Graeme A. Murray One of the fastest bowlers that I saw while I was at Mount Hermon School was Clive Shears of the Mt. Hermon Teacher’s Training College. I faced his bowling in School vs. Teachers Training College matches and I can verify that he was very fast. When the Edinburgh Shield team [consisting of staff and students from the school and TTC] for that year was selected, Clive Shears was on the list since he was also a good batsman. By the time the first match was played, players from the other teams had a fair idea of the bowlers from the various teams in the tournament from the ‘friendly’ games that had preceded. As a result, Clive Shears was known to be fast. In our first game of the tournament, we fielded first. As many batsmen will do when facing a fast bowler, the batsman at the crease stood a good six inches out of the crease. The dual expectation being that the wicket-keeper would stand well back for a fast bowler and therefore the batsman could afford to move away from the safety of the crease and get closer to the pitch of the good-length ball. Mr. Murray, who always played wicket-keeper for the Edinburgh team, saw this as a stumping opportunity. Clive had started his run-up to bowl when he noticed that Mr. Murray was standing right behind the stumps or ‘on the stumps’ as a wicket-keeper would do for the much slower spin bowlers. Clive stopped his run-up and asked to talk to Mr. Murray. When he got close enough he said, very politely, “Sir, I’m a fast bowler. I think you should move back”. Knowing Clive like I did, I think he was mostly concerned that Mr. Murray would get hurt. In a style all his own, Mr. Murray said, “You think you’re fast, eh? Get out there and bowl and stop wasting time”. More than a little affronted, Clive sent down a scorcher. The batsman, barely had time to react when the ball was in Mr. Murray’s right glove and the bales were off the wickets! The batsman couldn’t believe his eyes. Clive’s eyes nearly popped out of his head! If you know how hard a cricket ball is – even through wicket-keeping gloves – you will understand why wicket-keepers pull their hands back to absorb the impact of a fast delivery. Mr. Murray would collect Clive’s fastest with one hand that he would just hang out in the line of the ball and then flick the ball over to the short mid-off fielder – calling out adjustments to the field placing while the ball was still in the air. No batsman took up a stance outside the crease for the remainder of the game. They all had their back feet very respectfully planted inside the crease when they faced up! For me, a lot of who Mr. Murray was in Mount Hermon had to do with sport. He would frequently show up at practices for cricket and football. The whole school would know when he was at a game or a practice. His voice would bellow across the field, “Come on, get that ball! You’re running like an old woman!” It would resound off the trees and all the way down to Fern Hill, “My mother can throw harder than that! This is cricket – not Netball.” On the cold, February and March afternoons when we had cricket practice, Mr. Murray sometimes showed up with a bat and a couple of hard cricket balls. He would hit those balls to us at the other end of the field swinging the bat with one hand as if it was a feather-light badminton racquet. When that ball got to us at the other end of the field – it had some serious ‘juice’ on it. God help you if you took your hands away from the ball and let it pass – or tried to stop it with your feet. He would then proceed to send several balls, hit even harder, in your direction till he was satisfied that you had overcome your instinct for self-preservation. Then, you had to throw the ball straight back to the school wicket-keeper who stood at his side. It had to reach the wicket-keeper fast and it had to get to him just above wicket height. Any players whose returns that fell short got the ‘full treatment’ of several harder balls to field and return. Once, I thought I had done quite well at practice and was feeling a little smug. I must have had that look on my face as we all stood around joking with Mr. Murray because next thing I knew, he threw one of the balls he held in his hands up in the air and said to me, “Catch!”. While the ball was nearing the top of its curve at about fifteen feet and before it started coming down, he tossed another one straight at my stomach! A good cricketer would have caught at least one of the balls – maybe. I saw the second ball out of the corner of my eye and took my eyes off the first one. I was too late to catch the second one and one second after it hit me in the gut, the other one landed on my shoulder where I was doubled up in a heap on the field. It was so well executed that I had to join all the others as they cracked up laughing and Mr. Murray said, “I’ll make a cricketer of you yet”. At inter-school games, he was an ardent Mt. Hermon supporter and quite often the brunt of his booming voice would be borne by the umpires and referees. “Hey! Referee! That was a foul! Open the rule book before you referee a game!” “Ah – come on! That wasn’t leg before wicket!! Get yourself some glasses!” Once a year there would be a Staff vs. Students football game to kick off the football season. Mr. Murray liked to play goalie for the Staff. All the tough guys in the first XI looked at the match as an opportunity to go man-on-man with Mr. Murray. All of them came off worse for the encounter. A goalie has a very different perspective on a football game than any of the attackers. The approaching ball and the approaching forwards are all in his field of vision. There’s plenty of time to decide what to do while keeping an eye on the action. At every game there was the usual procession of first XI players bouncing off Mr. Murray and landing in a heap at his feet while he tossed the ball to his left-wing well beyond the half-line. And then he would turn to the boy on the ground and say something like, “What’re you doing down there, you ninny! Get up and play!” Of course, the whole school, including the fallen player, would be laughing. It was another of our traditions. We had to find out if the boss was as tough as he had been the