August 24, 1971. Climbing the web spun by Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, India reached a new high by winning their first Test and series in England. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the final day when the drama unfolded, spectators sat on the edge of their seats and captain Ajit Wadekar slept through all of it.
24th year of Independence.
A nation still finding its bearings, stumbling along to discover and establish its identity.
The optimism of the early years of a young nation struggling against the realities of a huge, convoluted country across cultural, religious, geographical divides, speaking over 800 languages.
The dreams constructed by Nehru’s new temples—the dams and nationalised heavy industries, merging with the realities of long queues for essentials, milk and kerosene, and decade-long waits for telephone connections.
As malnutrition remained a major challenge and life expectancy hovered around 48.4 (vast improvement from 32 in 1947 but some 25 years behind the first-world countries) a nuclear programme had kicked off.
A land of contrasts, frustrations, nationalisation of sectors and atrocious import duties.
It reflected in cricket.
In the 1960s, India had beaten England and had drawn an epic boring series against them at home. However, the England teams that visited India were known to be less than the best available pool of talent. Many, like Fred Trueman, did not visit the country ar all.
Through the last decade and a half, the Indians had struggled to shed the dull dogs tag.
They had been hammered whenever they had toured. Especially in the last dozen or so years.
Whitewashed in England in 1959 and 1967, in West Indies in 1962 and Australia in 1967-68.
The wait for an overseas win had been longer than an average telephone connection. It had come in 1967-68 against the weak New Zealand side, 35 years after their first Test match.
And suddenly early 1971 had been euphoric.
Operation Searchlight had kicked off, Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi was engaged in discussions with General Sam Manekshaw about supporting the Bangladeshi cause and take up arms against Pakistan. At the same time the Indian team had returned with an unprecedented triumph over West Indies in West Indies.
The combination of nation at war and success in cricket is always hard to beat in the context of raptures of Indian exhilaration.
The West Indies side they had overcome had been one of the weakest in history, in the midst of a 7 year drought of wins. Not too many took heed of that. The feat was pioneering enough to override such considerations.
However, England was a different story.
Ray Illingworth’s men had just won The Ashes. They were arguably the best side of the world, especially with South Africa all but out of reckoning.
And in England, till then, India had lost 15 of the 19 Tests they had played. 11 of the 12 Tests they had played since independence had resulted in humiliating defeats.
It was almost symbolic.
The results against the erstwhile rulers seemed to tell them that self-government was a pretence.
They were still not good enough.
In this context what took place was incredible in the history of Indian cricket.
.They were helped along by luck no doubt, with the near-certain defeat at Manchester averted by rain.
But what transpired in the final Test at The Oval, from Sardesai and Wadekar’s steady solidity, to Solkar’s all-round show and exceptional catching, to Venkat’s consitent supporting role and finally Chandra’s exceptional spell on the penultimate day, all this combined into nothing short of a miracle.
The victory was of paramount importance to India.
Down the years, especially in recent times, there have been many more victories, several far more emphatic, some against better sides, with less reliance on the luck factor.
But as far as results go, few have been so impactful as this one in the history of a young country —or an ancient nation in its second childhood.
When some 44 years later I wrote an article on the win, my then editor, who had spent his boyhood years in the newly independent India, provided the slightly over the top but understandably jingoistic headline : “The Day India ended England’s Home Rule”. That is how much the victory meant to a generation.
And then there is the ‘Refeeding after Starvation’ Syndrome. A serious and potentially fatal condition that can occur during refeeding in vast quantities after prolonged period of malnourishment or starvation, often resulting in confusion, coma or even death.
A couple of series wins against such cricketing superpowers after years and years of win-less deprivation sent several fans of that period into a state of perpetual confusion or cricketing coma … they could never enjoy subsequent highs of Indian cricket because it started and ended with 1971 for them. They still cannot.
But, that perhaps is an understandable condition.
The details of the match have been documented in detail below.
The match
Unwisely, Ajit Wadekar took on the arm of Basil D'Olliveira at cover, and was run out in the first over of the day.
