Wisden India EXTRA Issue 10

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

INDIA AT 500 T H E J O U R N E Y S O FA R

1932-2016 HIGHLIGHTS

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

IN-DEPTH FEATURES

RECORDS AND TRIVIA

WHAT’S INSIDE

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

TEN MEN, TEN MAGNIFICENT MEMORIES

The highlights of India’s journey to 500 Tests, narrated by those who made it all happen | 32

BEST SEAT TO WITNESS HISTORY

“A special occasion” - the story of watching Nayudu and Jardine, Nissar and Nichols from a sofa at Bombay Gymkhana

GLOOM TO GLORY: THE RESURRECTION YEARS In the aftermath of the fixing crisis emerged a league of extraordinary gentlemen, leaving the health of cricket in India at its best Manoj Narayan - 04

Vasant Raiji | 43

THE TWO GREAT TRADITIONS

The clichés were established early in India’s Test journey, which has also been filled with glorious uncertainties

Anil Kumble | 08

AN INDIAN XI FOR THE AGES

PERFECT TEN

Wisden India’s R Kaushik, one of a select few to have seen an Indian victory in every Test-playing country, takes us through those matches | 46

Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar, Kapil, Kumble – an all-time line-up of breathtaking audacity | 12

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY FROM CONNOR WILLIAMS

Despite Dalmiya’s best effort, the Centurion game that was the Baroda batsman’s only India appearance wasn’t accorded official status

Saurabh Somani | 51 THEM OF THE SPRIGHTLY 80S

EDEN GARDENS CHANGED OUR MINDSET AS A TEAM: VVS LAXMAN The wristy stylist reflects on his battle with the Aussies, his two defining knocks and much else

R Kaushik | 19

SEHWAG WAS A GENIUS WHO CHANGED INDIAN CRICKET: KAPIL DEV

Former India captain picks his favourites – Test wins, batsmen and performances – and looks back on his special 432nd

Shamya Dasgupta | 25

INDIAN TEST HISTORY - A REWIND Nisha Shetty | 34

They might have played just five Tests between them, but these octogenarians are trail-blazers in every sense of the term

TEN TO THE POWER OF KUMBLE “You plot and plan dismissals, but no, I didn’t have a sixth sense,” says the man who created history at Feroze Shah Kotla with 10 for 74

R Kaushik | 29

Sidhanta Patnaik | 55 FROM DRAVID TO KUMBLE VIA KAPIL – INDIA’S IMPACT HIGHS

The expected names feature in Impact Index’s list of India’s bestof-all-time, but there are a couple of surprises as well

Impact Index | 64

CK NAYUDU – THE IRON MAN OF INDIAN CRICKET

The Holkar legend was a stern disciplinarian, was as tough as they came, and played with grace, grandeur and bravado

Chandu Borde | 70

Edited by: Manoj Narayan Designed by: Ashish Mohanty Additional content by: Dileep V, Sidhanta Patnaik Pictures published courtesy Getty Images, AFP and Wisden India Archive.

4 INDIA AT 500

Gloom to glory: The resurrection years

In the aftermath of the fixing crisis emerged a league of extraordinary gentlemen, leaving the health of cricket in India at its best

MANOJ NARAYAN

I

will commit suicide rather than take a bribe. Who wants money? Take all my money,” Kapil Dev had wept on television back in May 2000. All these years later, that image is still etched in the memory, from a time in life when sport and its magic was just beginning to take root.

The memories aren’t many, as they are unlikely to be for a ten year old. Just that one image. One was far too young to understand the severity of the issue, but from my grandmother’s attempts to simplify concepts of honour and betrayal, I understood the seriousness of match-fixing, which had engulfed the sport at the start of the new millennium.

Kapil was cleared of any wrongdoing, but in December 2000, Mohammad Azharuddin, the former captain of the national side, was banned for life. Ajay Jadeja, Ajay Sharma, Manoj Prabhakar and Ali Irani, the longserving team physio, were slapped with bans of varying degrees by the Board of Control for Cricket in India. It seemed then that trust was something only the innocent would buy into. On the whole, the nation felt cheated.

The public became increasingly cynical.

The authenticity of all the big leaps taken in recent years was questioned. Cricket’s very core was being targeted, the ramifications irreversibly damaging.

The rise of the sport in India is a remarkable, unparalleled story. There’s romance – and

5

THE HONOURABLE MEN: Victories were made sweeter by the fact that they were fashioned by genuine, nice guys.

nose-wrinkling scepticism – at the thought of maharajas leading the side in the pre-war era. After that first Test in 1932, it took India nearly 20 years to register a Test victory. And legendary figures were involved in the coming together of a disparate bunch of people who believed they represented regional interests more than national ones.

“In practice we were only a group of several different states where the people were so diverse that each one spoke a different language, wore different attire, ate different kinds of food and above all thought differently too,” wrote CD Gopinath, the only surviving member of the side that won India’s first Test, in the Wisden India Almanack 2013. “When these diversities were put together as a team, their differences were all too evident.”

From there, to create an identity for the team and instil a spirit of togetherness was one of the first challenges that needed to be met. Progress was gradual until fate thrust Tiger Pataudi into the hot seat at 21. His brand of aggressive captaincy was a precursor to what was to come, the first overseas series triumph in New Zealand in 1967 a harbinger of gladder tidings.

The 1970s was the decade of spin, and maestros emerged to form the BediChandrasekhar-Prasanna-Venkataraghavan axis. And with it came successes overseas – in 1971, India secured maiden series wins in the Caribbean and in England. Home success slowly became more frequent, and more and more world-beaters sprang forth, primary among them Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil. The World Cup success of 1983 emphatically

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

6 INDIA AT 500

THE GAME CHANGER: Eden Gardens 2001 brought India back from the gates of doom.

made cricket the No. 1 sport in the country, and by the 1990s, cricket had become more than a pastime. The economy opened up in 1991, broadcasters sensed a cash cow in cricket, and television ensured cricket’s reach spread to second and third-tier cities.

You didn’t need to be physically present at the venue to watch the team anymore, and the stature of the side grew.

It was a story as much of sporting growth as it was a reflection of a nation evolving from the shadows of colonial rule. But the matchfixing saga was not just about betrayal of the sport and its fans. It undermined the whole journey, and all the various factors that went into the making of cricket in India.

A series of epochal events went a long way towards restoring the faith of the fans, none

more so than that victory in Kolkata in 2001.

From a point of no-return, India rode on VVS Laxman’s 281 and his 376-run partnership with Rahul Dravid while following on, before Harbhajan Singh ran through the Australians to fashion one of the most extraordinary wins in Test history. “It changed our mindset as a team,” Laxman had told Wisden India in 2013. “It instilled in us the belief that we must never give up. If 167 (in Sydney, January 2000) changed the way I viewed cricket, 281 altered the cricket world’s perception of India.”

That match would prove to be a statement, to the rest of the country and to the world, that this Indian team was made of sterner stuff, that not all eggs were rotten. There were series wins in Pakistan (2004), the West Indies (2006) and England (2007), along with fine performances in Australia, South Africa, and everywhere in between.

The period wasn’t without jitters, of course, but nothing more so than normal in a team environment.

More importantly, this Indian side would just never give up. Dravid and Laxman made a habit of grinding out the opposition with gritty middle-order revivals. Tendulkar went on a record-breaking spree. Virender Sehwag delighted at the top of the order, and at the other end, the likes of Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan ensured the bowling kept pace. Ganguly led the team with aggression, instilling a much-needed boost of confidence

7

and spirit. Dravid took over with equal if not more success and then passed the reins on to Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who plotted the team’s progress to the top of the Test rankings.

The Eden Test has to remain the turning point in Indian cricket. Until then, India had won 63 of 337 Tests played – a win percentage of 18.69. After that game, they have won 66 of 166, which translates to a win percentage of 40.74%.

Victories were made all the sweeter by the fact they were fashioned by honourable gentlemen that upheld the glorious traditions of the sport. “They were big stars but they were nice men. They were humble men. All of them – Sourav, Rahul, Laxman, Kumble, (Javagal) Srinath and Tendulkar himself.

There was never an issue. The youngsters coming in had fantastic role models to look up to and they all had successful careers because they were lucky to have the role models they had,” said John Wright, the Indian coach in the first half of the 2000s.

It was the best of times, so soon after the worst of times. And, without any doubt, it brought India soaring back from the gates of doom.

Now, 16 years on, with India’s 500th Test imminent, the health of the sport in the country has never been better. You look at Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, so happy to be

expressive, so confident of themselves, and it’s evident that cricket has more than just survived the gloom. It has come through stronger, more aware of the traps and dodgy elements, and more determined to keep them at bay.

The Eden Test has to remain the turning point in Indian cricket. Until then, India had won 63 of 337 Tests played – a win percentage of 18.69. After that game, they have won 66 of 166, which translates to a win percentage of 40.74%.

“This is (the) new Team India. We have everything it takes to win away from India as well. We are young, aggressive and play fearless cricket. No matter who we play or where we play, we will still be aggressive. This team is going to go a long way and achieve a lot of results,” said Rahul recently.

Lending shape and direction to the new generation are influential members of the golden generation. Kumble is the head coach of India, Dravid is in charge of the youth setup. Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman are part of the BCCI’s cricket advisory committee.

Having all played their parts in resurrecting Indian cricket, they have now embarked on a journey to lay out the roadmap for the future.

Just how different would it all have been had the fixing scandal not happened?

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

8 INDIA AT 500

The two great traditions

The clichés were established early in India’s Test journey, which has also been filled with glorious uncertainties

ANIL KUMBLE

I

n 80 years of Test cricket, a country’s national character pretty much reveals itself. You can join the dots and see patterns in hindsight that may not have been quite so obvious in the early days. Yet, in India’s case, the cliches were established early. Although the first great spinner, Vinoo Mankad, made his debut only a decade and a half after India’s first Test at Lord’s in 1932, C S Nayudu, a legspinner who made his debut in India’s third Test, hinted at what would become the country’s biggest strength in the future.

Already by the 1930s, the prototype for the Kapil Devs, Javagal Srinaths and Zaheer Khans had played for India – Mohammed Nissar, and the brothers Amar Singh and

L Ramji. The big-hitting opener, Mushtaq Ali, the spiritual father of Virender Sehwag, as well as Vijay Merchant, who led to Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid, had already made an appearance.

Over the years, the wristy strokeplayer in the Ranji mould (although Ranji never played for India and neither did his nephew Duleep) and the spinner, both classical and unorthodox have established themselves as the main strains in Indian cricket. From Mankad Ghulam Ahmed-Subhash Gupte down to Bishan Bedi-Erapalli PrasannaChandrasekhar-Venkataraghavan and beyond, spin bowling has been more closely associated with India than any other art in the game. I am proud and honoured to

9

THE TWEAK MASTERS: Spin bowling has been more closely associated with India than any other art form.

belong to this great tradition, but despite hailing from Bangalore which produced both Prasanna and Chandrasekhar, there was no inevitability about this.

I began, in fact, as a fast bowler, and it was my brother Diinesh who advised me to attempt legspin. I learnt later that Chandra too toyed with the idea of bowling fast, and even Bishan Bedi nursed the ambition to knock batsmen’s heads off with fast bowling after watching Roy Gilchrist in action.

Amazingly, within a couple of generations, the Karnataka team had all the elements of the national cliche, and at the highest level.

Prasanna and Chandrasekhar apart, there was Gundappa Viswanath and then Rahul Dravid, and in Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad they had the finest pair of opening bowlers operating in the country. When history and talent come together like that, it is not surprising that Karnataka won the national championship regularly.

Viswanath and Dravid (and Syed Kirmani too, in ODI) had already led India when I inherited the job. By then the national team was made up of professionals who knew their job, and were looked after by a team of professionals who knew theirs.

Gone was the amateur
approach that had

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

10 10 INDIA AT 500

Pataudi’s team had no coach, but Ganguly found an ally in coach John Wright and as a team we actually plotted our elevation to the No. 1 slot in the world.

Leading India was an honour, and I will always remember Bishan Bedi’s message to me during the ‘‘Monkeygate’’ crisis in Australia. “As a captain,” he wrote, “take a decision you will be proud of when you look back on history.”

INDIA’S GOLDEN AGE: In the 2000s, India won Tests in nearly every country they played in.

ruled many decades of India’s cricket, with Maharajahs captaining as if by divine right, and favourites playing in the eleven because of services rendered off-field. Sure, there were some dodgy selections – no selection is likely to satisfy everybody – but the decisions were not based on personalities.

The change was first apparent only some three decades after Test debut when Tiger Pataudi taught a group of disparate people to think as ‘‘Indians’’ and not as representatives of particular regions or religions. Another three decades later came Sourav Ganguly who, powered by a strong and enthusiastic team, led India to victories abroad consistently.

It was the golden age of Indian cricket.

We won Test matches in every country including Pakistan and South Africa where we had never won before. In India we were nearly unbeatable. Our batsmen scored more double and triple centuries than at any other time. Our bowlers went past the 400, 500, even the 600-wicket mark.

I am honoured to have been part of the best phase of Indian cricket, to have played alongside Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman, Dravid and Ganguly, Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Zaheer Khan, Sehwag and Harbhajan and Dhoni, each a great performer and together a team that took India to the top of the Test table. I watched Sachin make the first of his international hundreds; it was in my debut Test at Old Trafford in 1990.

All this was not even a dream in my mind while I watched my first-ever Test. That was the Pakistan match in Bangalore where Sunil Gavaskar made a stunning 96 on a rank

11

THE LONG WAIT: Kumble scored his maiden Test century in his 118th Test match. It was worth it.

turner, and Maninder Singh claimed wickets for India only to be overshadowed by the Pakistani spinners Abdul Qasim and Taufeeq Ahmed.

I was 16 or 17, inspired by the likes of Kapil Dev and Maninder Singh, but without fantasising about playing for India. Perhaps there is a strong steak of a realist in me. It wasn’t until I was picked for an under-17 national camp that the remote possibility of actually going all the way entered my head.

The message first appeared consciously: I might play for India!

By then the cliches were in place. India were best known as the land of wristy batsmen and mystery spinners. I would have liked to be part of both traditions. But wristiness was

not the main feature of my batting. I had to wait till my 118th Test to make my maiden century, but it had been worth it. Better batsmen than I had gone through an entire career without a single century, after all!

It might take India a bit longer to play the next 38 matches to get to 500 than they did to get to the current 462. Or may be not. Statistics too is a game of glorious uncertainties.

Anil Kumble led India in 14 Test matches.

His 619 wickets include 10-74 in an innings against Pakistan. He is currently the Indian team’s coach.

This article originally appeared in the first edition of the Wisden India Almanack.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

12 INDIA AT 500

An Indian XI for the ages A grand total of 285 players, spread over 84 years and 499 Test matches. Several of those games and players not viewed at all, many of those years not spent on earth. How do you pick an all-time XI from this?

It is both an exciting and a humbling experience. There is a definite slant towards players of the last three or so decades, after live television allowed us to soak in their deeds at least second-hand, as there will perhaps inevitably be. After much brainstorming, several hours of discussions that ranged from the informed to the heated, and plenty of give and take, we at Wisden India have arrived at our all-time Indian Test XI. Selection is oftentimes a subjective exercise,

Gavaskar, Dravid, Tendulkar, Kapil, Kumble – an all-time line-up of breathtaking audacity

not driven only by cold statistics and numbers.

Several legends have missed out because, as Sandeep Patil, the chairman of selectors, recently pointed out, only 11 can form a team. Many of this squad were unanimous choices, some not so, but this is a squad that can do serious damage. By almost unspoken agreement, active players weren’t seriously considered, though a couple of names did crop up more than once.

Here is our XI that has several men who have led the country with distinction, with another former skipper as the designated 12th man.

You are, of course, free to dissect and analyse, and come up with your own XI.

13

SUNIL GAVASKAR

TEST RECORD BATTING: 125-214-16-10122-236*-51.12-34-45108-0 BOWLING: 125-380-206-1-1/34-1/34-206.00-0-0 CAPTAINCY: 47-9-8-30-0

Pretty much the first name for obvious reasons, and not only because he is an opening batsman. The numbers roll off the tongue easily – 774 runs in his first Test series, at 21, in the Caribbean. The first man to pass Don Bradman’s long-standing mark of 29 hundreds.

The Edmund Hillary of the 10,000-run club. Sunil Gavaskar was the first Indian batsman in the television era to fire a huge salvo for Test batsmanship. Till he was at the crease, there was a sense of calm assurance, the feeling that all was well. His technique was exemplary, as was his ability to concentrate hard for long periods and to shut out everything around him. He could attack too, like he did during his glorious 221 at The Oval in 1979 as India nearly chased down aa total of 438, and at the Kotla against West Indies in 1983, when he brought up his 29th Test century at better than a run a ball. As a captain, if he was defensive, it was because of the resources he had – or, more importantly, did not have – at his disposal. He was also a wonderful slipper, gobbling up catches with the same stylish elegance with which he clipped the ball through midwicket. A batsman for all seasons, the master of Little Masters.

