60 years ago, the final day at The Oval was rained off, saving India from the humiliation of a 0-4 whitewash. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the horrid tour and how it came to a conclusion.
Showing posts with label Vijay Hazare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vijay Hazare. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2012
August 19, 1952 - Rain comes as saving grace on India's disastrous tour of England 1952
60 years ago, the final day at The Oval was rained off, saving India from the humiliation of a 0-4 whitewash. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the horrid tour and how it came to a conclusion.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Rahul Dravid will walk into an all-time great Indian XI
With a roll call of greatness from Vijay Hazare to VVS Laxman, the pool of Indian middle-order batsmen is an embarrassment of riches. However, Arunabha Sengupta expects Rahul Dravid to walk into any All Time Indian XI.Monday, June 4, 2012
Cricketing Rifts 7 - Sparks in Indian cricket that lit up a drab 50s & 60s
The Dhoni-Sehwag rift may have been true or blown out of proportion by the media. However, far from being unique, discords such as this have been commonplace in the history of the game. In this episode of the Rifts series, Arunabha Sengupta looks at the sparks in Indian cricket during the 50s and 60s.Monday, May 14, 2012
Cricketing Rifts 4 - Merchant Hazare
When two Vijays could not add up to Victory
Throughout the course of history, Indian cricket has produced one batting great after another– stalwarts who have stood up courageously to the weaponry hurled at the country by foreign attacks.
In spite of the embarrassment of riches, in the blur of the many great names that have whirled across scoreboards, quite a few all-time Indian XIs will still include the pioneering willow wielders who had put Indian batting on the map of the world.
While Vijay Merchant was the first great opening batsman of India, and one of the very, very few openers deserving the intensifying adjective, Vijay Hazare was the vanguard of a long line of middle-order masters.
Merchant, classical and correct, was the founder of the Bombay school of batsmanship. Hazare, sedate and solid, was the first sheet anchor of Indian cricket. They were the pillars of the Indian batting from the late 30s to the early 50s – the first of the many golden partnerships of the country. So much so that their names featured together in that famed, express monologue delivered by Amitabh Bachchan in Namak Halaal.
Playing during an era when Indians were regularly steamrolled by the established cricketing powers, both these stalwarts ended up with records that can evoke envy of the latter day masters. While both the batsmen finished with outstanding Test averages close to 48, Merchant's first-class average of 71.64 stands second only to Don Bradman.
Yet, both of them were incredibly decent and dignified. Hazare, laconic, reserved and monosyllabic, rarely voiced his opinions – especially about himself – broad blade distinctly more vocal. And when John Arlott had broached a comparison of his phenomenal first-class average with Bradman’s, Merchant had exclaimed, “Please never again mention my name in the same breath as Sir Donald Bradman. It is sacrilege.”
The decency probably crept into their batting as well. Arlott had eulogised, no ill-mannered attempt was made by either batsman to take the bowling by the scruff of the neck. Each, politely, indicated the fundamental error of bowling short or wide or at half-volley length, they corrected but did not chastise.
There was a lot of mutual admiration between the two. While Hazare’s respect for Merchant was well known, Merchant for his part, felt that the burden of captaincy had prevented Hazare from becoming India’s finest batsman – which was one of the greatest tragedies of cricket.
The point where their characteristics and personas merged was in the phenomenal appetite for runs. It was this insatiable hunger of more and more runs and centuries that propelled the two peaceful men answering to the same first name into the domain of surprising competitive rivalry.
There are historians – notably Ramachandra Guha – who are reluctant to make too much of this rivalry. According to them, it just happened that the two men in their primes broke each other’s record over and over again, and that lent a sheen of competitiveness to their saga.
True, the record breaking was a story so phenomenal that it nearly bordered on the ridiculous. Playing for the Hindus against the Muslims in the Bombay Pentangular, a tournament which may sound nightmarish to the modern secularist, Merchant hit the Indian first-class record score of 243 in 1941-42.
In the very next edition of the championship, Hazare surpassed it scoring 248 for the Rest against the Muslims.
