offering glimpses into a vanished sporting world.

Ramaswamy’s influence extended beyond the boundary rope. He was a dedicated academic, serving as a professor of agronomy at the University of Madras. In this role, he mentored the future father of India’s Green Revolution, M. S. Swaminathan, teaching him not just the intricacies of agriculture but also the finer points of cricket.

In 1928, Ramaswamy married Lakshmi Chaya Devi, his companion through a life that blended sport, service, and quiet grace. They had two sons, Ram Swarup and Lakshman Swarup, and a daughter, Shantha Devi. Ram Swarup, the elder, kept alive the family’s sporting lineage, representing both Madras and Andhra in first-class cricket.

In his later years, Ramaswamy lived quietly in Adyar, surrounded by books and the soft rustle of memories. Then, on that fateful October morning, he was gone. No note, no disturbance, only the silence of absence.

Some believed he had wandered away in confusion. Others whispered that he had chosen to leave life the way he had lived it, unobtrusively.

The story of a character like Cotah Ramaswamy resists neat endings. He was both patrician and patriot, athlete and agronomist, scholar and sportsman. He belonged to an age when sport was pursued for honour, not endorsement, when even a disappearance could retain dignity.

Perhaps that is how he wanted to be remembered: not as the man who vanished, but as one who walked gently out of history, leaving behind a line so faint and refined that only those who truly loved the game could still trace it.