VIRENDER SEHWAG The fire to Gavaskar’s ice. The man who redefined the art of batting against the new ball. The one who saw opportunities where others might have seen challenges, who saw gaps when others spotted fielders. India’s first, and only, triple centurion, two times over. A converted opener who marked his Test debut with a magnificent century from No. 6 in Bloemfontein. A packed middle order meant the only way Sehwag could keep his place in the Test XI was to move up the order, a switch that suited both his game and his personality brilliantly. In his first innings as opener, he made 84 at Lord’s, and followed it up with 106 in the next Test in Nottingham to showcase his adaptability, and an aggressive approach that teams around the world came to fear for the next decade. Few batsmen have done more to shape the destinies of Test matches. Sehwag was also a more than handy, classical offspinner, taking crucial wickets and providing vital breakthroughs to complement the specialist bowlers and offer the captain an entirely different attacking dimension with the ball too.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

TEST RECORD BATTING: 104-180-6-8586-319-49.34-23-32-91-0 BOWLING: 104-3731-1894-40-5/104-5/118-47.351-0 CAPTAINCY: 4-2-1-1-0

14 INDIA AT 500

RAHUL DRAVID

TEST RECORD BATTING: 164-286-32-13288-270-52-31-36-63210-0 BOWLING: 174-120-39-1-1/18-1/18-39.00-0-0 CAPTAINCY: 25-8-6-11-0

The undisputed, unchallenged No. 3, easily one of the greatest batsmen of all time. Technically sound, but even more resolute and strong mentally, with a penchant for standing up to the meanest quick bowlers away from home, and producing one epic after another.

His solid presence at one-drop allowed Sehwag ahead of him, and those below him in the batting order, to paint the pretty pictures. The artistes flourished around the artisan, which meant that as the 2000s developed, India always had enough overseas runs on the board for the bowlers to attack with. Unfairly nicknamed The Wall, Dravid was never the stone-waller, though batting time and wearing the bowlers down came almost naturally to him. He has been immortalised as the second wheel in that epic Eden stand with VVS Laxman against Australia in 2001, but Dravid played the lead role in many an overseas triumph, notably at Headingley in 2002, Adelaide the following year, and Kingston in 2006 as well as 2011. As captain, he masterminded India to series wins in the Caribbean (2006) and England (2007), and signed out from Test cricket as its most prolific catcher, helping Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, in particular, boost their wickets column.

SACHIN TENDULKAR A record 15,921 runs, a whopping 51 centuries, the only cricketer with 200 Test caps, more than 40% of all Test matches played by his country. A shoo-in for all all-time XIs, across countries and generations. Tendulkar burst forth as a baby-faced, chubby-cheeked, slightly plump, curly-mopped teenager, and proceeded to take the best bowlers apart with minimum fuss. His match-saving century at Old Trafford in 1990, in his second series, justified the hype, and he had the critics and pundits eating out of his hands with a memorable century in Perth on the tour of Australia in 1991-92. At every stage of his career, Tendulkar was burdened with the massive pressure of expectations, and at every stage, he met them in spectacular fashion. Strong on both sides of the wicket, against pace and spin alike, and with a back-foot punch to die for, Tendulkar exemplified courage, character and sincerity. With the ball, he could do just about anything, his mesmeric mix of long-hops and unplayable deliveries as a legspin-googly bowler one of the great spectacles of the modern game. He never enjoyed captaining the country, often disappointed that he didn’t get the teams he wanted, but he was never shy of being in the captain’s ear with advice.

TEST RECORD BATTING: 200-329-33-15921-248*-53.78-51-68115-0 BOWLING: 200-4240-2492-46-3/10-3/14-54.170-0 CAPTAINCY: 25-4-9-12-0

15

VVS LAXMAN

TEST RECORD BATTING: 134-225-34-8781-281-45.97-17-56135-0 BOWLING: 134-324-126-2-1/2-1/2-63.00-0-0

He will always be synonymous with 281, the innings that changed not just his life, but also the landscape of Indian, even international cricket.

Through one epic, Laxman redefined the approach to enforcing the follow-on, and instilled a belief in the Indian team that was to stand them in exceptional stead in time to come. Laxman never played his cricket with an eye on numbers, though for someone with his skills, he should have done far better than just 17 hundreds from 134 matches.

However, he has been instrumental in more Indian Test wins than any other batsman, Sehwag and Dravid included, despite battling knee and back injuries at various stages during his career. In one purple patch between August and December 2010, he shaped victories at the P Sara Oval, in Mohali against Australia, and at Kingsmead. A master at batting with the lower order and getting them to perform above themselves, Laxman forged wonderful batting alliances with Dravid, Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and was an excellent catcher at second slip, standing beside Dravid at first. In another era, he would have made a superb captain too, but given the people he played alongside, that honour was to prove elusive till the end.

KAPIL DEV Until Kapil broke into the Test team as a 19 year old on the tour of Pakistan in 1978, India’s new-ball bowlers were essentially the precursors to the main course, basically taking the shine off the ball and setting the stage for the spin wizards to do their thing. Kapil changed all that, hurrying batsmen with express pace at the start of his career and then becoming a more rounded, swing-centric bowler with the passage of time and burgeoning workload. At home and overseas, he was both the stock and the shock bowler for the longest of times, manfully carrying the attack on his shoulders and supplanting Richard Hadlee in early 1994 as Test cricket’s highest wicket-taker.

With the bat, Kapil was a phenomenal talent, effortlessly switching gears and playing with an abandon that might have prevented him from being more prolific but certainly appealed to the masses. He was a wonderful mover across the turf and had an exceptional arm from the deep, though he was at home in any position and had the softest, most giving hands. A true allrounder’s allrounder, capable of being in the team solely as a batsman if he put his head to it, or solely as a bowler as evidenced by the numbers. His best Test moment as captain came in England in 1986 when India won the three-match series 2-0, and it was later that year too that Kapil was at the helm during only the second tied Test in cricket history, against Australia at Chepauk.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

TEST RECORD BATTING: 131-184-15-5248-163-31.05-8-27-64-0 BOWLING: 131-27740-12867-434-9/83-11/14629.64-23-2 CAPTAINCY: 34-4-7-22-1

16 INDIA AT 500

MAHENDRA SINGH DHONI (CAPT, WK)

TEST RECORD BATTING: 90-144-16-4876-224-38.09-6-33-25638 BOWLING: 90-96-67-0-N/A-N/A-0-0 CAPTAINCY: 60-27-18-15-0

Dhoni’s transformation from a rustic, long-haired biffer of the cricket ball to a suave, polished leader of men has been one of the more fascinating tales in Indian cricket. From the time he made his Test debut in December 2005, Dhoni made the big gloves his own, leaving the rest of the stumping fraternity to settle for crumbs. As he grew into Test cricket, Dhoni reshaped his batting too, though from time to time the innately dominant persona did make its presence felt. As a wicketkeeper, he was in a completely different league, especially when standing up the spinners. He redefined the art of keeping, his hands always moving forward and allowing him to pull off stumpings that otherwise might not have dared to dream of. Once he took over the captaincy towards the end of 2008, Dhoni led with dignity, even if occasionally he was defensive. Under him, India were swept 4-0 in England and then Australia in 2011-2012, but he presided over a difficult transition period that saw several legends of the game bid adieu, and several young guns arrive and quickly assert themselves.

In a team replete with several captains, nominating a skipper was a tough call. Dhoni shaded the rest largely because he has more Test wins than anyone else, and was the first to take India to the No. 1 Test ranking, in December 2009.

ANIL KUMBLE He was to bowling what Tendulkar was to batting, though in his own words, both Tendulkar and he always had plenty to prove – Tendulkar to live up to expectations and prove people right, Kumble to exceed expectations and prove people wrong. Having turned to legspin after having started off a medium pacer, Kumble relied on bounce and fizz as much as anything else for wickets early in his career, though a rotator cuff injury forced him to look for other weapons to retain his effectiveness. He thus came up with two googlies, each one more difficult to pick than the other, on his way to a rash of wickets in the second half of his career. With 619 scalps, he is third in the all-time list, only behind Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne. In February 1999, he took all 10 wickets in Pakistan’s second innings in the Kotla Test, only the second man after Jim Laker to have achieved that feat.

Kumble put a huge price on his wicket and enjoyed his hundred at The Oval in 2007 as much as any of his storied bowling accomplishments.

Captaincy came to him very late in his career, and just as well that it came when it did. On the fractious tour of Australia in 2007-08 with Monkeygate rearing its ugly head, Kumble moved from cricketer to statesman. Everything after that was mere icing on the cake.

TEST RECORD BATTING: 132-173-32-2506-110*-17.77-1-5-60-0 BOWLING: 132-40850-18355-619-10/74-14/14929.65-35-8 CAPTAINCY: 14-3-5-6-0

17

JAVAGAL SRINATH

TEST RECORD BATTING: 67-92-21-1009-76-14.21-0-4-22-0 BOWLING: 67-15104-7196-236-8/86-13/13230.49-10-1

Tall and rangy, and able to work up extreme pace with a whippy action that invariably brought the ball sharply in to the right-hand batsman, Srinath was a whiff of fresh air so far as Indian cricket was concerned.

He repeatedly disconcerted those used to getting on to the front foot to India’s new-ball attacks, hustling batsmen across the world even if it took him nearly three years since his debut to make his maiden Test appearance in India. With Manoj Prabhakar and Kapil in the mix and spin the dominant weapon of destruction at home, Srinath had to bide his time despite impressive overseas displays, but when he did get his chance, he immediately made it count by winning the Man of the Match award against West Indies in Mumbai in November 1994. A tireless performer who seldom lost his effectiveness despite miles in the legs, Srinath continued to be a key performer until his retirement in November 2002 when he perhaps still had a couple of years of Test cricket in him. He was a competent bat as evidenced by four half-centuries but clearly, he isn’t in this team for a few handy runs down the order.

ZAHEER KHAN A rare and precious commodity in Indian cricket, Zaheer’s left-arm pace acquired a totally new dimension in the second half of his career, following a stint with Worcestershire in the English County Championship in 2006. Having announced himself with a memorable One-Day International debut against Australia in the ICC KnockOut Trophy in 2000, Zaheer had to overcome numerous unrelated injuries to keep himself relevant to the scheme of things. The arrival of several exciting young prospects seemed to have consigned him to history until, re-energised after the Worcester stint, Zaheer came roaring back, a master of his craft and an absolute legend of the reverse swing. He began his second coming, ironically, in England in 2007, then played an instrumental part as the leader of the bowling pack in India’s climb to the No. 1 position in Test cricket with masterful exhibitions of reverse on unhelpful home pitches. Furthermore, he took it upon himself to mentor the younger fast bowlers coming through, imparting his knowledge and experience and walking them through their progress. In his final Test innings, he picked up 5 for 170 in Wellington in February 2014, a fitting swansong for one of India’s most versatile quick bowlers ever, who also once boasted the highest score by a Test No. 11.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

TEST RECORD BATTING: 92-127-24-1231-75-11.95-0-3-19-0 BOWLING: 92-18785-10247-311-7/87-10/14932.94-11-1

18 INDIA AT 500

BISHAN SINGH BEDI

TEST RECORD BATTING: 67-101-28-656-50*-8.98-0-1-26-0 BOWLING: 67-21364-266-7/98-10/194-28.71-14-1 CAPTAINCY: 22-6-11-5-0

The sheikh of tweak. The turbaned mesmeriser, who had the ball on an invisible string, and who directed it to do his bidding. The most celebrated member of the famed spin quartet, Bedi is one of the greatest left-arm spinners ever to have played the game. His impeccable control and the ability to land the ball on a spot time after time were as integral to his enormous success as his guile and deception, and helped him stand out in the league of champions that he was in alongside BS Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan. He had more than reasonable success on the lessfriendly surfaces overseas too, particularly in Australia where he had three five-wicket hauls including in both innings of the Perth Test in 1977. Bedi often dared batsmen to go over the top as he gave the ball loads of air, trusting his ability to deceive them in the air and off the surface. As captain, Bedi was not averse to calling a spade a spade and was an excellent leader of men, taking hard calls when he needed to and rapidly establishing himself as a no-nonsense, nonestablishment individual. He was far from the typical tailender of his era and once batted as high as No. 3, if only as a nightwatchman in the second innings, as India successfully chased down 181 against Australia at the Kotla in 1969.

MOHAMMAD AZHARUDDIN (12TH MAN) The original Destiny’s Child, Azhar made a sensational entry into Test cricket by becoming the first – and to date only – batsman to make centuries in his first three games. Pencil-thin but blessed with extraordinarily wondrous supple wrists of steel, he was a connoisseur’s delight as he coaxed and cajoled the ball into the deep recesses of the outfield, much like Laxman was to do after him. The more he played outside India, the better he got against quicker bowling, though he was at his best when the ball was around waist high and he could direct it to whichever part of the ground his mood dictated.

Azhar also brought the fitness culture to Indian cricket, taking great care of his diet, working out rigorously and paying particular rare attention to fielding and catching. Thrust into the captaincy hot seat of the Team of the 90s by Raj Singh Dungarpur, Azhar more than held his own in the middle of established superstars such as Kapil, Dilip Vengsarkar and Ravi Shastri, building up an impeccable home record with Ajit Wadekar as the cricket manager and Kumble as the chief wrecker in a three-pronged spin force. With Azhar at the helm for the most part, India went undefeated in a series at home for the entire duration of the 1990s.

TEST RECORD BATTING: 99-147-9-6215-199-45.03-22-21-105-0 BOWLING: 99-13-16-0-N/A-N/A-N/A-0-0 CAPTAINCY: 47-14-14-19-0

Note: For batting, please read: Matches, innings, not out, runs, highest, average, hundreds, fifties, catches, stumpings For bowling, please read: Matches, balls, runs, wickets, best innings bowling, best match bowling, average, five wickets in an innings, 10 wickets in a match For captaincy, please read: Matches, wins, losses, draws, ties.

19

Eden Gardens changed our mindset as a team: VVS Laxman The wristy stylist reflects on his battle with the Aussies, his two defining knocks and much else R KAUSHIK

Something about Australia always brought the best out of VVS Laxman. The stylist from Hyderabad announced his arrival as an international batsman of great pedigree with his first Test century – a stirring 167 – in Sydney in early 2000, a knock that was to prove the first turning point in a wonderful career. A little over a year later, he played inarguably the greatest Test innings by an Indian. His 281 in Kolkata changed the course of not just his career, but also the mindset of the Indian team.

In this interview with Wisden India, Laxman reflects on his battle with the Aussies, speaking at length on those two career-changing knocks, and of his early skirmishes with Australia,

dating back to Under-19 days. Excerpts:

Your overwhelming success against Australia has been discussed at length, but is there any particular reason why you had such great results against them?

It’s extremely difficult to pinpoint one reason why you have so much success against a particular opposition, but I have a long history with Australia and I am sure that has something to do with it. Australia always play to win and they are so supremely focussed and hard-nosed that you have to constantly be on your toes. If you are at less than your best, you will be found out. That’s something that has always appealed to me.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

20 INDIA AT 500

I relished going to battle knowing that I had to be on top of my game. Australia also attack you no matter what the situation. As a batsman, that suited my game because I could hit boundaries and score quickly.

I first ran into the Australians in 1994 during the Under-19 series. They had a

and plastic balls between the warm-up game and the ‘Tests’, and that played a big part in my having a very good ‘Test’ series.

My breakthrough into the Indian squad was during the one-off Test against Australia in 1996, and even though I didn’t figure in the XI, it was a great feeling to watch my heroes

THE TURNING POINT: Laxman’s first tour of Australia changed everything for him.

strong team – Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie, Matthew Nicholson, Andrew Symonds and Mike Hussey, among others. There was a warm-up game in Hyderabad, which we lost by an innings. I hadn’t faced such pace, it was my first exposure to such quality pace bowling. But I practised with wet tennis balls

– Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh and Glenn McGrath – from close quarters. The first time I played against Australia was in 1998 when I made 95 at the Eden Gardens as an opener, and played Shane Warne for the first time, but it was my first tour of Australia that was the turning point of my career.

21

Talk us through that Sydney game, and your mindset when you went in to bat in the second innings.

I always wanted to score a hundred in Australia because I have always enjoyed watching cricket from there. I also loved the way Australia played their cricket. Coming into Sydney, I had had two bad Test matches in terms of runs scored. I felt I was batting well, both in the nets and in the matches, but I didn’t have any scores to talk about. I thought it was my last opportunity to make an impression in Australia because I was not in the Indian team for the triangular series to follow. I had not got too many runs in the first innings, so in effect the second innings was my last chance. Walking in to bat, I told myself that I should just play my natural game and not think too much about the result. I played to the merit of the ball, I started timing the ball well and because of the formidable position that Australia were in, they had attacking fields all the way through. I used the pace of the ball and found the gaps, the boundaries came and I started to score quickly. But what really gave me satisfaction was that I was able to play an innings of that nature against quality opposition on a helpful track and in

COVER DRIVE

a difficult situation. It reiterated to me the importance of carrying a positive approach to the middle.

And how did that change in mindset come about?

Usually in a cricketer’s career, there comes a point when everything you plan works your way. I was practising and training hard, but not able to convert my efforts into performances. Going into that second innings in Sydney, I told myself that I must not allow myself to think about the result, but instead concentrate on the process. I was mindful it was my last innings in Australia.

And as the innings progressed, I went into a zone where I was just reacting to the ball and not thinking what happened before or what will happen later. In sporting terms, people talk about being in the ‘zone’. That was the first time I experienced the feeling of being in the ‘zone’.