In the finals of the 1943 tournament, Hindus met the Rest and piled up 581, including yet another record-breaking effort of 250 by Merchant. The Rest were bowled out for 133 in the first innings, and crashed to an innings defeat with a total of 387 in the second. But in this modest second innings score, Hazare’s contribution was an amazing 309!
Within the span of one week, the two great men had broken each other’s record thrice. This tussle continued in the Ranji Trophy. When they faced off barely a week later, Merchant scored 141 in Bombay’s 487 and Hazare responded with 109 inBaroda’s reply of 297.
A couple of weeks down the line, Bombay met Maharashtra and Merchant shattered all the previous records with an innings of 359.
This obviously caught the imagination of the public and the media, but both these cricketers carried themselves with too much poise and dignity to confess to rivalry. As mentioned, many historians still maintain that the sequence of high scores was incidental and the conflict was a myth created around it.
However, there are a few who thought differently. Brian Statham, the legendary English fast bowler, certainly felt there was a perpetual battle between the two that did not always work well for India.
In his autobiography Flying Balls, Statham wrote disparagingly about his first full tour, a visit to India with the English team of 1951-52. He found the conditions appalling, the food, accommodation and wickets unsuitable for good cricket. And he also mentioned that Merchant and Hazare carried their legendary clash of tall scores into the Test matches.
Indeed, in the first Test at Feroz Shah Kotla, the tactics of these two men raised several eyebrows. England had been bowled out for 203 by the end of the first day. When India batted, Merchant and Hazare came together with the score reading 64 for two. By the end of the second day, they had crawled to 186 for two, adding 39 in the last hour and a half. Merchant, in the process, had completed his century. The pair batted on well into the second session of the third day, adding 211 runs in five hours and ten minutes. Statham says that often the batsmen ran only one when two, or even three, were for the taking. Even when well settled, they did not seem keen on hammering a tired English attack on a docile wicket, although fast scoring was definitely the requirement of the moment.
When Merchant was finally bowled by Statham, he had batted seven and a half hours for 154, a new Test record for India, passing Hazare’s 145 scored in Adelaide, 1947-48.
Hazare, the captain, could have declared around tea, with a huge lead, to have a go at the exhausted Englishmen. However, he decided to bat on and declared only at the end of the last session, thus enabling the visitors to enjoy the rest day before starting their second innings. By then, with his eight hour, 35-minute vigil he had regained his record with 164 not out.
When a dogged England held out for a draw, the tactics did come under a lot of criticism. Although both the Vijays later denied any on-field rivalry leading to slow scoring and delay in declaration, quite a few, like Statham, were convinced otherwise.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
60 years of India's first Test match victory
This post by the author appeared on Cricketcountry on 10th February 2012
The moment of history in Chepauk on the afternoon of February 10, 1952 took nineteen and a half years in coming, a staggering statistic that turns somewhat palatable when we consider that the number of Test matches played during that barren period was a paltry 24. On ten of those occasions the country had ended up on the losing side.
Success had painfully eluded the expectant young nation by a whisker two years earlier at the Brabourne Stadium against the West Indies. A spirited chase of 361 runs in 395 minutes had ended six runs short with two wickets in hand when time had run out.
The dramatis personae
Vijay Hazare, who had built the platform of that near victorious chase with a masterly 122, was now the captain of the side. The team, in stark contrast with the India of recent times, was a sparkling collection of all-round talent. Vinoo Mankad was the star all-rounder at the peak of his abilities. Lala Amarnath was still a force to reckon with both bat and ball. Dattu Phadkar had an excellent record going into the Test, averaging over 40 with the bat and in the early 30s with his medium-pace. Hazare himself, one of the finest batsmen ever produced by India, was a decent medium pacer. And young Polly Umrigar, then striving to establish himself in the side, was a canny off-spinner who could also open the bowling when required and eventually ended up with two five wicket hauls in Test cricket.
There was a fair mix of youth and experience at the top of the order with the talented Pankaj Roy combining with the aging artist Mushtaq Ali. With the ball, Mankad’s left- arm spin found wonderful accompaniment in Ghulam Ahmed’s off-breaks, while the combination of Mankad with wicket-keeper Prabir Sen in luring the batsman forward and catching him short ground is a part of Indian cricketing folklore.