previous year!! He always came out higher in our esteem after the game. 1978 was my first year as a teacher in Mt. Hermon and Mr. Murray’s last as Principal. He was still playing cricket and he even played part of the Staff vs. Students football game that year. I got to see a different side of Mr. Murray that year. I got to see him as an administrator in the school. I got to see him as a public figure in the town of Darjeeling. On a farewell trip to Gangtok late in the year, I got to see the abiding respect and adulation that he received from ex-students, some not much younger than he was. It is difficult to describe what it was about Mr. Murray that made him so special. Here’s what I can describe. He was about 6ft. 2in in height. He displaced significant water when he dived into the swimming pool. When he shook your hand you remembered the hand-shake for a couple of days. He had clear, piercing blue eyes that seemed to dance with either amusement or just sheer enjoyment of life. He barrelled along wherever he went. He walked like he was on a downhill slope and would frequently shout things at you as he was passing, “I heard you swam a good 75 lengths, eh! Well, done”, and then, before you could thank him, he was gone around the corner. He looked flat-footed and if you didn’t know him, you might be forgiven for thinking him clumsy. For those of us who knew him, however, it was enough for us that he was good enough a sportsman to have made quite a name for himself as a Rugby player in the land of the All Blacks – possibly the premier Rugby-playing nation in the world. Also, we had the testimony of those who had bounced off him and onto the field in many a football game. There wasn’t a weak bone in his body – except that I hear he liked to eat well and often paid for it with bilious attacks! If he had to hand out a reprimand or punishment he did it without any anger. He was stern – so you knew he meant what he was saying and you didn’t want to find out what he’d do if you didn’t shape up, but there was never any anger. The one time he pulled me up in his office I left feeling like he had just given me some friendly advice but knowing from the steel in those blue eyes that what he had said had been a command. Every Sunday morning was Inspection time in Fern Hill. In the late ’60s and early ’70s when I was a senior school student, many of the boys wanted long hair and long side-burns like the Beatles. School rules were that there had to be a gap of two fingers between your hair and the top of your collar at the back. It could not cover more than half your ears and your sideburns could not extend too close to the bottom of your ear-lobe. We would all be busy in Fern Hill – tidying up our beds and lockers and making sure you could see your reflection in our shoes. And our hair . . . the lengths to which some of the boys would go to make it look like their hair met regulations. When the school Jeep came up the road towards the dorms trailing a cloud of dust or splashing at top speed through the monsoon puddles, the word would go out – “Aayo Bhuntay!!” About fifty out of the seventy or so boys in Fern Hill would try and comb their hair away from their collars and then, when Mr. Murray walked into the dorm – you should have seen how these boys tried to elongate their necks and contort their heads forward to raise the level of the hair above their collars at the back. So – there we all are craning our necks to keep our hair long for another week as Bhuntay walks down the line, pen in hand. Like everything else he did, his inspection was like a whirlwind passing through, leaving behind many ruffled feathers. All over the dorm, boys would be vigorously rubbing their cheeks where Mr. Murray had drawn a horizontal line with his ball-point pen indicating where those side-burns should be shortened to. All over Fern Hill boys would be settling their hair because Mr. Murray had messed it up while he was telling them it was too long and that it was time for a haircut and that they looked like Hippies. You have to remember – two of Mr. Murray’s fingers were probably as thick as three of our fingers – so when he measured the gap between your hair and your collar there had to be significant clearance for those fingers! If you failed the test – he would draw a line on your neck where your hair had to be shortened to! The boys who ‘escaped’ laughed at the boys who ‘got it’ from Bhuntay. They deserved the ridicule, of course, because they were usually the ones who spent hours in front of the mirrors – ‘Grooming’ and then looking at their hair from every possible angle that the girls might look at it from – as if the girls had nothing better to do – huh? I’m telling you – some of them would have put even the most particular of girls to shame with the amount of time they spent on their hair. I could mention names – but what would be the point – most of them are probably bald by now from all that extra combing!!!  And, besides, this is about Mr. Murray. I know that he commanded respect wherever he went. Students and teachers were, for the most part, more than happy to do what he said. He was respected by the non-teaching Staff of the school. Students and teachers from all the Darjeeling schools recognized and respected him. The extent of the recognition and respect he commanded in Darjeeling is witnessed in the fact that the nickname by which we knew him in school was also how he was refered to all over Darjeeling. ‘Bhuntay’ was so much more than just a Mt. Hermon phenomenon. The people of Darjeeling took pride in him and embraced him as one of their own. Mr. Murray is part of a heritage of which Hermonites can be proud. The many years he spent serving the school epitomize the values that inspired him. He loved life, Darjeeling and Mt. Hermon, but more than all that he loved God who had put it in his heart to go to India rather than follow a more financially rewarding career in New Zealand. Mr. Graeme A. Murray, servant of the living God, Mount Hermon hails you and esteems you highly. Be blessed as you have blessed. As you have found favour with man, so may you find favour with Almighty God.   By : ROBIN SENGUPTA         Graduated : Date : 27/6/2003 5:23