Have you been in the ‘zone’ since? And would you term that 167 the first significant moment of your international career?

The experience of one good innings can do wonders to your mindset, and once you

Laxman’s 281 against Australia at Eden Gardens in Kolkata was ranked sixth in Wisden’s list of 100 greatest Test innings.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

22 INDIA AT 500

have been in the ‘zone’, you can get there repeatedly. You know you have done well once, you understand why that innings happened.

You analyse what your preparation was, what your mindset was, what your approach was. You go back to that same preparation physically and mentally as often as possible.

As for that knock, as much as the runs I made, it was the manner in which I made them that gave me great satisfaction and confidence.

That 167 has to be the defining knock; it convinced me that I could play the best in the business, and that I could do it successfully in all conditions. It was also my first Test hundred. As a batsman, getting to your first Test hundred is extremely important. It gave me the confidence and the belief that I belonged at the highest level.

happy because one-drop was my favoured slot in the batting order.

I didn’t even remove my pads, I just sat outside and watched what was going on. But while sitting outside and then when I went in to bat, I kept telling myself that I must

Then, of course, came that sensational 281.

That entire Test match is still so fresh in my memory. I was last man out in the first innings after having scored a half-century, and I can say now without fear of being fined that it was a bad decision too! But I suppose the manner in which I played in the first innings must have prompted John Wright to tell Sourav [Ganguly] that I must bat at No. 3 in the second innings. When I came back to the dressing room and was about to take my pads off, John came up to me and said ‘Don’t take your pads off, you will bat No. 3 in the second innings’. I was very surprised – Rahul [Dravid] was established at No. 3 and he was also the vice-captain – but I was also very

THE EPIC: “Eden Gardens changed our mindset as a team.”

start from zero, that what I had scored in the first innings was history. I was conscious and mindful that I needed to start afresh, and settle down. Luckily, SS Das and Sadagoppan Ramesh gave us a good start, putting on more than 50. That waiting period was also helpful, as it gave me a chance to think about how I was going to bat. Once I went in, I didn’t play shots straightaway. I took my time assessing the conditions and the bowling, but once I

23

and follow the same principles – not to think about the runs but occupy the crease and play for time – in international cricket. The situation in Kolkata demanded that I do so.

We were in a very difficult position, which demanded that someone play a long knock – not only bat time, but also score big.

And then you and Rahul, at No. 6, had that great partnership. Considering you had swapped positions, what was your chemistry like during that association?

LONG HELD DREAM: “I’ve always wanted to score a hundred in Australia. I’ve enjoyed watching their cricket.”

got ‘in’, the strokes just flowed.

Did you ever feel the pressure of having to justify the promotion to No. 3?

To be honest, that thought never crossed my mind at any stage. In fact, the only thing on my mind was to play for as long as possible.

I told myself that I must not think about the end result and the score I would make. I was coming off a very good domestic season. I had had plenty of big scores – one triple-hundred and a couple of double-hundreds in firstclass cricket. I wanted to use that experience

Not once did Rahul show any displeasure.

When he walked in, he didn’t show that he was unhappy to be batting at No. 6. I knew Rahul’s nature, and I knew that he would do anything for the sake of the team. We decided to keep concentrating on one over at a time to start with, and then gradually the focus became one hour at a time. We told ourselves that we must not think about the end result or our individual performances.

We gelled well; we have always done so.

We knew each other’s games; we knew our strengths and weaknesses. We knew we were different kinds of players. We didn’t talk too much out in the middle. Yes, on the few occasions when one of us lost concentration, the other would come down quickly with a word of caution but otherwise, most of our conversations between overs were: ‘One more over, buddy’ or ‘One more over, mate’.

So when did you realise that you were on to

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

24 INDIA AT 500

something special?

By the end of the third day, when I had got my hundred, I was very pleased from a personal point of view. But from the team point of view, we were not satisfied till tea on the fourth day. I was always aware that though I had got a hundred, we were still behind in the game and Australia, being

COVER DRIVE

In 1994, Laxman abandoned his medical school entrance exams to attend a cricket camp in Bangalore, for selection in an Under-19 series against an Australia side comprising Jason Gillespie, Brett Lee and Matt Nicholson. He averaged 110.

aggressive by nature, would attempt to scale down any reasonable target. It was only by tea on the fourth day that we felt we had saved the game. It was a great feeling when I went past 236, then the highest score by an Indian.

After all, that record was in Sunil Gavaskar’s name, and he is one of the most respected cricketers not only in India but also in world cricket. He had made those runs against a very good West Indian attack. It felt good, but that’s all, because I was not thinking about milestones. I have never ever throughout my career thought about milestones. Had it been the case, I would have tried to bat on and get 300 the following day. I have always emphasised that the team comes ahead of

personal aspirations.

The next day (the fifth), Australia bowled negative lines but I had to try and manufacture some shots so that we could score quickly, declare and give our bowlers the opportunity to try and win the game for us. That 281 was special, but more so because it came in a winning performance. That gave me more satisfaction. I don’t think I would have felt the same way had we lost the match or even just drawn it.

That knock gave me the confidence that what I was doing in domestic cricket, I could do at the international level as well. Equally important, it changed our mindset as a team.

It instilled in us the belief that we must never give up. If 167 changed the way I viewed cricket, 281 altered the cricket world’s perception of India. To have played my part in that process, and to have scored consistently heavily against the best bowling attack of my time, against the best team of that era, is a memory I will cherish forever. During my career, the team was to be in such situations many times later, including in Adelaide in 2003-04. We remembered what happened in Kolkata, and the rest, as they say, is history.

This interview first appeared on Wisden India on February 28, 2013.

25

Sehwag was a genius who changed Indian cricket: Kapil Dev Former India captain picks his favourites – Test wins, batsmen and performances – and looks back on his special 432nd SHAMYA DASGUPTA

Still, arguably, Indian cricket’s greatest allrounder. Once the highest wicket-taker in Test cricket. Captain of the 1983 World Cupwinning team. Architect of one of the greatest One-Day International batting innings ever.

Still the owner of the third-best innings figures in Test cricket among his countrymen.

Likely to be the No. 7 in all all-time great XIs for his country, in both the formats he played, for a long, long time to come.

Kapil Dev was part of 131 of the 499 Tests India have played till date. Ahead of the side’s 500th Test match, Wisden India caught up with him for his take on Indian Test cricket, and Test cricketers, over the years.

Favourite memory from his playing days I know we are talking about Test cricket, but it has to be the 1983 World Cup. Nothing beats that. When it comes to Tests, some people will mention matches India have won, but for me, the greatest Test I was involved in was the tied Test against Australia in Madras in 1986. It was memorable also because I scored a century and was joint Man of the Match with Dean Jones, but more because of the experience. It was a historic moment to be a part of. As for a Test series, it has to be the time we won 2-0 in England in 1986.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

26 INDIA AT 500

FAVOURITE MEMORY: The 2-0 win in England in 1986 is Kapil’s happiest memory in Test cricket.

Favourite performance in Test cricket When I got my 400th Test wicket, and then my 432nd, to go past Sir Richard Hadlee.

But it’s not just because I was proud of my achievement, it was about being an Indian.

Our pitches, our cricket, everything was different. For an Indian pacer to take so many Test wickets was a huge achievement. A lot of people talk about the 9 for 83 in Ahmedabad against West Indies, but that was fine. I was happy with that. But, in totality, one thing stands out: the 432nd wicket. I never thought I would one day be the highest wicket-taker.

India was always about great spinners. For a

fast bowler to do it was a big achievement.

Most significant incident from his playing days

When we played against Pakistan in Pakistan for the first time. The first Test was in Faisalabad in October 1978, and it was my debut. To me, as a young kid, it was interesting and very emotional. I was totally naïve and unaware of the history, but we were told that India had not played Pakistan in 18 years. In that sense, it was very, very important. Similarly, when we went to South Africa to break the apartheid in 1992, it was also very important.

Most significant moment in Indian Test cricket It was winning that Test in Kolkata in 2001.

(VVS) Laxman and Rahul (Dravid), and all the others played so well. I remember I was in a flight when India won, so I didn’t know.

I reached India and heard at the airport that we had won. I didn’t believe it. It seemed impossible. When I went back, I saw the recording … hats off to those boys.

COVER DRIVE

“Well, I suppose it’s only logical, if you need 24 to save the follow-on ... why wouldn’t you get it in four hits?” - Richie Benaud on air as Kapil Dev, with No. 11 Narendra Hirwani at the other end, hit four successive sixes over Eddie Hemmings’s head at Lord’s in 1990.

Indian Test cricket then and Indian Test cricket now When I played, it was about saving matches. We didn’t think about winning. We had big players but we didn’t think we could beat Australia or England or West Indies. It was almost amateurish. Sunil Gavaskar, Ajit Wadekar, the great spinners, (Gundappa) Viswanath, Farokh Engineer, (Dilip) Sardesai … we had great players. Now it’s very different. We go out to win matches and win series. Those days, not losing was a big thing.

Not any more.

R Ashwin – 37, 6 for 31 & 6 for 54 v New Zealand, Hyderabad, 2012 Touring India in 2012, New Zealand were subjected to a trial by spin from the get-go. The hosts, electing to bat first, piled on 438 before unleashing Ashwin on the hapless visitors, who folded for 159 and 164 – losing by an innings and 115 runs. The offspinner was playing just his seventh Test match and helped himself to his first ten-wicket haul– accounting for as many as seven top and middleorder wickets – and his third man of the match award. Not only was this the best performance by an Indian against New Zealand in Test cricket, it remains the highest impact allround performance by an Indian in Test history.

Favourite Indian batsman in Test cricket It keeps on changing. When I was in school, the school captain looked the best. Who knew how good Muhammad Ali or John McEnroe or Diego Maradona were? You had to see them first.

My favourite early on was Viswanath – what a batsman! But the more I played with Sunil Gavaskar, the more I realised how good he was. He was technically very sound, especially against genuine pace bowling.

Those days, so many young kids wanted to be like Gavaskar.

Then these young boys in the last 15-20

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

HIGHEST IMPACT INDIAN TEST ALL-ROUND PERFORMANCE

27

28 INDIA AT 500

as a bowler. But he had excellent attitude and dedication. He made the most of his abilities.

Impact of the golden generation of the 2000s

THE SEHWAG EFFECT: “He opened the door for Indian cricket.”

years. Rahul. Sachin (Tendulkar). No point talking about Sachin. It’s like mentioning Don Bradman. Sachin is an obvious choice.

Then Virender Sehwag turned it around; he changed Indian cricket. We were subdued, and he came out like a flash. He was unbelievable. Sehwag, one has to say, was a genius. Uncomplicated. Now there is Virat Kohli. But Sehwag opened the door for Indian cricket.

Favourite Indian bowler in Test cricket

Anil Kumble. You can talk about ten great batsmen but I have only one bowler. He was not the best athlete, and had his limitations

See, I haven’t seen Lala Amarnath or Dattu Phadkar or Salim Durrani or Tiger Pataudi.

I can only talk about the players I have seen – for the last 40 years or so. And I think if you want to pick the best Indian Test team of all time, most of the players from that 2000 generation have to be there. Tendulkar, Laxman, Sehwag, Sourav (Ganguly), Rahul, Kumble, even Harbhajan (Singh), Zaheer (Khan), (Javagal) Srinath, (MS) Dhoni … can’t leave any of them out. Sunil Gavaskar will be there in that list, but otherwise, it’s all these boys. They were the best.

Thoughts on the current team and the future

It won’t be fair to compare this team to the team of the 2000s. When a big generation goes away, things change. Like for West Indies.

It’s very tough for any generation to reach the level of the Indian team of the 2000s. But they have shown glimpses. Virat Kohli is an excellent player. There are some others, like (R) Ashwin. He is getting better day by day.

You can’t say there is anyone better than him.

He is an excellent allrounder. But you have to give all these boys 60-70 Tests before you can judge them properly.

29

Ten to the power of Kumble

“You plot and plan dismissals, but no, I didn’t have a sixth sense,” says the man who created history at Feroze Shah Kotla with 10 for 74

R KAUSHIK

It was a Sunday morning like any other in India’s national capital. By the evening, it would go down as a spectacularly special day in the history of world cricket.

February 7, 1999. Remember that date?

“I do!” says the man who made that day special, almost shocked that you would ask something so obvious. After all, he had done just what one other man had done before – or no other man has done since – in Test cricket.

One of the national newspapers came up with a clever pun in commemoration of that feat. AK-74, they termed it. Referring, of course, to Anil Kumble’s 10 for 74 at the Feroze Shah Kotla, the legspinner single-

handedly gunning down Pakistan.

In 1442 Tests prior to that, only once had a bowler taken all 10 wickets in a Test innings. Jim Laker was in an exclusive club of one between July 31, 1956 and that epochal Sunday at the Kotla, the England offspinner having dismissed all 10 Australian batsmen in the second innings of the Manchester Test to go with his nine scalps in the first. 10 for 53 finally had company, even if Laker himself had passed away nearly 13 years before Kumble emulated his feat.

As ‘I-was-there’ moments go, 10 for 74 will rank up there with the most celebrated, most memorable. Against that backdrop, how much more significant is an ‘I-did-it’ moment?

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

30 INDIA AT 500

“Honestly, it didn’t sink in for a while,” Kumble tells Wisden India more than 17 years on, though you can clearly see that the passage of time has done little to dim the memory. “The immediate feeling was one of great elation because we had won the Test match and squared the series. That had been our priority going into the match, so from that perspective, it was mission accomplished and a sense of satisfaction.”

Pakistan were visiting India for a Test series for the first time since 1987, and had pulled off a heart-stopping 12-run win in the previous game in Chennai, a result that left centurion Sachin Tendulkar in tears.

Battling a terrible back injury, the little fella

had conjured a magical 136 but his dismissal triggered a second, decisive collapse that saw the last four wickets go down for just four runs, Kumble one of those four wickets.

It was imperative to bounce back, and India called the shots at the Kotla right from the time they were put in by Wasim Akram.

“We were still batting in our second innings at the start of that day,” Kumble recalls as you prod him, asking him if he felt the trappings of something extraordinary in the offing when he woke up that morning. “Sourav (Ganguly) and Sri (Javagal Srinath) were batting, and our immediate objective was to extend the lead to as much as possible because time wasn’t going to be a factor.

HISTORY MAKER: Kumble is just the second man ever to take all ten wickets in an innings.

31

“You plot and plan dismissals, you visualise what you think is going to happen like you always do, but no, I didn’t have a sixth sense or something like that,” Kumble chuckles. “I was well prepared, of course, but I would be less than honest if I said I knew what was coming. When we were bowled out, our lead was upwards of 400 (419) and we were confident of getting the job done.”

“I was well prepared, of course, but I would be less than honest if I said I knew what was coming.”

Pakistan started their chase of 420 strongly with Saeed Anwar and Shahid Afridi putting on 101 for the first wicket. Kumble, brought into the attack in the ninth over, had six unproductive overs before lunch from the Football Stand End, going for 27 runs; it was after he was switched to the Pavilion End by Mohammad Azharuddin that things started to happen, even if not immediately.

“For a while, no wickets were forthcoming, and then Sachin came to me and said, ‘Give me your cap and sweater, let’s see if things change’,” Kumble reveals. “And guess what, a wicket (Afridi) fell immediately. And then it sort of became a ritual every time there was a little partnership – Sachin picking up my cap and sweater from me and handing it over to the umpire. And it seemed to work every single time!”

ENDURANCE: Kumble bowled 26.3 successive overs of relentless probing, teasing, testing, and succeeding.

The change of ends apart, Kumble bowled unchanged – 26.3 overs of relentless probing, teasing, testing, and succeeding. Often, like it did with Ijaz Ahmed one ball after Afridi, wickets came in a rush. Sometimes, like during a mini-revival between Saleem Malik and Akram, Kumble had to be patient and bide his time. Patience, of course, has always been a Kumble virtue, so he was not going to be rushing things.

Bowlers tend to remember most wickets, like batsmen do most runs. All of us, no matter at what level we might have played, will fondly pore over that pulled six in standard eight, that brilliant slip catch in standard 12, maybe a dream leg-cutter during the early days in college. But is it possible to remember

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

32 INDIA AT 500

956 international wickets – 619 in Tests and 337 in ODIs – to go with hundreds of others in senior representative cricket?

“I do remember almost all of them,” Kumble tells you quietly but firmly, probably reading the scepticism in the tone if not the look. “And if I see the scorecard, I will remember all of them.” Which, needless to say, pre-empts the question of whether he recalls every dismissal that Sunday.

Of them all, it is Malik’s that Kumble opts to discuss. “He and Wasim were batting at tea time, and were in the middle of a partnership (worth 58 eventually). I was a little tired, but I also realised that because Malik was nursing a hamstring injury, his movement was hampered. I decided to bowl one quicker to him and push him back. He tried to go for the pull, but he was late on coming down on the ball which hit top of off.” As simple as that – a batsman who would finish his career with an average of 43.69 from 103 Tests cleaned up clinically.