In contrast, India’s majorly low-key performances over the years had induced England to send a second string side. Absent from the squad were names such as Len Hutton, Cyril Washbrook, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Alec Bedser and Jim Laker. A rookie Tom Graveney was the only one who would end up as a major heavyweight with the bat while Brian Statham and, to some extent, Roy Tattershall lent some degree of class to the bowling.
Adding to England’s problems, captain Nigel Howard had a torrid series with the bat, and was injured for the final Test – and the team had to be led by Donald Carr. Yet, when Hazare and Carr went in to toss the coin in Madras, England led the series 1-0, having secured a nine-wicket win in the low scoring fourth Test at Kanpur.
Mankad magic on a placid track
Carr called correctly and England batted on a true first day track. There were moments when Dick Spooner, the wicket keeper doubling up as opening batsman, and Jack Robertson batted as if a big score was on the cards. However, some exceptional bowling by Mankad – on a largely unhelpful wicket – restricted them to a modest 224 for five at the end of the first day.
The death of King George VI – the monarch so excellently portrayed by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech – made the administrators tweak the arrangements and convert the second scheduled day of play into the Rest Day. WhenEngland resumed their innings after the longish break, Mankad ran through the lower order and the visitors could manage just 42 more. The loop and flight, uncannily always on or just outside the off stump, lured four batsmen out of their crease to be stumped by Sen – Graveney, Carr, Malcolm Hilton and Statham all deceived by the inviting trajectory and stranded down the track. Robertson, who resisted for four and a half hours for 77, was induced into misjudging the length and pushing a return catch brilliantly held by the bowler. Mankad’s analysis of eight for 55 was testimony to his class, underlined further by a near-perfect batting wicket. Most of his battles were won in the air – a lesson that holds good even today when the tweakers increasingly push it through and are often overly pampered by dustbowls that turn square from the first session.
There was a sense of expectation in the air and excitement in the temporarily attached makeshift stands of Chepauk – brim-full to their 25000 capacity. The Indians had got a whiff of the long-awaited Test win, and it showed in the way the batsmen approached their task.
Roy and Umrigar pile up tons
Mushtaq, Hazare, Mankad – batting at No 4 – and Amarnath all put their heads down and got starts, but the one who rode on the crest of brilliant batting form was Pankaj Roy. While the rest got out in their 20s and 30s, the opening batsman from Bengal, with already one century in the series, stroked 15 boundaries around the wicket in a pleasing innings of 111.
However, when Tattershall had snared Roy into lobbing a catch, the score read 191 for four, which soon became 216 for five when Amarnath edged one from Statham – the early advantage seemed to have been squandered and the match hung in balance.
It was then that young Umrigar joined Phadkar in the middle and proceeded to play one of the most important of his many splendid innings that would make him a mainstay of Indian batting.
Had it not been for a sprained wrist of Hemu Adhikari, Umrigar, still searching for a decent score in Test cricket, would have been sitting out. Now, seizing the opportunity, he guided the second half of the innings, with solid, safe application, largely eschewing the scintillating big hits he was capable of. He put on 104 with Phadkar, and then took the match beyond the Englishmen with a 93-run stand with local batsman Coimbatarao Gopinath. When Hazare declared the innings to make England bat through the uncomfortable final few minutes of the third day, he was still unbeaten on 130 and the lead had stretched to 191.
The final rites
With two full days remaining, England neither had much of a chance, nor did they look like creating any. After Phadkar and his new ball partner Ramesh Divecha had got rid of the openers, Mankad and Ahmed made excellent use of a wearing track, picking up four wickets each. Only Robertson and Allan Watkins provided some resistance as only four batsmen reached double figures.
The match could not have ended more appropriately. Mankad ran in with three short steps, and let the ball loop in the air, descend in the slow inviting arc on the off stump – Hilton, unable to contain his instincts, came out for the drive and was beaten by the wicked turn, and Sen behind the stumps collected the ball with by now practiced efficiency and whipped off the bails.
