British broadcasting celebrity and all-round intellectual Stephen Fry normally presents the Bafta film awards, with barbed jokes aimed at self-important Hollywood stars hogging front row seats.
But there was none of that on Thursday when he announced that Ranjitsinh Disale, a 31-year-old from Maharashtra, was the winner of the $1-million “Global Teacher Prize 2020”.
Speaking from the Natural History Museum in London in a virtual ceremony, Fry fetched the customary sealed envelope from his inside pocket and read: “The winner of the Global Teacher Prize 2020 is Ranjit Disale from India.”Fry, who read English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, could not resist displaying his classical education, declaring: “I can hear the voice of my Latin teacher from a very different age that you are primus inter pares -– first among equals.”
That was after Fry had been taken aback when Disale revealed he should share half his prize money with the other nine shortlisted teachers.
To well-read cricket fans, the event would have brought together two famous names from the game’s Golden Age. K.S. Ranjitsinhji (Ranji) and C.B. Fry, among the best batsmen of their time, had during their stint with Sussex in the 1890s and 1900s been known as much for their friendship as for the skill with which they put bowlers to sword.