Was it then, with seven of seven in the bag, that thoughts of a Perfect Ten first began

COVER DRIVE

After Anil Kumble’s ten-for, a circle in Bangalore was named after him on MG Road, and he also received a car with a customised licence plate: KA-10-N-10.

to take deep root? “No, not at all,” he says, quickly. “You don’t think about these things, you are too involved in the action, in trying to win the game for the team, to worry about stuff like this.” Four overs later, he got rid of the two Mushtaqs – Ahmed and Saqlain – off consecutive deliveries. Nine on nine now.

Saqlain was dismissed off the last delivery of the 59th over, Kumble’s 26th. The onerous task of bowling the 60th fell on Srinath, Kumble’s great mate. Onerous, because the task ahead of Srinath, a predator if there was one, was to try and not take a wicket, to not be the one to deny Kumble a shot at a historic 10th.

“I wasn’t worried, not at all. If Sri got a wicket, he got a wicket and we would win the match, so that was perfectly fine.”

Sri, of course, didn’t get the wicket. Srinath wasn’t even looking for the wicket; in a determined bid to stay away from the stumps, he sent down two wides, and had a real go in that same over at Sadagopan Ramesh who, in all the excitement, made a desperate attempt to catch out Waqar Younis, the last man.

“An event like that doesn’t happen every day, I wanted to contribute my little bit to history,” Srinath offers, modestly. “The ball was reversing a little, and I just wanted to stay away from the stumps. The idea was to finish the over as quickly as possible without getting a wicket, and then hand it over to Anil because the way he was bowling, he looked

33

It took Kumble just three deliveries in the next over to storm the pantheon, Akram caught at short- leg off the inside-edge by VVS Laxman.

“I knew that Sri was trying not to get a wicket, though I hadn’t discussed anything with him,” Kumble says, attempting to clear already unsullied air. “Maybe Azzu told him, maybe the team discussed it, but I wasn’t part of those discussions.” In hindsight, and if he were so inclined, Kumble might have remembered his own efforts to not dismiss a batsman at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in 1994, as Kapil Dev homed in on Richard Hadlee’s then Test record of 431 wickets.

In the immediacy of his soul-stirring exploits, Kumble was a man much sought after. Flooded with request for interviews and celebrated and eulogised in India and beyond, that was when the enormity of what he had achieved finally started to sink in.

“I mean, once Wasim was dismissed, we all got together to enjoy the victory, but it was only after I saw the reactions of the people that I realised what had happened,” Kumble reveals, appearing still a little stunned by it all. “And then you realise, so many Test matches, and this has happened only twice.

It might never happen again, or it might happen in the next Test, but it has happened now. So much has to go right to get 10 wickets in an innings, so little has to go wrong. It felt

great, a special achievement; it feels great.”

Like good wine, that effort continues to rake in greater appreciation with the passage of time.

Vinoo Mankad – 8 for 52 and 5 for 79 v Pakistan, Delhi, 1952 It was Pakistan’s debut in international cricket.

In the series opener in Delhi, India, opting to bat, made 372. Mankad then ran through the Pakistan side (8 for 52 in 47 overs and 5 for 79 in 24.2 overs), dismissing the visitors for 150 and, following on, 152. India won by an innings and 70 runs.

Narendra Hirwani – 8 for 61 and 8 for 75 v West Indies, Chennai, 1988 Trailing 0-1 coming into the fourth and final Test, India, electing to bat first, made 382 in their first innings. Narendra Hirwani, on debut, then worked his way through the strong West Indian batting line-up, cleaning them for 184. India declared their second innings at 217 for 8, setting the visitors 416. Hirwani, for the second time in the match, bamboozled the West Indian batsmen with his legspin and knocked them over for 160.

Vinoo Mankad’s 13 wickets against Pakistan tops the list despite the fact that Hirwani’s sensational debut performance against West Indies (16 wickets) had a higher wickets tally. This is because although the legspinner had a higher wickets impact, he was taken for plenty in both the innings (61 in 18.3 overs and 75 in 15.2 overs). Mankad, however, was highly restrictive in the first innings (52 runs in 47 overs), which gave him a very high economy impact – this was the differentiator in their performances.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

HIGHEST IMPACT INDIAN TEST BOWLING PERFORMANCES

like he would get a wicket every ball.”

34 INDIA AT 500

35

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

36 INDIA AT 500

10

Ten men, ten magnificent memories The highlights of India’s journey to 500 Tests, narrated by those who made it all happen

India’s Test cricket journey started at Lord’s in June 1932, when Mohammad Nissar and L Amar Singh reduced the inventors of the game to 19 for 3 before the Englishmen fought back to seal a 158-run win. It was only in February 1952 that India won their first Test, beating the same opposition in Madras by an innings and eight runs within four days: the first truly glorious occasion for Indian cricket.

In this series of interviews with ten prominent – some legendary – Indian cricketers, we celebrate some of the most magnificent achievements in Indian Test cricket, starting with CD Gopinath’s memories of those four days

in Madras 66 years ago, stopping by in Port of Spain, Melbourne and Colombo, and Ajinkya Rahane rounding off the story, again with a pause at Lord’s.

The Indian team that takes on New Zealand on September 22 in the nation’s 500th Test enjoys more ‘professional’ a process and environment than any that came before it. On the cusp of the No.1 ranking, Virat Kohli’s men are the sum of these wins and losses – and ties and draws – of generations gone by, even as they get ready to fashion some milestones of their own.

TURN TO NEXT PAGE >>

37

01

NARI CONTRACTOR

Victory over New Zealand in Madras in January 1956

CD GOPINATH

Victory over MCC (England) in Madras in February 1952 We had already played 24 games since 1932 and had not tasted victory except for in a few unofficial Tests.

We had never thought it was possible to beat a team of such class, but we realised that we too had some standard and were not always the underdogs.

It was Vinoo Mankad’s Test. He took eight wickets in the first innings and four in the second. Equally crucial was Ghulam Ahmed’s four wickets in the second innings. In the second innings, Vinoo moved me about three to four feet before bowling to Brian Statham and the very next ball the catch came straight to me. Also, the century Polly Umrigar made in the only innings we batted in – we had a 93-run stand together.

My only disappointment is that when I went out to bat, the captain (Vijay Hazare) asked me to score quickly as we were looking for a declaration. I hit seven or eight fours in my 35, but after I got out we continued to bat. I felt a bit let down.

There was no strategy as such in those days. Even the team members did not stay together. All of us made our arrangements, assembled at the ground an hour and half before the start of play and did what our captain said.

It‘s hard to remember much from that period now, it’s been so long. For me, personally, my first Test, which was against New Zealand at home in 1955 was significant. As far as the series was concerned, we won two Tests and the series; our first series win against New Zealand.

In that fifth Test, which we won (by an innings and 109 runs), Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy created a record for the first wicket with 413 runs, which was the best in Test cricket till recently. We won quite comfortably. Bapu (Nandkarni) and I made debuts in that series. I opened the innings for India the first time and did reasonably well. The most important thing then was the bowling of Subhash Gupte. He did very well in that series (with 34 wickets).

02

- As told to Karunya Keshav

- As told to Sidhanta Patnaik

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

38 INDIA AT 500

03

SALIM DURRANI

Victory over West Indies in Port of Spain in March 1971 The most famous of them was the one in Port of Spain, in 1971. It was the first time India had beaten West Indies in West Indies, and what a match it was!

That series belonged to (Sunil) Gavaskar, and I think it was his Test debut in Port of Spain, the Test we won. He scored two 50s (65 and 67 not out) and Bishan (Singh Bedi) and Pras (Erapalli Prasanna) and Venkat (S Venkataraghavan) got a lot of wickets in that game.

But Ajit Wadekar didn’t let me bowl in the first innings and I batted at No. 3 and got just nine runs.

Then, in their second innings, they were batting brilliantly, scoring fast, hammering our bowlers, and they had Clive Lloyd and Garry Sobers. So I wanted to bowl.

People say I snatched the ball from Wadekar, but that’s not true. It doesn’t happen like that. I bowled a different line from Bedi, and a shorter length, which was tough for Lloyd. He edged one to Wadekar in the slips, and then I pitched one slightly up and bowled Sobers. In the end, Venkat got five and we had a small target of 124 runs. Still gives me goosebumps to talk about it.

- As told to Shamya Dasgupta

ABBAS ALI BAIG

Victory over Australia in Kanpur in December 1959 I remember the sensation on beating Australia in Kanpur in 1959. That 119-run victory – India’s first against Australia – coming after 11 defeats was probably the stepping stone for further victories.

They were chasing just 225, but Polly Umrigar and Jasu Patel (who had 9-69 in the first innings) bowled them out. The fact that we batted well on the same track where the ball was turning square and gave ourselves a sizeable lead was one of the positives.

The game is obviously remembered for Jasu’s 14-wicket haul. Jasu was a study in himself, because he was not particularly athletic. He was prone to be a little on the heavy side. His main thing was his wrist action, which made the ball spin sharply and bounce.

Until the last wicket had fallen, none of us believed India could beat Australia. That was the reaction when Jasu dismissed Colin McDonald for the last wicket. Not many in the Indian team was given to going to a pub or having a glass of wine or beer, so our celebrations were subdued.

We stayed in an old mahal for that game, and the facilities were minimal. It was a big shock for me, having just arrived from England to play in that series. Nevertheless, it was a different experience.

04

- As told to Sidhanta Patnaik

39

BISHAN SINGH BEDI

Three series wins in a row between 1971 and 1973 and Tiger Pataudi’s captaincy The Port of Spain win of 1971 was an outstanding achievement and India‘s first overseas series win in 1968 in New Zealand was a moment to cherish, but winning three series in a row in 1971-72 – against West Indies, against England in England – and against England in India (1972-73), that was special.

That period signalled the emergence of Sunil Gavaskar, Gundappa Viswanath, the close-in catchers Syed Abid Ali and Eknath Solkar. My biggest thrill was to observe and absorb the varied skills of Chandra (BS Chandrasekhar), Pras (Erapalli Prasanna) and Venkat (S Venkataraghavan). They were all highly qualified (engineers all!) and exceptionally intelligent purveyors of the art of spin. I was lucky to be a cog in the wheel, a part of that spin quartet nurtured by Tiger Pataudi.

We were all very fortunate to play under a great, great leader, Tiger. His influence on Indian cricket was wide-ranging. He was perhaps 50 years ahead of his time. The way he located a spirit of ‘Indianness’ in our dressing room was amazing. He was the first Indian captain who told us in the team meeting, “Look guys, we aren‘t playing for Delhi or Bombay or Madras or Bengal or Punjab, we‘re playing for India.” That spirit is Tiger Pataudi‘s legacy. We weren‘t intimidated. He said, “We‘re going to go for a win.” Never mind if you lose in the process. That was a change in mindset.

- As told to Karunya Keshav

05

06 SYED KIRMANI

The 59-run win in Melbourne in 1981 Everyone remembers the incident where Sunil Gavaskar and Chetan Chauhan walked out of the field. Sunny thought he had inside-edged Dennis Lillee on to his pads, but the umpire gave him lbw.

There was an exchange of words and Sunny walked off with Chetan.

There was panic in the dressing room. Wing Commander (Shahid) Durrani was the team manager – he had no idea what decision to take. I remember asking him to go into the field and ask our boys to start the game again. Chetan continued with Dilip (Vengsarkar). Sunny had scored 70, which helped us take a small lead.

On the last day, we needed seven wickets. They were chasing only 143, but Karsan (Ghavri) and Dilip Doshi were bowling well, and they lost three wickets on the fourth day, so I was very optimistic. Kapil (Dev) didn’t bowl; he had a hamstring injury. But he took some painkillers and came out to bowl on the last day, and he made the difference.

I remember taking a very good catch. It wasn’t a good ball from Kapil (wide down the leg side) but Allan Border edged it, and I went a long way to my right to catch it. That one made us feel that we were going to win.

It was a great victory for us.

- As told to Karthik Lakshmanan

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

40

07

INDIA AT 500

DILIP VENGSARKAR

The 2-0 series win in England in 1986 We dominated the series. It was a special series because that was the first time India won at Lord‘s. I scored my third century there too, so I remember that fondly.

I guess it’s a dream for every cricketer – to play at Lord‘s. There are some grounds that give you positive vibes. For me, Lord‘s was one of them. The 1986 knock was my favourite among my three centuries at Lord‘s, because we won the Test.

I remember they had scored around 300 runs (294) and we lost Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth early.

I had a long partnership with Mohinder (Amarnath) and then (Mohammad) Azharuddin. Kiran More then stood around – the important thing was to take a lead and get that advantage, which we managed.

Kapil Dev was in brilliant form, and Chetan Sharma bowled brilliantly too. The wicket was still good enough in the second innings, and though we lost two early wickets in the chase, there wasn‘t much pressure.

I remember Headingley too, it was the game where we won the series and I got the Man of the Match and Man of the Series awards.

- As told to Karthik Lakshmanan

41

JAVAGAL SRINATH

The 1-0 series win in Sri Lanka in 1993 It was very early on in my international career, when we went to Sri Lanka in 1993. I had been to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and we hadn’t done too well. But when we went to Sri Lanka for three Tests in 1993, it was an eyeopener for me, because we won a Test, and the series, and I realised what it means to cricketers to win abroad. We won the second Test, at SSC in Colombo, and Anil Kumble did very well, picking up eight wickets in the game. I got three wickets too. But it was more important from the team’s perspective. We were losing badly abroad at the time, and we needed confidence. All of a sudden, we won in Sri Lanka. I could see the joy in each and every player. That joy was unbelievable. It remains a special one for me. We lost a few after that; it was back to square one. But it struck me, and for the first time I started thinking about home conditions and overseas conditions and what I needed to do to succeed abroad. That tour became the foundation for the future for me. You learn a lot when you lose, but learning when you win is three times more. I have lot of respect for teams winning abroad, and that was the start of it

08

- As told to Shamya Dasgupta

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

42 INDIA AT 500

09

HARBHAJAN SINGH

Victory over South Africa in Kolkata in February 2010 The best thing about the game was that it was a proper Test match – it went till the last session on the fifth day, and kept everyone involved before the result was decided with nine mandatory balls to go.

It was an important win for us as it helped us retain the No. 1 ranking. A lot of critics had written us off after our loss in Nagpur where Dale Steyn was unplayable and Jacques Kallis batted well. We showed that we can play good cricket and beat a team that was projected as ‘unbeatable’.

There was a lot of tension as Hashim Amla and Morne Morkel had a last-wicket stand of 76 minutes. There were a few chances here and there, but we gave our heart out. At one stage, we had almost everyone surrounding the bat.

It was a great phase in Indian cricket, and it was building up from 2001. By 2010, we had become a brilliant team. Except for Anil (Kumble) bhai and Sourav Ganguly, all the seniors were playing. It was in 2001 that we decided we want to become the No. 1 team. We were glad we achieved the goal, and mind you we were not playing on home pitches that were turning from the first ball.

- As told to Sidhanta Patnaik

AJINKYA RAHANE

Three series wins in a row in 2015-16 This phase where we have won three consecutive series – in Sri Lanka, against South Africa at home and in the West Indies – has been pretty special. The secret of the consistency, I think, is that we help each other, we enjoy each other’s success, and we look after each and every player.

We won our first series in Sri Lanka, but it all started in South Africa in 2013-14 when we started playing together as a team for the first time. After that we went to New Zealand, then we won a Test at Lord’s in England before travelling to Australia and Bangladesh. So, by now we know each other’s strength and we back each other.

Credit must go to Virat’s (Kohli) captaincy. He has his own ideas and shares his views with us, but he is pretty open-minded. He listens to everyone and is always keen to hear fresh ideas, and that gives us a lot of confidence. Also, (R) Ashwin’s consistency as a bowler has been the key. As far as my batting is concerned, I always believe in being in the present and think positive. For me, small things like my routine before a game, during a practice session and during a series, all that matters.

10

- As told to Sidhanta Patnaik

43

Best seat to witness history VASANT RAIJI

I

was 13 years old in December 1933 when Douglas Jardine’s England were in India to play the first official Test match on our soil. India had already made the Test debut, with a 158-run loss against England at Lord’s in June 1932, and there was a lot of enthusiasm building up to this game.

My father, who introduced me and my younger brother Madan to cricket, had taken me to the Hindus and Marylebone Cricket Club match at Bombay Gymkhana in 1926, and after seeing CK Nayudu hit 13 fours and 11 sixes during his 153, I became a fan of the game. So I was naturally disappointed when all the cheap tickets for the first Test at Gymkhana were sold out.

“A special occasion” the story of watching Nayudu and Jardine, Nissar and Nichols from a sofa at Bombay Gymkhana

Seeing my excitement, my father bought me the most expensive ticket for the match – the season ticket for sofa seats costing around Rs 50 – and you can imagine my happiness. Even our classes at school, located around seven kilometres from the ground, were specially scheduled from 8am to 10am so that those interested in the match could reach the ground on time.

I had watched quiet a few Pentangular matches at the venue already and went on to watch so many Tests against different countries until recently, but this was a special occasion. A capacity crowd of 30,000 was expected, and I remember a lot of people who could not get tickets stood outside the ground for updates.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

44 INDIA AT 500

NATIONAL HERO: Lala Amarnath (R) scored a century against England in India’s maiden home Test.

Cricket-wise, we were realistic of India’s prospects. The team was still new at the international level, and we did not expect anything miraculous. We just wanted to see good cricket. Even though India lost by nine wickets on the fourth and final morning, we were satisfied with the team’s performance, as it did not disgrace the nation.