Missing zeroes
Landmark win, a run of history brought to a grinding halt and a new beginning scripted with immortal feats … but those were the days when flow of champagne in dressing rooms was unthinkable, cash awards unheard of and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), believe it or not, was an organisation pitifully short of cash. Often players had to be put up in private homes to save on the hotel costs. Hence, the eleven men who had kick-started the winning ways of Indian cricket congratulated each other and went home with their individual match fees of Rs 250.
When MS Dhoni’s India crushed Sri Lanka by an innings and 144 runs at Kanpur to bring up their 100th Test win, BCCI announced a cash award of Rs 25,00,000 for each member of the team.
However, some memories are invaluable enough to go beyond the number of trailing zeroes accompanying the remuneration figure. As CD Gopinath puts it, “It was the first time we beat any team in Tests. And it came 20 years after we became a Test-playing nation. Even we were taken by surprise. It was unbelievable. It gave us a great feeling of satisfaction. It still does.”
Brief scores:
England 266 (Dick Spooner 66, Tom Graveney 39, Jack Robertson 77, Donald Carr 40, Vinoo Mankad 8 for 55) and 183 (Jack Robertson 56, Allan Watkins 48, Vinoo Mankad 4 for 53, Ghulam Ahmed 4 for 77) lost to India 457 for 9 declared (Pankaj Roy 111, Dattu Phadkar 61, Polly Umrigar 130*, CD Gopinath 35) by an innings and eight runs.
 |
| Vinoo Mankad |
With Test matches turning more and more into torture tales for India, the team is currently scraping the bottom of the barrel of cricketing fortunes. However, in a somewhat off-key note of the music of time, they also celebrate the 60thanniversary of their first victory in Test cricket this Friday.
The moment of history in Chepauk on the afternoon of February 10, 1952 took nineteen and a half years in coming, a staggering statistic that turns somewhat palatable when we consider that the number of Test matches played during that barren period was a paltry 24. On ten of those occasions the country had ended up on the losing side.
Success had painfully eluded the expectant young nation by a whisker two years earlier at the Brabourne Stadium against the West Indies. A spirited chase of 361 runs in 395 minutes had ended six runs short with two wickets in hand when time had run out.
The dramatis personae
 |
| Vijay Hazare |
There was a fair mix of youth and experience at the top of the order with the talented Pankaj Roy combining with the aging artist Mushtaq Ali. With the ball, Mankad’s left- arm spin found wonderful accompaniment in Ghulam Ahmed’s off-breaks, while the combination of Mankad with wicket-keeper Prabir Sen in luring the batsman forward and catching him short ground is a part of Indian cricketing folklore.
In contrast, India’s majorly low-key performances over the years had induced England to send a second string side. Absent from the squad were names such as Len Hutton, Cyril Washbrook, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Alec Bedser and Jim Laker. A rookie Tom Graveney was the only one who would end up as a major heavyweight with the bat while Brian Statham and, to some extent, Roy Tattershall lent some degree of class to the bowling.
Adding to England’s problems, captain Nigel Howard had a torrid series with the bat, and was injured for the final Test – and the team had to be led by Donald Carr. Yet, when Hazare and Carr went in to toss the coin in Madras, England led the series 1-0, having secured a nine-wicket win in the low scoring fourth Test at Kanpur.
Mankad magic on a placid track
Carr called correctly and England batted on a true first day track. There were moments when Dick Spooner, the wicket keeper doubling up as opening batsman, and Jack Robertson batted as if a big score was on the cards. However, some exceptional bowling by Mankad – on a largely unhelpful wicket – restricted them to a modest 224 for five at the end of the first day.
The death of King George VI – the monarch so excellently portrayed by Colin Firth in The King’s Speech – made the administrators tweak the arrangements and convert the second scheduled day of play into the Rest Day. WhenEngland resumed their innings after the longish break, Mankad ran through the lower order and the visitors could manage just 42 more. The loop and flight, uncannily always on or just outside the off stump, lured four batsmen out of their crease to be stumped by Sen – Graveney, Carr, Malcolm Hilton and Statham all deceived by the inviting trajectory and stranded down the track. Robertson, who resisted for four and a half hours for 77, was induced into misjudging the length and pushing a return catch brilliantly held by the bowler. Mankad’s analysis of eight for 55 was testimony to his class, underlined further by a near-perfect batting wicket. Most of his battles were won in the air – a lesson that holds good even today when the tweakers increasingly push it through and are often overly pampered by dustbowls that turn square from the first session.