Like Jardine, Nayudu, who was India’s captain, had a towering personality and pretty much held his own. The match is obviously best remembered for Lala Amarnath becoming the first Indian to score a century on Test debut. It came in India’s second innings after England had ridden on Bryan Valentine’s 136 to make 438 and take a lead of 219 runs.

Amarnath’s 118 was brilliant, and he had a good 186-run partnership for the third wicket with Nayudu, who made 67. Usually Nayudu was an aggressive batsman, but on this occasion, batting with an injured hand, he played a secondary role to Amarnath, who hit 21 fours. It made Amarnath an overnight national hero and the Bombay crowd went mad about him. I remember the crowd collecting a lot of money and gifts for him, but I did not pay anything for the gift as nobody approached me. It is indeed strange that Amarnath, regarded as the stormy petrel of Indian cricket, played 23 Tests after that, but never got another century.

The other thing that I remember about the match is the fast bowling of Stan Nichols

45

and Nobby Clark. They were very sharp and difficult to tackle. In fact, the pair took eight wickets between them as India were bowled out for 258 in the second innings after that strong partnership between Amarnath and Nayudu. India’s pace duo of Mohammad Nissar and Amar Singh were equally good.

Hindu Gymkhana had boycotted the tour due to the Civil Disobedience Movement.

“Seeing my excitement, my father bought me the most expensive ticket for the match – the season ticket for sofa seats costing around Rs 50 – and you can imagine my happiness. Even our classes at school, located around seven kilometres from the ground, were specially scheduled from 8am to 10am so that those interested in the match could reach the ground on time”

The 96-year-old Vasant Raiji is a former first-class cricketer and a cricket historian. He lives in Mumbai with Panna Raiji, his wife.

Thanks to the exploits of Amarnath, Nayudu and Nissar, it often gets overlooked that this was the game where Vijay Merchant, who would go on to become one of the greatest, too made his debut and played well for his 23 and 30. He had been selected to go to England in 1932, but could not go because

(As told to Sidhanta Patnaik)

Kapil Dev – 38 and 46, 1 for 29 & 5 for 70 v England, Mumbai, 1981 For a while, it didn’t seem a wise decision to bat first as Sunil Gavaskar saw his team succumb for 179. His bowlers, however, ensured parity was restored as England were, in turn, dismissed for 166. The teams pushed one another close for three days before the ‘Haryana Hurricane’ struck – first with the bat and then with the ball. Kapil was India’s best run-scorer and his quick runs, especially in the second innings where he also absorbed pressure of falling wickets, ensured India had a target to defend. And then on a fine fourth morning, Kapil scythed through England – four of his five wickets were that of the top and middle order – send them crashing to a 138-run defeat.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

SECOND HIGHEST IMPACT INDIAN TEST ALL-ROUND PERFORMANCE

At that point of time, they were dubbed as the best opening bowling pair in the world.

Nissar, who had taken a five-wicket haul in the Lord’s Test, repeated the feat in this game also and became the first player to take five wickets in an innings in India. I would rate Nissar as one of the finest pacers India has ever produced.

India drew the next Test in Calcutta and lost in Madras by 202 runs. After the tour, Jardine made a forecast that one day India will be challenging other countries on equal terms.

46 INDIA AT 500

Perfect ten R KAUSHIK

1

BANGLADESH

(DHAKA - NOV 10-13, 2000):

This was Bangladesh’s inaugural Test, the Bangabandhu National Stadium was packed to the rafters, the atmosphere sensational.

For two days and more, the home crowd celebrated with gay abandon, and they had much to celebrate. Aminul Islam became Bangladesh’s first Test centurion, India’s bowling attack was being shown up as Bangladesh piled up 400, and the famed batting line-up was in a shambles at 236 for 6. Sourav Ganguly’s first Test as captain was going pear-shaped when Sunil Joshi came to the party. Joshi had taken 5 for 142 when Bangladesh batted, and made 92 to gradually

Wisden India’s R Kaushik, one of a select few to have seen an Indian victory in every Test-playing country, takes us through those matches

silence the crowd. Bangladesh folded up in their second innings, and when Rahul Dravid powered India home, there was as much relief that India hadn’t been embarrassed as there was joy at watching an Indian Test win.

My first.

2

SRI LANKA

(KANDY - AUG 22-25, 2001):

India set to rest their not unfounded reputation as poor chasers. No Sachin Tendulkar, no VVS Laxman, and yet, 264 was hauled down with ridiculous ease, with only three wickets down.

Cricketers are supposed to be a superstitious lot, but for the first time, I was exposed to the superstition of travelling Indian journalists.

47

EMOTIONAL: When victory was sealed in Perth after the Monkeygate incident, all hell broke loose.

Ganguly was captain, which meant a host of journalists from Bengal would be accompanying the team. Going into day four – eventually the last day – India needed 209 more for victory with nine wickets standing.

Almost every Kolkata journalist wore the same clothes as the previous day, sat in the same seat as the previous day. Even with the match so delicately poised, it was quite a sight to see grown men behave like excitable schoolchildren as every run was counted down. Poor Mohammad Kaif glanced a legside full toss for four and the winning runs with Ganguly stranded on 98. “They might have bowled a wide to deny me my century!”

Ganguly was to say later.

3

AT HOME

(V ENGLAND, MOHALI DEC 3-6, 2001):

After more than a decade, several draws on featherbeds and the odd defeat, Mohali was where I watched my first Test win at home as a journalist. The team had just returned from a controversial tour of South Africa, match referee Mike Denness banning Virender Sehwag for one Test and fining almost the entire team. India and South Africa played out an unofficial ‘‘Test’’ at Centurion, and by the time they returned home, they appeared ripe for the picking. The pace attack was revamped – Iqbal Siddiqui, Tinu Yohannan

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

48 INDIA AT 500

and Sanjay Bangar all made Test debuts – but it was the established duo of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh that did all the damage.

Yohannan picked up a wicket with his fourth delivery while in his only Test, Siddiqui opened the bowling and the batting. With India needing five, he smashed the winning runs. The monkey was off the back.

4

ENGLAND

(LEEDS - AUG 22-26, 2002):

It was the first bold statement of intent from brave new India, tired of being saddled with the reputation of poor travellers. The might of India’s batting flexed its collective muscle in the most English of conditions, this after Sourav Ganguly surprised everyone by choosing to bat first under grey, foreboding skies. Sanjay Bangar was as patient as Job, Dravid produced a masterpiece, while

COVER DRIVE

It took India 19 years, 7 months and 16 days to win their first Test match at home. It took them a further 16 years for their first overseas win.

Tendulkar and Ganguly subjected England to a torrent of boundaries. The defining moment in a match of several highlights came late on the second evening – the umpires offered Tendulkar and Ganguly the light, the Indians

turned it down and almost spitefully, Nasser Hussain took the third new ball. Tendulkar and Ganguly smashed Matthew Hoggard, Andrew Caddick and Alex Tudor to all parts of the ground, forcing Hussain to almost plead with the umpires for light. Having amassed 628, India whittled the opposition away through a combination of pace and spin to complete a splendid victory. By an innings.

5

PAKISTAN

(MULTAN - MAR 28-APR 1, 2004):

What a Test match to be a part of! India’s first Test tour of Pakistan in 14 years, the first triple century by an Indian in Tests, the first time India had defeated Pakistan in their own backyard. The dusty roads of Multan, home to Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, threw up no hints of history in the making as we snaked towards the wonderful but sparsely patronised stadium. Sehwag battered and joked his way to 309 – at one point, as Shoaib Akhtar kept imploring him to play the pull, Sehwag asked him in Hindi, “Are you bowling, or are you begging?” - while Dravid stunned the cricketing world and Tendulkar, not necessarily in that order, by declaring when the great man was on 194.

For two days, a debate raged on whether Dravid, standing in for the injured Ganguly, had done the right thing by Tendulkar.

All that was forgotten as Kumble, as key a figure as Dravid in almost every significant

49

21 months, while Irfan Pathan teased the batsmen with prodigious swing. A regulation Test win, devoid of any drama, any excitement.

All too easy.

THE JOKING ASSASSIN: In Multan, Sehwag battered and laughed his way to a scintillating 309.

overseas win during that period, snapped up six second-innings wickets to fashion a glorious innings triumph.

6

ZIMBABWE

(BULAWAYO - SEPT 1316, 2005):

Seldom have India won a Test match overseas with such authority. Even before a ball had been bowled, it was obvious that the gulf between the two sides was massive. Zimbabwe had neither the experience nor the quality to push the Indians. Bulawayo and Zimbabwe’s friendly bowling offered Sourav Ganguly the chance to bring up his first Test hundred in

7

WEST INDIES

8

SOUTH AFRICA

(KINGSTON - JUNE 30JULY 2, 2006):

There wasn’t just a Test match on the line, it was a Test series too. India had dominated the first three Tests but were denied by the last wicket in the first Test, by the elements in the second and by stubborn West Indian batting in the third. Victory in the final Test would herald India’s first series win in the Caribbean since 1971, and what better place to create history than at Sabina Park, of the bloodbath of 1976.

On a spiteful surface that Brian Lara spewed venom at, Dravid played two of the finest innings of his career – two priceless halfcenturies that alone were worth the journey to the Caribbean. There were periods when the West Indies threatened in the second innings; nails were chewed out in the middle, nails were chewed in the press box. In the end, it seemed, it was all worth it.

(JOHANNESBURG - DEC 15-18, 2006):

This was special. Memorable.

And so totally unexpected.

India had wiped the floor in the one-dayers and, by general consensus, stood not a chance in hell. Not, that is, until S Sreesanth

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

50 INDIA AT 500

happened. There was drama with the arrival of prodigal son Ganguly in South Africa for the Test series; ever the showman, Ganguly made a half-century on his return, then faded into the background as Sreesanth took over.

I haven’t seen a better exhibition of swing bowling from any Indian bowler anywhere, before or since – the proud, straight seam, the relentless accuracy, the optimum speed at which swing would be most effective. It was magic while it lasted, and it lasted the duration of the Test, though my favourite moment was Sreesanth’s pelvic thrust after smashing the irascible Andre Nel over his head for six. The tables had been turned – South Africa shellacked, India with their first Test win on Protean soil.

9

AUSTRALIA

(PERTH - JAN 16-19, 2008):

The events preceding this Test match made the 72-run victory at the most Australian of venues, the WACA ground, a very special one. ‘‘Monkeygate’’ had taken all the attention away from a series of howlers from umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, almost all of which Australia benefited from. There was anger, resentment and a quiet determination within the Indian ranks, and even as a journalist, it was impossible not to be swept up in all the emotion. The first signs that India might be on the verge of history came when Matthew Hayden was ruled out of the Test with an injury. As a journalist, I haven’t

encountered more excruciating conditions – relegated to the uncovered ‘‘Overflow’’ area, under a blazing sun, the laptop roasting, the keyboard too hot to touch. For four days, India punched to their weight, Australia below theirs. When Rudra Pratap Singh cleaned up Shaun Tait to signal victory, all hell broke loose.

10

NEW ZEALAND

(HAMILTON - MAR 18-21, 2009):

This was the most relaxed I had gone into any Test match.

There was this overwhelming conviction that India would win, and handsomely at that, which was strange considering India hadn’t won a Test in New Zealand in some 33 years.

But India had come a long way since, having registered recent Test wins in all corners of the globe, and possessed a well-rounded, balanced side. New Zealand have always been feisty competitors, especially at home, but match eve, both sides knew that unless there was a miracle, India would not be denied.

And they weren’t. The bowlers did the job first up, Sachin Tendulkar made a sparkling 160 and Harbhajan Singh hastened the end with a six-for. The full set was complete, it was party time!

This article originally appeared in the first edition of the Wisden India Almanack.

51

The one that got away from Connor Williams SAURABH SOMANI

S

eptember 20, 2016 marks a year since Jagmohan Dalmiya passed on to wherever it is that cricketing souls go, when they move beyond flesh and blood.

In two days, India will begin their 500th Test match. And yet, if Dalmiya had his way, it wouldn’t have been thus.

I know what you’re thinking. But no, I’m not going down the route of ‘Dalmiya would have scheduled only one-day and Twenty20 cricket to milk the Indian cricket cash cow and neglected Tests’. Far from it in fact.

Because if Dalmiya had had his way entirely in one matter, India would have reached 500 Tests a while ago.

Despite Dalmiya’s best effort, the Centurion game that was the Baroda batsman’s only India appearance wasn’t accorded official status

It was November 2001, and Dalmiya had returned after a stint as the ICC president to take charge of the BCCI. That Dalmiya had crashed a tightly knit world to head the ICC was a significant breaking of the glass ceiling.

The events thereafter first established just how much the world would wince if India flexed its muscle with the Mike Denness affair.

In essence, Denness’s actions - as the match referee - in sanctioning six Indian players and no South Africans in the second Test of a three-match series in South Africa led to India’s emotional powder keg exploding.

Among the six were Virender Sehwag, who had hit a sparkling 105 on debut in the previous Test, and most crucial of all,

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

52 INDIA AT 500

THE CANNY OPERATOR: Try as he did, Jaggu da couldn’t get the third match officially sanctioned as a Test.

Sachin Tendulkar. Sehwag earned a one-Test suspension, but slapping a ball-tampering charge on Tendulkar after television cameras picked him up cleaning the seam was like tampering with India itself. Dalmiya got the UCBSA (as CSA were known then) to agree to ban Denness from the third and final Test, an unprecedented act. The ICC reacted by revoking the game’s Test status. Both teams went ahead and played it anyway, in Centurion.

It’s still down in the record books as a “five-day first-class match”. Malcolm Speed, the then ICC CEO, details the “15-rounder” he fought with Dalmiya in his book, Sticky Wicket. An entire chapter is devoted to the episode and all its ramifications. It reads like an action movie, and concludes with the words, “Overall, I think we had established

the ICC’s authority to take action in a crisis.

We were well supported by England. We had several victories along the way, but Dalmiya showed that he could still pull the strings at Board meetings when it counted.”

Reading that perspective, from a man who clearly had no love lost for Dalmiya, gives you a sense of just how canny an operator Jaggu da - as everyone referred to him whether they knew him personally or not - was. He mounted attacks on varied fronts, never tired of the battle. And while holding his own, he awoke world cricket to the might of India’s financial heft. But the one string Dalmiya couldn’t pull was getting that match officially sanctioned as a Test. Had Dalmiya succeeded in getting it retrospectively accorded Test status, India would have spent their 500th Test staring at a sun-drenched ground at Queen’s Park Oval

53

Africa A between the first and second Tests.

Both matches were abandoned without a ball being bowled.

Enter Denness. Dalmiya, never one to miss a trick, had his cards neatly stacked. Sehwag was served a one-match ban? Fine, he would not play the third Test.

THE BITTERSWEET FEELING: “I can still say at least I got the opportunity to play for India.”

while watching their brief return to Test No. 1 melt away because of no play.

Or would it have been that way? Had that non-Test counted, Tendulkar would have been on 199 Tests before the hastily arranged two-match series against West Indies. Would that have been just one Test and five ODIs then, perhaps, instead of two Tests and three ODIs? Or a couple of T20Is thrown in?

That one ‘Lost Test’ as it were, has so many sub-plots to it. None are more poignant than that of Connor Williams. A doughty batsman who is still Baroda’s most capped cricketer and has over 7000 first-class runs, Williams was part of the touring squad for the Test leg of that tour. He was slated to play in two of the tour matches, against a Board President’s XI before the first Test, and against South

And that meant Williams got a ‘debut’ in that third match. In his first time batting for the country, Williams was thrust into a cauldron against Shaun Pollock, Nantie Hayward, Makhaya Ntini and Lance Klusener, the same attack that had done duty in the first two Tests. The first innings brought only 5 runs, but Williams gave a good account of himself in the second essay, with a gritty 42 and a valuable opening stand.

And then… as is the way of Indian cricket sometimes, he never got a chance to play for India again. His only ‘international’ match is going to show as a first-class fixture in the record books. He was India’s second highest scorer in the second innings (his 42 marginally behind opening partner SS Das’s 48). He was in the squad for the next tour, and after that, he wasn’t.

“We had a fair idea before the Test itself that this won’t be an official match,” Williams told Wisden India. “But even though it wasn’t official, I can always cherish the memory that I got a chance to play for India. At the end of the day, I was representing my country, and I

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

54 INDIA AT 500

was proud of that. It was an honour. I’ll take it as a very good memory with me for the rest of my life.

“Before that match, I hadn’t had an opportunity to play at all. The tour games were washed out, and this was my first time batting in South Africa in an actual match.

Considering that, my second innings in which I scored 40-odd runs was very pleasing because without any actual experience, I went abroad and played a decent knock. My opening partnership with Shiv Sunder Das was 92. Indian openers having this kind of partnership abroad is always creditable.

These two are precious moments.”

Ask Williams if the non-official status of the match diminished the feeling in any way, and he’s emphatic. “It was very much topclass standard. It was Test-level and there was no feeling of it being an unofficial match.

Both teams were trying to win, and playing accordingly.”

That his name will not have the ‘international’ tag to it does remain a bit of a bittersweet feeling, but Williams was philosophical about that twist in his fate.

“For a professional cricketer, which I was, it’s not about one match or series.

“It was not the end of the road for me after that, it’s not that I didn’t get a chance.

Maybe I couldn’t keep up with the runs in the domestic level and that is the reason I

In his first time batting for the country, Williams was thrust into a cauldron against Shaun Pollock, Nantie Hayward, Makhaya Ntini and Lance Klusener - he scored 42 in the second innings. didn’t get picked. I don’t want to… blame any particular reason or anything else other than my own performance.

“If you see the other side of the coin, I can still say at least I got the opportunity to play for India, whatever it was. India is such a huge cricket-loving country and everyone wants to play cricket, but only 15 will make a squad and 11 will play. So rather than looking at the negative side, I will always look at the positive – at least I was there, and played for my country.”

And it’s not everyone that gets a word of advice from Tendulkar before the biggest day of your professional career either. “Before I went in to bat, Sachin had a word with me. He just told me that everyone has played a first match (no matter how big they become). The pressure will be there, but you don’t have to worry about it. Just play the game that you know.”

Williams did play the game he knew. It just didn’t count as a Test. If it had done, recent Indian cricketing history could have had some minor, but significant, changes.

55

Them of the sprightly 80s

They might have played just five Tests between them, but these octogenarians are trailblazers in every sense of the term

SIDHANTA PATNAIK

“Someone visited me from England as they wanted to write a book about India’s first-ever Test win in Chennai in 1952,” recalls CD Gopinath. “I told them since I am the only member remaining from that team, I could say anything I want and there would be no contradiction.”

Gopinath, who wrote a lovely piece about that match in the first edition of the Wisden India Almanack, was the youngest member of that side. Gopinath, who shuttles between Chennai and his summer home in Coonoor, is now 86.

With India scheduled to play their 500th Test match – the first game of the threematch series against New Zealand, in Kanpur from September 22 – it made sense to look up the country’s other octogenarian Test

cricketers. Interestingly, we found a New Zealand connect among three of the oldest – Chandrakant Patankar, Prakash Bhandari and Sadashiv Patil.

Dattajirao Gaekwad, born on October 27, 1928, is currently India’s oldest-surviving Test cricketer. Among the other elderly gentlemen, the fit and charming Madhav Apte is full of energy, VV Kumar is an active coach in Chennai, and V Subramanya was inspirational during his last appearance at a public gathering.

Nari Contractor, Chandu Borde and Salim Durrani remain in public consciousness, too.

But, barring basic statistics, very little is known about Patankar, Patil and Bhandari – all of whom were in the Indian XI at various

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

56 INDIA AT 500

YOUNG GUN: On his debut in 1954-55, Bhandari was India’s youngest Test player at the time at 19 years and 91 days.

points when New Zealand toured for the first time in 1955-56.

Patankar, later a long-serving assistant secretary for sports at Cricket Club of India and the manager of the Indian team on the 1998 Zimbabwe tour, and Bhandari were easy to trace. To reach Patil, however, needed many phone calls before a friend in Kolhapur and Surendra Bhave, the former Maharashtra skipper and a national selector, helped us out.

While the tales of all three are fascinating, we’ll start with Bhandari.

PRAKASH BHANDARI A fairway of stories Bhandari was a rule official for the Augusta Masters Golf tournament in the United States of America for 13 years from 1985 to 1997, and is one of the pioneers of the golf movement in India. Chairman of Mission Olympics for Indian Golf Union, he is a member of Royal and Ancient Golf Club and Delhi Golf Club, and also sits on the committee of the World Club Championship. He travels a lot, and last year came third in a bridge competition in Chennai. Golf is a common enough obsession for many cricketers, but not many have been as involved as Bhandari has.

57

“I got involved in golf after retirement, and not cricket, even though Jagmohan Dalmiya approached me once, because I enjoyed it. To have seen many of my propositions regarding the change of rules being implemented is one of my proudest achievements,” Bhandari, whose current handicap is 18, tells Wisden India. “Meeting personalities like Tiger Woods, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros and Gary Player over dinner at Augusta, hearing stories about how Bobby Jones and his partner started the tournament and soaking in the history, tradition and culture are some my best lifetime experiences.

“I went to play at the Augusta National twice with the captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club on invitation. It was wonderful. Gary visited Delhi regularly to do the DLF course, and used to praise me publicly, saying if you need anything in golf, then be friendly with Prakash Bhandari.”

Bhandari, an allrounder who bowled offspin, is truly golf’s gain and cricket’s loss.

Having taken up cricket at the age of 11, he made his first-class debut for North Zone against the touring Pakistan side in October 1952, and impressed immediately with a five-wicket haul, including the scalps of Hanif Mohammad and Abdul Hafeez Kardar.

“That ball to dismiss Hanif Mohammad was a miracle ball. It swung in the air, went in from outside off and took his stump. He had scored 100, and both of us were surprised,”

COVER DRIVE Of the 285 players who have represented India in Tests, 48 have played just a solitary match, while 35 have played two and 15 have three Test caps.

he jokes. “I was called for the Indian team trial to CCI when I was 17 because of Hemu Adhikari, but they thought I was too young to play international cricket.”

Bhandari was named in the national team for the historic tour of Pakistan two seasons later and made his debut in the fifth Test, hence becoming independent India’s youngest Test player at that time at 19 years and 91 days, only behind Syed Mushtaq Ali’s record of 19 years and 19 days in 1933-34.

Bhandari remembers that his fielding skills earned him praise from the seniors when the team went to Pakistan. “In Pakistan, I was declared as the best fielder in one game. Everyone including Vijay Manjrekar appreciated my fielding, and I was made the 12th man for the first four Tests,” goes on Bhandari. “I was my own hero when it came to fielding. It was great entertainment for me.

I used to stand at cover or cover-point, and my anticipation skills by watching the feet of the batsmen were god’s gift.”

Bhandari, a product of the famous Hindu College in New Delhi, played two more Tests,

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

58 INDIA AT 500

the last against the visiting Australians in 1956-57, but remained wicketless – he was rarely given a bowl.

With a focus on securing his future, he shifted to Calcutta for a job with South Eastern Railways, with whom he was employed for only six months. The city’s “allergic weather” led to “asthmatic problems” and his health needed attention. Cricket became second priority even though he ended up with four centuries and seven five-wicket hauls in 63 first-class matches spread across 18

‘‘That ball to dismiss Hanif Mohammad was a miracle ball. It swung in the air, went in from outside off and took his stump. He had scored 100, and both of us were surprised.” - Prakash Bhandari.

seasons. He rates his unbeaten 111 made in 68 minutes for Bengal against Rajasthan in the 1961-62 Ranji Trophy semifinal and two double-centuries for Delhi as his career highs.

Bhandari remained active in the cricket circuit till 1970-71, though his fascination for golf took shape in 1967 when Russi Mody (not to be mistaken with the Test cricketer) initiated his transfer to Hyderabad with Tata Steel.

“I became a nine-handicap golfer in seven

months time – a record then – and won several tournaments in Hyderabad. At one stage, my lowest handicap was two,” he remembers.

“I played in many all-India tournaments and went to Sri Lanka. Even though I was a club golfer, I beat Major Biloo Sethi and Vikramjeet Singh – big golfing names back then – without much ado.”

It was in Hyderabad that Bhandari met his future wife Jaya, who played badminton.

Their daughter now holds a senior post with the Tatas and son Vivek is a pro golfer. The Bhandaris celebrated the golden jubilee of their wedding earlier this year.

Tests: 3 – Runs 77, HS 39, Avg 19.25; Wickets 0 First-class: 63 – Runs 2552, HS 227, Avg 32.71; Wickets 122, Best 7-54, Avg 28.24

SADASHIV PATIL A Bollywood marriage, a career all too short Sadashiv and Sulabha Patil will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary this December. Their wedding, in 1956, came after a Bollywood-ish struggle, a year after Sadashiv had turned out for India in his only Test, at the Brabourne Stadium. It was also the only occasion when his future wife was at the ground to watch him live.

“We met in Mumbai through one of his friends, who was working with me at Hindustan Petroleum. I am a Brahmin and he

59

THERE WHEN IT MATTERS: Patil’s only Test was also the only occasion his wife watched him live.

is a Maratha, so there was a lot of resentment at the inter-caste marriage, though our brothers and sisters were supportive,” Sulabha, speaking on behalf of Sadashiv as he struggles with his hearing, tells us. “Our parents did not attend our wedding fearing a boycott from society. As both of us were working, there wasn’t a financial issue as such, and we were accepted by our families within two to three months of our marriage.

“We have our relatives nearby, and our two daughters visit us when possible, but essentially we two take care of each other,” she says, understandably proud of her decision to marry him despite the opposition all those years ago. “The number of years we have carried on together shows our strong bond.”

After they got married, Sadashiv went

to England in 1959 and 1961 to play in the Lancashire league, and Sulabha remembers waiting for the Saturday edition of The Times of India to see how many wickets her husband had picked up. “Those were some of the great days for him, but unfortunately I did not keep the cut-outs.”

Sadashiv comes from a sporting family. His father was a wrestler, and his older brother Dattatraya played one Ranji Trophy game for Maharashtra.

Cricket was never too far away from the young Sadashiv, and when he picked up five wickets on his first-class debut in Maharashtra’s first-ever outright win against Mumbai, higher honours were not going to be far away. Sadashiv became a

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

60

HIGHEST IMPACT INDIAN TEST BATTING PERFORMANCES

INDIA AT 500

VVS Laxman – 59 and 281 v Australia, Kolkata, 2001 India’s most famous win in Test cricket. VVS Laxman came in to bat at 88 for 4 (under pressure) in the first innings and top-scored as India were bundled out for 171 in reply to Australia’s 445.

Following on, he again came to the crease, under pressure of the first-innings deficit, at 52 for 1. He put together 117 for the fourth wicket with Sourav Ganguly before being involved in a mammoth 376run stand with Rahul Dravid that not only changed the momentum of the match but of the series.

India declared at 657 for 7 in the second innings.

Harbhajan Singh picked up six in the final innings to dismiss Australia for 212 as India won by 171 runs.

VVS Laxman – 69 v Australia, Mumbai, 2004 From a 99-run deficit in a very low-scoring match, India were 14 for 2 when Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar came together. Laxman made 69 (under pressure of falling wickets and the first-innings deficit), Tendulkar hit 55, and India set a target of 107. Australia were shot out for 93. In the context of the match, Laxman’s innings, though appearing only a modest 69, had a very high impact.

Mohammad Azharuddin – 182 v England, Kolkata, 1993 In the series opener at the Eden Gardens in 1993, India, after opting to bat, were 93 for 3 when Azharuddin joined Tendulkar at the crease. The pair stitched together 123 before the latter was dismissed. Azharuddin took control and put on useful partnerships with Pravin Amre and Kapil Dev. He was finally dismissed for a sublime 182 off just 197 deliveries and India ended with 371. The spin trio of Anil Kumble, Venkatapathi Raju and Rajesh Chauhan skittled England for 163 and then 286 when following on. India chased down their target of 79 with eight wickets to spare.

beneficiary of Lala Amarnath’s policy of throwing youngsters in at the deep end, but unfortunately his international career was limited to only one match in December 1955 in Mumbai where he dismissed John Reid twice as India beat New Zealand for the first time.

Little did Sadashiv and Sulabha know back then that his cricketing days were going to last just three more seasons after he returned from England in 1961.

“After 12-15 years of active cricket, he started getting persistent knee pain in 1962. There was not enough awareness or specialisation in sports medicine back then,” Srikrishna Shinde, their elder son-in-law, offers. “Doctors say there is a gap in his knee, but now age doesn’t permit operation.”

“He doesn’t move now,” carries on Sulabha, even as she expresses her gratitude to the BCCI for its pension scheme. “That allows us to have whatever we need for our living. We worship cricket as it made our life.”

Sadashiv, formerly employed with Tata’s textile branch, may not be able to walk or hear well anymore, but hasn’t lost his wit. He asks his wife to tell us that dismissing Polly Umrigar, his India captain, in a Times Shield match remains his favourite moment, and that he closely followed India’s recent Test series in the West Indies. He also informs us that he was deeply saddened when GS

61

Ramchand, who became his closest friend while playing in Lancashire, passed away in 2003. But he becomes coy when asked what he likes the most about his wife of so many years.

“I am bolder and more extroverted than him. He is blushing, he is very shy,” Sulabha says, laughing out loud. “He is a man who has never hurt anyone and I am proud of that. He will go to any extent to protect others. It’s just that he forgets things; maybe one day, I will become like him.”

Before we end the conversation, Sadashiv takes over, and screams into the mouthpiece of the phone: “Thank you. Thank you.” Oh, thank you, Mr Patil.

Tests: 1 – Runs 14, HS 14*, Avg -; Wickets 2, Best 1-15, Avg 25.50 First-class: 36 – Runs 866, HS 69, Avg 27.06; Wickets 83, Best 5-38, Avg 30.60 CHANDRAKANT PATANKAR “Only 86” - the cricketer with a Ph D Patankar lost his wife to Alzheimer’s at the age of 60 in 1993, but he had his plate full and could not afford to break down.

Vaijyanti Karnik, one of Patankar’s twin daughters – separated from Jayawanti Kapre, her sister by three minutes and unsure which of them is older – provides the details: “We twin sisters are very attached to our parents.

MORE THAN A ONE-TEST WONDER: Patankar is a rare Indian international cricketer to have completed a PhD.

So my father took it very strongly for our sake, and kept the family together.” Karnik remembers her father telling them how Vijay Merchant announced the birth of the two sisters on radio during commentary.

Even though his daughters are settled in Mumbai, Patankar prefers to stay independently in his house in Parel. His daily schedule, which he calls “normal life”, includes reading the morning newspapers, offering prayers to the almighty, eating a simple meal, taking a nap in the afternoon and then spending time with friends in his locality in the evening.

Patankar, a wicketkeeper-batsman, missed out on playing for India on a regular basis

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

62 INDIA AT 500

WITH WADEKAR: Patankar became secretary of the Mumbai Cricket Association in 1993-94, before joining CCI, where he was active till 2009.

because he played in the same era as Naren Tamhane – one of India’s finest wicketkeepers of that era.

“Unfortunately, Mr Naren Tamhane was my contemporary and he used to get preference over me,” says Patankar in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Those days, foreign teams used to come once in four or five years, so there was hardly any chance. After my debut, where I had a partnership with Mr (Jayasinghrao) Ghorpade when we were 88 for 7 (against New Zealand in Kolkata in 1955-56), they called back Mr Tamhane, and that was it.

After all, only one wicketkeeper can play.

“Similarly, even though I played two Ranji Trophy finals for Mumbai, I only got chances when Mr Tamhane was not available,” Patankar, who rates a century in an interuniversity game as his best knock, adds. “I first played a Ranji final against Rajasthan in Udaipur (in 1960-61), and then didn’t play for three seasons. The next chance I got was in the semifinal in 1965-66.

“Cricket was not a do-or-die business those days. If you are called, you play. If you are not called, you don’t play. I am happy that I played at least one Test for India. It was more for fun,

63

and I got to play with Vinoo Mankad, Subhash Gupte, Vijay Manjrekar, Dattu Phadkar, Polly Umrigar, (GS) Ramchand in local cricket.”

But Patankar, who started his cricket at Modern High School in Pune and captained Indian University against a Commonwealth XI in 1954, is more than just a one-Test wonder.

He remains a rare Indian international cricketer to have completed a Ph D.

In 1985, the principal of Commerce College in Pune suggested to Patankar’s father, a famous doctor in the city who lived for 100 years, to get experienced candidates to do their Ph Ds. Egged on by his father, Patankar, who was almost at the end of his tenure as vice-president for the material management department at Laxmi Vishnu Mills at the time, took up the challenge.

“I got my Ph D when I was 55 years of age,” he laughs. “I did it because I had guidance. I got the highest educational degree, but could not put it into much use because I retired in 1988.”

After retiring, Patankar became the secretary of the Mumbai Cricket Association in 1993-94, which was when he lost his wife, before joining CCI where he was active 2009.

“I had joined CCI at the insistence of Raj Singh Dungarpur. Till I was physically fit, I looked after all sports there and then withdrew from my post.”

COVER DRIVE India’s Test Septuagenarians Farokh Engineer (78); Abbas Ali Baig (77); Erapalli Prasanna (76); Ajit Wadekar (75); Syed Abid Ali, Umesh Kulkarni (74); BS Chandrasekhar, S Venkataraghavan, Ajit Pai, Sudhir Naik (71) *Bishan Singh Bedi will turn 70 on September 25

Patankar has very little contact with the cricket world these days, but catches up with Vasu Paranjape, Ajit Wadekar, Dilip Vengsarkar and Milind Rege, among others, when invited for functions. His spirits remain as high as ever. “Health is okay. I am only 86 after all,” he says. “There are age-related complaints, but you have to deal with it, no?”

Tests: 1 – Runs 14, HS 13, Avg 14.00 First-class: 26 – Runs 503, HS 100, Avg 15.71 ***

The world may be a different place now from when Prakash Bhandari, Sadashiv Patil and Chandrakant Patankar represented India.