There was a sense of expectation in the air and excitement in the temporarily attached makeshift stands of Chepauk – brim-full to their 25000 capacity. The Indians had got a whiff of the long-awaited Test win, and it showed in the way the batsmen approached their task.
Roy and Umrigar pile up tons
Mushtaq, Hazare, Mankad – batting at No 4 – and Amarnath all put their heads down and got starts, but the one who rode on the crest of brilliant batting form was Pankaj Roy. While the rest got out in their 20s and 30s, the opening batsman from Bengal, with already one century in the series, stroked 15 boundaries around the wicket in a pleasing innings of 111.
 |
| Umrigar |
It was then that young Umrigar joined Phadkar in the middle and proceeded to play one of the most important of his many splendid innings that would make him a mainstay of Indian batting.
Had it not been for a sprained wrist of Hemu Adhikari, Umrigar, still searching for a decent score in Test cricket, would have been sitting out. Now, seizing the opportunity, he guided the second half of the innings, with solid, safe application, largely eschewing the scintillating big hits he was capable of. He put on 104 with Phadkar, and then took the match beyond the Englishmen with a 93-run stand with local batsman Coimbatarao Gopinath. When Hazare declared the innings to make England bat through the uncomfortable final few minutes of the third day, he was still unbeaten on 130 and the lead had stretched to 191.
The final rites
With two full days remaining, England neither had much of a chance, nor did they look like creating any. After Phadkar and his new ball partner Ramesh Divecha had got rid of the openers, Mankad and Ahmed made excellent use of a wearing track, picking up four wickets each. Only Robertson and Allan Watkins provided some resistance as only four batsmen reached double figures.
The match could not have ended more appropriately. Mankad ran in with three short steps, and let the ball loop in the air, descend in the slow inviting arc on the off stump – Hilton, unable to contain his instincts, came out for the drive and was beaten by the wicked turn, and Sen behind the stumps collected the ball with by now practiced efficiency and whipped off the bails.
 |
| CD Gopinath points out histeam mates |
The spectators went delirious and the ovation was deafening. The two decade wait had ended with a victory by an innings and eight runs. Mankad finished with 12 wickets in the match, 34 in the series to go with 223 runs. And according to the only surviving member of the team, CD Gopinath, the only way the Indians celebrated was by patting each other on the back.
Missing zeroes
Landmark win, a run of history brought to a grinding halt and a new beginning scripted with immortal feats … but those were the days when flow of champagne in dressing rooms was unthinkable, cash awards unheard of and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), believe it or not, was an organisation pitifully short of cash. Often players had to be put up in private homes to save on the hotel costs. Hence, the eleven men who had kick-started the winning ways of Indian cricket congratulated each other and went home with their individual match fees of Rs 250.
When MS Dhoni’s India crushed Sri Lanka by an innings and 144 runs at Kanpur to bring up their 100th Test win, BCCI announced a cash award of Rs 25,00,000 for each member of the team.
However, some memories are invaluable enough to go beyond the number of trailing zeroes accompanying the remuneration figure. As CD Gopinath puts it, “It was the first time we beat any team in Tests. And it came 20 years after we became a Test-playing nation. Even we were taken by surprise. It was unbelievable. It gave us a great feeling of satisfaction. It still does.”
Brief scores:
England 266 (Dick Spooner 66, Tom Graveney 39, Jack Robertson 77, Donald Carr 40, Vinoo Mankad 8 for 55) and 183 (Jack Robertson 56, Allan Watkins 48, Vinoo Mankad 4 for 53, Ghulam Ahmed 4 for 77) lost to India 457 for 9 declared (Pankaj Roy 111, Dattu Phadkar 61, Polly Umrigar 130*, CD Gopinath 35) by an innings and eight runs.
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