Over their many years, they have had to deal with much that many of us are probably not ready for yet. But for those young at heart, like these three extraordinary gentlemen, there is very little that changes with time.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

64 INDIA AT 500

L

API K A I V E L UMB

OK T D I V A R FROM D HS G I H ’s besta T i d C n I A f P o IM S ’ ex’s list A d I n I D t c N a I – s well in Imp a e s r e u s t i a r e p f ur names ple of s d u e t o c c e a p re The ex there a t u b , e m of-all-ti

BATSMAN RAHUL DRAVID He is right on top for one very simple reason – no Indian batsman has produced more high impact performances in critical circumstances (in a series context) than Dravid. In fact, in all Test cricket, only Inzamam-ul-Haq has as many series-defining (SD) performances as him (8). Between 2001 and 2006, Dravid was the secondhighest impact batsman in the world, after Inzamam.

In that period, India made considerable strides in world cricket (including notable overseas wins), and it is uncanny how Dravid played the lead role every single time in those landmark wins. Dravid also has the second-highest batting consistency in Indian Test history after Sunil Gavaskar. He has the highest Runs Tally Impact (proportion of runs made in every match relative to the match standard, with a higher value on ‘tough runs’) and partnership-building Impact in Indian cricket history. He also has the

1

fourth-highest pressure impact (of falling wickets) after Gundappa Viswanath, Chandu Borde and VVS Laxman. Interestingly, he even has the fourth-highest

65

new-ball impact (ability to see off the new ball). The three batsmen are ahead of him are all openers – Gavaskar, Gautam Gambhir and Navjot Singh Sidhu.

This indicates what a reliable No. 3 batsman he was.

Combine all that with his longevity (163 Tests in 16 years, second only to Sachin Tendulkar), and his place cannot be disputed.

SACHIN TENDULKAR The name many expect at the top here is third in consistency (after Gavaskar and Dravid), runs tally impact and partnership-

2

those were in support roles. Despite a poor phase between 2005 and 2007, he came back spectacularly as the highest impact batsman in the world between 2008 and early 2011, the highest impact phase of his career (despite the more spectacular phase between 1996 and 2000). At the time of the 2011 World Cup, Tendulkar and Dravid had almost the same impact as batsmen. Thereafter, Dravid was the highest impact Indian batsman till he retired in 2012, and Tendulkar was the lowest impact specialist Indian batsman till he retired in 2013 – this separated them quite emphatically, for posterity.

SUNIL GAVASKAR The most consistent Indian batsman ever also predictably has the highest newball impact – he was one of the most accomplished opening batsmen in history. Despite some landmark successes, the Indian team’s mindset was much more defensive in his time, thus reducing the potential for SDs relative to the Indian teams of the 2000s.

Moreover, two of Gavaskar’s greatest innings (221 v England, and 96 v Pakistan, his last Test innings) narrowly missed being SD performances by 9 and 16 runs respectively. Had they been scored even by his colleagues, he would have had an impact neck-toneck with Tendulkar. Gavaskar gave Indian cricket a spine in the 1970s and was their highest impact batsman right through his career. Most interestingly, he was India’s highest impact batsman ever till early2002, when Dravid overtook him (and then increased the gap dramatically). Despite Tendulkar’s stunning individual performances from the mid1990s, he never overtook Gavaskar till his own high impact phase between 2008 and 2011. It is one of the most interesting aspects of Indian cricket when you look at impact in a team context.

3

building impact (both after Dravid and Gavaskar).

He is second when it comes to SD performances, two less than Dravid in 37 more Tests, and half of

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

66 INDIA AT 500

GUNDAPPA VISWANATH It would surprise a lot of people to see him at this position, given how much lower his average is than many others below him on this list. In fact, his impact is in the same league as Gavaskar’s, who averages almost 10 runs per innings more than him. The reason for this is the one extra SD Viswanath has, in 34 fewer Tests. Moreover, apart from being one of the great stylists in the game, Viswanath was also the go-to man in a crisis (he absorbed the most pressure successfully among Indian batsmen who played more than 50 Tests) and surprisingly

4

NAVJOT SINGH SIDHU The most surprising name on this list, an eccentric presence, given the company.

Despite his high failure rate, his high new-ball impact and partnership-building impact are pointers to his effectiveness as an opener. But the main reason for his high impact is the two SD performances he registered in just 51 Tests. In India’s only Test match win (also series win) outside its own shores in the 1990s against Sri Lanka (1993), Sidhu was India’s highest impact batsman (with 82 and 104).

Then, against Australia in the famous momentumchanging Chennai Test of 1998, Sidhu was India’s second-highest impact batsman (with 62 and 64).

In the second innings, with India still in the arrears, he began a famous assault of Shane Warne (which Tendulkar continued spectacularly with his classic unbeaten 155) and India came back from behind to win the match, and eventually, the series. These two SDs give him this impact. Interestingly, his longevity is not as low as his tally of 51 Tests suggests it should be, because his Test career actually lasted 16 years.

5

BOWLERS ANIL KUMBLE India’s accomplishment of being the only unbeaten Test side in home conditions throughout the 1990s has perhaps not been given enough credit (only four teams have accomplished that after World War II). Anil Kumble was the main reason why India did that. He was the highest impact bowler in the world in that period, with six of his nine SD performances coming in that time.

Interestingly, even in the 2000s (till he retired late in 2008), he was India’s highest impact bowler, even if not too overwhelmingly. All this makes him the second-highest impact bowler in home conditions

1

consistent (his failure rate is also the fourth-best for an Indian batsman). Given his longevity (91 Tests in 14 years), his place in Indian cricket history is a very special one.

67

world-beating Australian side in 2001. The other three were against the second strongest side, South Africa, in 2004, 2008 and 2010. That’s as serious as any contribution gets in Test history. In fact, between 2001 and 2010, a period in which he played 75 of his 103 Tests, Harbhajan was the sixth-highest impact bowler in the world (after Muralitharan, Warne, Glenn McGrath, Dale Steyn and Kumble). Like Kumble, he is often judged harshly for his lack of sufficient overseas laurels (his away bowling average is 39) but like Kumble, he needs to be acknowledged for what he did overall for Indian Test cricket.

BISHAN SINGH BEDI Quite simply, the most difficult Indian bowler to score runs off, by a huge distance.

Kumble, who is next on economy impact, is almost half of Bedi in that respect. Internationally, only

3

in Test history, after Muttiah Muralitharan, and the seventh-highest impact bowler in the 138-year Test history. Kumble has eight SD performances purely as a bowler (second-highest along with Shane Warne).

Only Muralitharan, with 10, has more. This puts Kumble amongst the three biggest series-winners with the ball in Test cricket history. He’s Test cricket royalty.

HARBHAJAN SINGH Whether it was big-match temperament or just the good fortune of playing in a strong side, Harbhajan’s four SD performances separate him from the legendary trio of Bishan Singh Bedi, BS Chandrasekhar and Erapalli Prasanna, despite each of them having a better bowling average than him. All four of Harbhajan’s SDs were at home – the first of them the most memorable, against a

2

Lance Gibbs, McGrath, Muralitharan and Curtly Ambrose were harder to put away – that’s serious company to be in. A master of flight and deception, Bedi’s dominance as a spinner coincided with India’s

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

68 INDIA AT 500

phenomenal rise and success in Test cricket from the late 1960s into the late 1970s. In fact, between 1968 and 1978, Bedi was not only the highest impact Indian bowler but also the fifth-highest impact bowler in the world, a period in which India not only won their first overseas series – in New Zealand – but also tasted maiden away success in West Indies and England. It is curious, then, that for a bowler of his calibre, Bedi just has a solitary SD performance in his career, which puts him below Harbhajan when it comes to impact, despite being a higher impact wicket-taker and a more consistent bowler.

The fact is, Bedi’s miserly bowling often helped his other colleagues (Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan) get wickets at the other end and so, his famous colleagues perhaps owe him as much as Indian cricket does.

BS CHANDRASEKHAR He was a prolific wicket-taker (second only to Kumble when it comes to top and middle-order wickets) who struck panic in batting line-ups when he found his groove (second-highest pressure-building impact after Kumble). The big occasion also seemed to bring out his best more than his other illustrious partners – he has two SDs, including the legendary one against England at The Oval in 1971 when his 6 for 38 destroyed the home team. In fact, when it comes to away conditions, he remains India’s highest impact spinner till date. Though considered a ‘mystery bowler’ who reportedly did not himself know what he was going to bowl next, and was therefore labelled ‘erratic’ right through his career (explained by his low economy impact), it is very interesting that he was actually still more consistent when it came to impact, thanks to his wicket-taking, than both Prasanna and Venkataraghavan.

KAPIL DEV After an era heavily dominated by spin (when the likes of Gavaskar used to open the bowling), came Kapil. Between late 1978 (when he debuted) and early 1982, Kapil was the secondhighest impact bowler in the world, after Dennis Lillee. In that period, India won four consecutive series at home and Kapil produced SDs in three of

5

4

them. Overall, he registered four SDs with the ball in his 129 Tests. Till 1993, he was the only Indian fast bowler who ever registered an SD. It is this quality of rising to the occasion and playing at his best, often when the situation was charged, that lifts him over both Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath, both of whom actually had a higher propensity to pick up wickets. Till date, he remains India’s fourthmost consistent bowler ever (after Kumble, Zaheer and Bedi) – remarkable, given that he was a genuine allrounder.

69

HIGHEST IMPACT PLAYERS Bowlers always have a higher impact than batsmen in Test cricket. That is the nature of the beast – the cliché about bowlers winning matches is truest

ANIL KUMBLE

KAPIL DEV

HARBHAJAN SINGH

in Test cricket. So it is not surprising to see more bowlers than batsmen on the top five list.

Kumble as the definitive highest impact Indian bowler, followed byHarbhajan, gets further accentuated, given that they are half-batsmen too.

Kapil is easily India’s highest impact allrounder, his

QUIZ 1.

consistency of 14% making him India’s most reliable player, after Mahendra Singh Dhoni (for whom wicketkeeping gives a natural advantage). If he had paid a little more attention to his batting, as say Imran Khan did later in his career, he would have

BISHAN SINGH BEDI

RAHUL DRAVID

been among the five highest impact five allrounders in Test history.

In the absence of a top-class batting allrounder, India’s highest impact batsman comes in as the fifth highest impact player.

ANSWERS ON PAGE 76

- DILEEP V

Which useful lower-order batsman registered India’s first fifty in Test cricket in their first Test match at Lord’s in 1932?

2.

Which ground hosted India’s first home Test in 1933?

3.

Don Bradman has been out hit-wicket only once in his career. Name the bowler against whom this happened.

4.

What first in Indian cricket did Vijay Hazare achieve in the fourth Test of the 1947-48 tour of Australia at Adelaide?

5.

Which bowler took the wickets of Clive Lloyd and Garry Sobers in successive overs in the second innings of the second Test in 1971, paving the way for India’s first ever victory against West Indies?

6.

Set a target of 143 to win, Australia crumbled to 83 all out to hand India an unlikely Test win in Melbourne in 1981.

Which bowler took pain-killers after having strained a thigh muscle, and bowled unchanged to take five wickets?

7.

Three teams have played their inaugural Test against India. Name all three.

8.

In the historic 2001 Test at Eden Gardens against Australia, Harbhajan Singh’s 13 wickets was the most. Who with three wickets, all of them in final innings, was second in the list?

9.

India’s drawn Test in Mumbai in 2011 against West Indies was only the third instance of this occurring in Test cricket. What happened?

10. It has been achieved 14 times by Indian batsmen in Tests. Lala Amarnath was the first and Rohit Sharma the latest. What are we talking about?

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

70 INDIA AT 500

CK Nayudu –

The Iron Man of Indian Cricket

The Holkar legend was a stern disciplinarian, was as tough as they came, and played with grace, grandeur and bravado

CHANDU BORDE

I

was in the Maharashtra side that travelled to Indore to take on the formidable Holkar state outfit led by Colonel CK Nayudu in the 1952-53 Ranji Trophy semi-finals.

The occasion afforded me my first sighting of Indian cricket’s original colossus. I couldn’t take my eyes off him – a towering personality with big eyes. An equally thrilling moment for me was to see his 6′2′′ frame leading his team out. I have known people who were excited by the mere sight of him walking to the centre. His attractive batting was another story.

We batted first and at one stage in our first innings, Nayudu stationed himself at

silly mid-off where Marutirao Mathe’s fierce drive hit him on the shin. A lesser man would have made his way to the pavilion to treat the swollen leg, but Nayudu asked his bowler who had a concerned look on his face, to continue bowling.

Even at 58 years of age, he was the iron man of Indian cricket.

My memory of that match will be undiminished. Not for our seven-wicket loss of course, but, among other things, how he did not want players from both teams to consume water in the drinks breaks.

Only Khandu Rangnekar, who was playing for Holkar then, could make him change his mind. Ultimately, he said Maharashtra

71

THE IRON MAN: Nayudu is one of very few players to have had careers spanning half a century.

players could have drinks every 45 minutes in the extremely hot conditions, but not his players.

The previous year, we heard about how he requested his rival captain, Mumbai’s Madhav Mantri to instruct his reputed bowler Dattu Phadkar to continue bowling fast after Phadkar had dealt a blow to Nayudu’s mouth which resulted in the loss of two front teeth and a bloodied shirt at the Brabourne Stadium.

Indian cricketers didn’t come as tough as Nayudu especially in those days when batsmen were happy to thrive in home conditions only to come a-cropper when they toured abroad. Nayudu, already 37 when

he led India on their inaugural Test match at Lord’s, was 67 when he played his last first-class match. Few players have a career spanning half a century, a tribute as much to Nayudu’s fitness as to his competitiveness.

He was tough and expected others to have the same kind of toughness. During the second Test of the 1951-52 series against England in Mumbai, Vijay Hazare was hit above the eyebrow while trying to hook a bouncer from Fred Ridgway. Just as Hazare was about to get the cut stitched up in the dressing room by the doctor, Nayudu walked in to ask what was the batsman doing in the room. When Hazare told Nayudu he was getting the wound treated, the old pro said sternly: “It can wait.” The India captain had

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

72

no option but to get back to the crease and take on the fast bowler, who bowled another bumper which was hooked to the fence.

Hazare only returned when he was run out through a misunderstanding with Chandu Sarwate with 155 to his name. Only then was the cut treated.

Even the Englishmen witnessed his physical and mental toughness. I’ve heard the story about his bravado in the Oval Test of 1936 when England’s captain Gubby Allen hit Nayudu below his heart. After dropping his bat, he made a quick, successful attempt to continue batting and hooked the next ball to the fence. His 81 denied England an innings victory and it was his highest Test score in what would be his final Test for India.

I am sure the Colonel, as he was called, had a role to play in my selection for India’s 195455 tour of Pakistan. The BCCI requested state associations to send their promising first-class cricketers to Delhi for selection trials conducted by Nayudu. After dividing the lot into batsmen and bowlers, he asked us to queue up. Putting on his gloves, he walked into the net with a bat, but without pads. When he asked the young fast bowlers to bowl at him, they didn’t have the heart to do so at full throttle. He was 58 years old.

Noticing their hesitancy, he yelled, “I want you all to bowl fast. Don’t you want to be picked for India?” When they obeyed his orders, we saw something that we will remember forever. Nayudu middled every ball. Some of

Sachin Tendulkar – 0 and 136, 1 for 10 and 2 for 35 v Pakistan, Chennai, 1999 It is perhaps one of the most famous Test matches ever. The age-old rivals were renewing ties after nine years and it had been more than 11 years since Pakistan played a Test match on Indian soil. The series couldn’t have asked for a more mesmerising start. Restricted to 238, Pakistan kept the hosts to 254 and up until then, Tendulkar had one wicket and a duck to show for his efforts. The visitors then posted 286 – Tendulkar claimed two top-middleorder wickets and broke a partnership in the process – leaving India to chase 271, which would, then, have been the most successful run chase at Chepauk. Waqar Younis had other ideas though, and his opening burst left the home team reeling at 6 for 2. Tendulkar walked in. Under pressure as wickets kept falling, and braving pain, Tendulkar made a valiant 136 that took India within striking distance. His dismissal, though, would prove dear as Pakistan went on to record a famous win. This was Tendulkar’s highest impact performance in Test cricket.

those bowlers, such as V Rajindernath and G R Sunderam, went on to wear India colours.

When it was our turn to bat, he took the ball and many a time bowled at shoulder height on the leg side. Some batsmen hooked his deliveries and ended up being caught while I played with a straight bat and concentrated on hitting the ball along the ground. After my session, he asked where I came from. When I said Baroda, he smiled and asked, “How is Hazare?” He had noticed that I had modelled myself on Vijay Hazare.

THIRD HIGHEST IMPACT INDIAN TEST ALL-ROUND PERFORMANCE

INDIA AT 500

73

He was stern and had gained huge respect among the cricket fraternity. Very few had the courage to contradict him, but he was a kind man in many ways. Watching good cricket made his day. Long after he quit as national selector, he happened to be visiting Nagpur for a break and made it a point to watch a game which I figured in. To me, that was true love for the sport and it was only one of the

In 1967, while waging a losing battle for life in Indore, his family had to insert an announcement in the local newspapers requesting admirers not to visit him for his birthday on October 31.

I felt deeply honoured to be a recipient of an award instituted in his memory by the BCCI in 2003. It was also very special because

BATTING AVERAGES

Mat

Inns

NO

Runs

HS

Avg

100s

50s

Ct

Test

7

14

0

350

81

25.00

0

2

4

First-Class

207

344

15

11825

200

35.94

26

58

170

BOWLING AVERAGES Mat

Inns

Balls

Runs

Wkts

BBI

BBM

Ave

Econ

SR

4w

5w

10w

Test

7

10

858

386

9

3-40

3.40

42.88

2.69

95.30

-

-

-

First-Class

207

-

25798

12038

411

7-44

-

29.28

2.79

60.70

-

12

2

many examples of Nayudu’s contribution to Indian cricket.

His popularity would match that of the biggest stars in the game today. The late Dicky Rutnagur, the cricket writer, once wrote that schoolboys left their classes and businessmen stopped trading to be at Bombay Gymkhana when they heard C K Nayudu had arrived at the crease. After obliging a young boy with her autograph, Sarojini Naidu, known as the Nightingale of India, asked the child if he knew who she was. “Yes,” he said. “You are CK Nayudu’s wife!”

the CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to me at the CK Nayudu Hall of the Cricket Club of India not far away from the Bombay Gymkhana where the great man played some of his finest innings with grace, grandeur and bravado.

An elegant batsman and decent legspinner, Chandu Borde played 55 Tests between 1958 and 1969, scoring 3061 runs at an average of 35.59, and captaining India in one game.

This Hall of Fame article first appeared in Wisden India Almanack 2014.

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

74 INDIA AT 500

INDIA’S 285 TEST CRICKETERS Amar Singh (7) • Sorabji Colah (2) • Jahangir Khan (4) • Lall Singh (1) • Naoomal Jeoomal (3) • Janardan Navle (2) • CK Nayudu (7) • Syed Nazir Ali (2) • Mohammad Nissar (6) • Phiroze Palia (2) • Syed Wazir Ali (7) • Lala Amaranth (24) • LP Jai (1) • Rustomji Jamshedji (1) • Vijay Merchant (10) • L Ramji (1) • Dilawar Hussain (3) • MJ Gopalan (1) • Syed Mushtaq Ali (11) • CS Nayudu (11) • Yuvraj of Patiala (1) • Dattaram Hindlekar (4) • Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram (3) • Khershed Meherhomji (1)• Cotar Ramaswami (2) • M Baqa Jilani (1) • Gul Mohammad (8) • Vijay Hazare (30) • Abdul Hafeez Kardar (3) • Vinoo Mankad (44) • Rusi Modi (10) • MAK Pataudi Sr (3) • Sadhu Shinde (7) • Chandu Sarwate (9) • Ranga Sohoni (4) • Hemu Adhikari (21) • Jenni Irani (2) • G Kishenchand (5) • Khandu Rangnekar (3) • Amir Elahi (1) • Dattu Phadkar (31) • K Rai Singh (1) • Prabir Sen (14) • CR Rangachari (4) • KC Ibrahim (4) • Keki Tarapore (1) • Polly Umrigar (59) • Mantu Banerjee (1) • Ghulam Ahmed (22) • Nirode Chowdhury (2) • Madhusudan Rege (1) • Shute Banerjee (1) • Nana Joshi (12) • Pankaj Roy (43) • CD Gopinath (8) • Madhav Mantri (4) • Ramesh Divecha (5) • Subhash Gupte (36) • Vijay Manjrekar (55) • Datta Gaekwad (11) • Gulabrai Ramchand (33) • Hiralal Gaekwad (1) • S Nyalchand (1) • Madhav Apte (7) • Bal Dani (1) • V Rajindernath (1) • Ebrahim Maka (2) • Deepak Shodhan (3) • Chandrasekhar Gadkari (6) • JM Ghorpade (8) • Pananmal Punjabi (5) • Naren Tamhane (21) • Prakash Bhandari (3) • Jasu Patel (7) • AG Kripal Singh (14) • Narain Swamy (1) • Nari Contractor (31) • Vijay Mehra (8) • Sadashiv Patil (1) • Bapu Nadkarni (41) • GR Sunderam (2) • Chandrakant Patankar (1) • Chandu Borde (55) • Ghulam Guard (2) • Manohar Hardikar (2) • Vasant Ranjane (7) • Ramnath Kenny (5) • Surendranath (11) • Apoorva Sengupta (1) • Ramakant Desai (28) • ML Jaisimha (31) • Arvind Apte (1) • Abbas Ali Baig (10) • VM Muddiah (2) • Salim Durrani (29) • Budhi Kunderan (18) • AG Milkha Singh (4) • Man Sood (1) • Rusi Surti (26) • Balu Gupte (3) • VV Kumar (2) • Farokh Engineer (46) • Dillip Sardesai (30) • MAK Pataudi Jr (46) • Erapalli Prasanna (49) • Bhagwat Chandrasekhar (58) • Rajinder Pal (1) • Hanumant Singh (14) • KS Indrajitsinhji (4) • S Venkataraghavan (57) • V Subramanya (9) • Ajit Wadekar (37) • Bishan Singh Bedi (67) • Subrata Guha (4) • Ramesh Saxena (1) • Syed Abid Ali (29) • Umesh Kulkarni (4) • Chetan Chauhan (40) • Ashok Mankad (22) • Ajit Pai (1) • Ambar Roy (4) • Ashok Gandotra (2) • Eknath Solkar (27) • Gundappa Viswanath (91) • Mohinder Amarnath (69) • Kenia Jayantilal (1) • P Krishnamurthy (5) • Sunil Gavaskar (125) • Ramnath Parkar (2) • Madan Lal (39) • Brijesh Patel (21) • Sudhir Naik (3) • Hemant Kanitkar (2) • Parthasarthi Sharma (5) • Aunshuman Gaekwad (40) • Karsan Ghavri (39) •

75

Surinder Amaranth (10) • Syed Kirmani (88) • Dillip Vengsarkar (116) • Yajurvindra Singh (4) • Kapil Dev (131) • MV Narasimha Rao (4) • Dhiraj Parsana (2) • Bharath Reddy (4) • Yashpal Sharma (37) • Dillip Doshi (33) • Shivlal Yadav (35) • Roger Binny (27) • Sandeep Patil (29) • Kirti Azad (7) • Ravi Shastri (80) • Yograj Singh (1) • TE Srinivasan (1) • K Srikkanth (43) • Ashok Malhotra (7) • Pranab Roy (2) • Ghulam Parkar (1) • Suru Nayak (2) • Arun Lal (16) • Rakesh Shukla (1) • Maninder Singh (35) • Balwinder Singh Sandhu (8) • TA Sekhar (2) • L Sivaramakrishnan (9) • Raghuram Bhat (2) • NS Sidhu (21) • Chetan Sharma (23) • Manoj Prabhakar (39) • Mohammad Azharuddin (99) • Gopal Sharma (5) • Lalchand Rajput (2) • Sadanand Viswanath (3) • Kiran More (49) • Chandrakant Pandit (5) • Raju Kulkarni (3) • B Arun (2) • Raman Lamba (4) • Arshad Ayub (13) • Sanjay Manjrekar (37) • Narendra Hirwani (17) • WV Raman (11) • Ajay Sharma (1) • Rashid Patel (1) • Sanjeev Sharma (2) • M Venkataramana (1) • Salil Ankola (1) • Sachin Tendulkar (200) • Vivek Razdan (2) • Venkatapathi Raju (28) • Atul Wassan (4) • Gursharan Singh (1) • Anil Kumble (132) • Javagal Srinath (67) • Subroto Banerjee (1) • Pravin Amre (11) • Ajay Jadeja (15) • Rajesh Chauhan (21) • Vinod Kambli (17) • Vijay Yadav (1) • Nayan Mongia (44) • Ashish Kapoor (4) • Sunil Joshi (15) • Paras Mhambrey (2) • Venkatesh Prasad (33) • Vikram Rathour (6) • Rahul Dravid (113) • Sourav Ganguly (164) • David Johnson (2) • VVS Laxman (134) • Dodda Ganesh (4) • Abey Kuruvilla (10) • Nilesh Kulkarni (3) • Debasis Mohanty (2) • Harvinder Singh (3) • Harbhajan Singh (103) • Ajit Agarkar (26) • Robin Singh (1) • Robin Singh Jr (1) • S Ramesh (19) • Ashish Nehra (17) • Devang Gandhi (4) • MSK Prasad (6) • Vijay Bharadwaj (3) • Hrishikesh Kanitkar (2) • Wasim Jaffer (31) • Murali Kartik (8) • Nikhil Chopra (1) • Mohammad Kaif (13) • Shiv Sunder Das (23) • Syed Saba Karim (1) • Zaheer Khan (92) • Vijay Dahiya (2) • Sarandeep Singh (3) • Rahul Sanghvi (1) • Sairaj Bahutule (2) • Samir Dighe (6) • Hemang Badani (4) • Deep Dasgupta (8) • Virender Sehwag (104) • Sanjay Bangar (12) • Iqbal Siddiqui (1) • Tinu Yohannan (3) • Ajay Ratra (6) • Parthiv Patel (20) • L Balaji (8) • Aakash Chopra (10) • Yuvraj Singh (40) • Irfan Pathan (29) • Gautam Gambhir (51) • Dinesh Karthik (23) • MS Dhoni (90) • RP Singh (14) • S Sreesanth (27) • Piyush Chawla (2) • Munaf Patel (13) • VRV Singh (5) • Ramesh Powar (2) • Ishant Sharma (72) • Amit Mishra (20) • M Vijay (39) • Pragyan Ojha (24) • S Badrinath (2) • Wriddhiman Saha (15)• Abhimanyu Mithun (4) • Suresh Raina (18) • Cheteshwar Pujara (35) • Jaydev Unadkat (1) • Virat Kohli (45) • Praveen Kumar (45) • Abhinav Mukund (5) • R Ashwin (36) • Umesh Yadav (19) • Varun Aaron (9) • R Vinay Kumar (1) • Ravindra Jadeja (17) • Bhuvneshwar Kumar (14) • Shikhar Dhawan (22) • Ajinkya Rahane (26) • Mohammed Shami (16) • Rohit Sharma (18) • Stuart Binny (6) • Pankaj Singh (2) • Karn Sharma (1) • KL Rahul (8) • Naman Ojha (1).

ISSUE 10, SEPTEMBER 2016

76 INDIA AT 500 OVERALL RECORDS

Played: 499; Won: 129; Lost: 157; Tied: 1; Drawn: 212 Won series: 56 Drawn series: 32 Lost series: 62 Series Results 1932: India in England 0-1; 1933-34: England in India 0-2 (3); 1936: India in England 0-2 (3); 1946: India in England 0-1 (3); 1947-48: India in Australia 0-4 (5); 1948-49: West Indies in India 0-1 (5); 1951-52: England in India 1-1 (5); 1952: India in England 0-3 (4); 1952-53: Pakistan in India 2-1 (5), India in West Indies 0-1 (5); 1954-55: India in Pakistan 0-0 (5); 1955-56: New Zealand in India 2-0 (5); 1956-57: Australia in India 0-2 (3); 1958-59: West Indies in India 0-3 (5); 1959: India in England 0-5 (5); 1959-60: Australia in India 1-2 (5); 1960-61: Pakistan in India 0-0 (5); 1961-62: England in India 2-0 (5), India in West Indies 0-5 (5); 1963-64: England in India 0-0 (5); 1964-65: Australia in India 1-1 (3), New Zealand in India 1-0 (4); 1966-67: West Indies in India 0-2 (3); 1967: India in England 0-3 (3); 1967-68: India in Australia 0-4 (4), India in New Zealand 3-1 (4); 1969-70: New Zealand in India 1-1 (3), Australia in India 1-3 (5), 1970-71: India in West Indies 1-0 (5); 1971: India in England 1-0 (3); 1972-73: England in India 2-1 (5); 1974: India in England 0-3 (3); 1974-75: West Indies in India 2-3 (5); 1975-76: India in New Zealand 1-1 (3), India in West Indies 1-2 (4); 1976-77: New Zealand in India 2-0 (3), England in India 1-3 (5); 1977-78: India in Australia 2-3 (5); 1978-79: India in Pakistan 0-2 (3), West Indies in India 1-0 (6); 1979: India in England 0-1 (4); 1979-80: Australia in India 2-0 (6), Pakistan in India 2-0 (6), England in India (Golden Jubilee Test) 0-1 (1); 1980-81: India in Australia 1-1 (3); India in New Zealand 0-1 (3); 1981-82: England in India 1-0 (6); 1982: India in England 0-1 (3); 1982-83: Sri Lanka in India 0-0 (1), India in Pakistan 0-3 (6); India in West Indies 0-2 (5); 1983-84: Pakistan in India 0-0 (3), West Indies in India 0-3 (6); 1984-85: India in Pakistan 0-0 (2), England in India 1-2 (5); 1985: India in Sri Lanka 0-1 (3); 1985-86: India in Australia 0-0 (3); 1986: India in England 2-0 (3); 1986-87: Australia in India 0-0 (3), Sri Lanka in India 2-0 (3), Pakistan in India 0-1 (5); 1987-88: West Indies in India 1-1 (4); 1988-89: New Zealand in India 2-1 (3), India in West Indies 0-3 (4); 1989-90: India in Pakistan 0-0 (4), India in New Zealand 0-1 (3); 1990: India in England 0-1 (3); 1990-91: Sri Lanka in India 1-0 (1); 1991-92: India in Australia 0-4 (5); 1992-93: India in Zimbabwe 0-0 (1), India in South Africa 0-1 (4), England in India 3-0 (3), Zimbabwe in India 1-0 (1); 1993: India in Sri Lanka 1-0 (3); 1993-94: Sri Lanka in India 3-0 (3), India in New Zealand 0-0 (1); 1994-95: West Indies in India 1-1 (3); 1995-96: New Zealand in India 1-0 (3); 1996: India in England 0-1 (3); 1996-97: Australia in India 1-0 (1), South Africa in India 2-1 (3), India in South Africa 0-2 (3), India in West Indies 0-1 (5); 1997: India in Sri Lanka 0-0 (2); 1997-98: Sri Lanka in India 0-0 (3), Australia in India 2-1 (3); 1998-99: India in Zimbabwe 0-1 (1), India in New Zealand 0-1 (2), Pakistan in India 1-1 (2), Asian Test Championship – Pakistan; 1999-00: New Zealand in India 1-0 (3), India in Australia 0-3 (3), South Africa in India 0-2 (2); 2000-01: India in Bangladesh 1-0 (1); Zimbabwe in India 1-0 (2), Australia in India 2-1 (3); 2001: India in Zimbabwe 1-1 (2), India in Sri Lanka 1-2 (3); 2001-02: India in South Africa 0-1 (2), England in India 1-0 (3), Zimbabwe in India 2-0 (2); 2002: India in West Indies 1-2 (5), India in England 1-1 (4); 2002-03: West Indies in India 2-0 (3), India in New Zealand 0-2 (2); 2003-04: New Zealand in India 0-0 (2), India in Australia 1-1 (4), India in Pakistan 2-1 (3); 2004-05: Australia in India 1-2 (4), South Africa in India 1-0 (2), India in Bangladesh 2-0 (2), Pakistan in India 1-1 (3); 2005: India in Zimbabwe 2-0 (2); 2005-06: Sri Lanka in India 2-0 (3), India in Pakistan 0-1 (3), England in India 1-1 (3); 2006: India in West Indies 1-0 (4); 2006-07: India in South Africa 1-2 (3); 2007: India in Bangladesh 1-0 (2), India in England 1-0 (3); 2007-08: Pakistan in India 1-0 (3), India in Australia 1-2 (4), South Africa in India 1-1 (3); 2008: India in Sri Lanka 1-2 (3); 2008-09: Australia in India 2-0 (4), England in India 1-0 (2), India in New Zealand 1-0 (3); 2009-10: Sri Lanka in India 2-0 (3), India in Bangladesh 2-0 (2), South Africa in India 1-1 (2); 2010: India in Sri Lanka 1-1 (3); 2010-11: Australia in India 2-0 (2), New Zealand in India 1-0 (3), India in South Africa 1-1 (3); 2011: India in West Indies 1-0 (3), India in England 0-4 (4); 2011-12: West Indies in India 2-0 (3), India in Australia 0-4 (4); 2012: New Zealand in India 2-0 (2); 2012-13: England in India 1-2 (4), Australia in India 4-0 (4); 2013-14: West Indies in India 2-0 (2), India in South Africa 0-1 (2), India in New Zealand 0-1 (2); 2014: India in England 1-3 (5); 2014-15: India in Australia 0-2 (4); 2015: India in Bangladesh 0-0 (1), India in Sri Lanka 2-1 (3); 2015-16: South Africa in India 3-0 (4); 2016: India in West Indies 2-0 (4).

QUIZ ANSWERS 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Amar Singh Bombay Gymkhana Lala Amarnath Scored hundreds in both innings Salim Durrani

6. Kapil Dev 7. Pakistan (1952), Zimbabwe (1992) & Bangladesh (2000) 8. Sachin Tendulkar 9. Match drawn with scores level 10. Hundreds on Test debut

FW Sports And Media India Private Limited, Wisden House, 13/A, 1St Cross, Lavelle Road, Bangalore - 560001 India extra@wisdenindia.com