Chandra picked up six, and had a stroke of luck as well; John Jameson departs, caught short of his ground as the drive deflects off the bowler's hand on to the stumps
At 76 for three, England perhaps got the whiff of a chance. Hordes of Indian fans who had turned up at The Oval were made to bite their nails to the quick and crack their knuckles to the limits.
According to Wadekar himself, with just 97 more to win, he was confident enough to return to the dressing room, lie down and spend the next three hours till the end of the match in the depths of slumber-land.
The blessings of Ganesha
It was the previous day that had really turned the match on its head. Having obtained a first innings lead of 71, England had started confidently enough before Bhagwat Chandrasekhar had spun his web to trap the innings before it could take off.
A Brian Luckhurst drive was deflected on to the stumps by the leg spinner, catching John Jameson short of his ground.
And a few minutes later he struck twice, in successive balls, just before lunch. Prompted in mid stride by his teammates to bowl his faster ball – christened “Mill Riff” after the Derby winner of that summer – Chandrasekhar ripped one through. John Edrich’s bat was still in the air when the ball hit the stumps. And the very next delivery saw Keith Fletcher gobbled up by Eknath Solkar at short leg.
Bella Walks in the outfield
Lunch was taken at this stage, but the action in the middle remained more than ample, although peripheral. Bella, a three-year old elephant, plodded around the outfield, regaling the crowd. In a curious way of celebrating Ganesha Chaturthi, she had been loaned from the Chessington Zoo.
Blessings from the god seemed to pour forth after the break, as one after another the obstacles on the way to an Indian victory were removed. The English innings folded for 101 in the next hour and forty minutes. Wadekar crowded the bat with a battery of close in fielders and the English batsmen obliged with snicks and edges, the highlight being Solkar’s famous full length dive to dismiss Alan Knott off Srinivas Venkataraghavan.
Chandra catches Snow off his own bowling
Chandrasekhar finished with six for 38 from 18 overs – one of the greatest spells by an Indian spinner bowling abroad. Playfair Cricket Monthly waxed eloquent about his performance, noting –On a pitch which gave him little if any assistance Chandra had vindicated a vanishing breed of bowling in a fashion which can only be described as astonishing.
Needing 173 to win, India had a disastrous start. Sunil Gavaskar had been involved in the infamous collision with John Snow in the first Test. Snow had been dropped from the second Test on disciplinary grounds.
In the first innings of this Test he had sent Gavaskar’s stump cartwheeling at 6. In this innings he caught him plumb for 8.
However, Ashok Mankad put his head down and batted longer than he had done in the entire series, spending 74 vital minutes at the wicket for 11 runs.
Wadekar and Dilip Sardesai saw through till stumps, with India on 76 for two.
The home stretch
The breach created by the early morning dismissal of Wadekar was soon sealed by the arrival of Gundappa Viswanath. The English skipper, Ray Illingworth, tried to recreate the magic of the Indian spinners by bowling in tandem with Derek Underwood, but they were not nearly as effective. Later Wadekar observed, “Illingworth’s psychology was that we were not good against their pace, and in the process he floundered. Then he relied too much on Underwood. I just told my batsmen to wait and watch and go for the runs."
Underwood did create a few hiccups by snaring Sardesai at 124, and getting Solkar to hit one back to him ten runs later. But, Farokh Engineer and Viswanath batted calmly, sprinkling the defensive approach with a few attacking strikes. India was within a stroke from victory when Viswanath edged one from part-timer Luckhurst.
It was left to Abid Ali to finish the match with a square cut. The speeding ball did not quite reach the fence, with the Indian supporters sprinting in to celebrate almost as soon as it had left the bat.
Ken Barrington, the manager of the English team, was the first to enter the Indian dressing room to congratulate the victorious captain. Supposedly, he found him snoring away. He nudged Wadekar awake to give him the good news. Wadekar recalls, “I said to him that I always knew we’d win.”
The winning run is scored
The fans erupted when Wadekar and his men appeared on the balcony of The Oval, savouring the moment – a snapshot of cricketing history famously recorded by the photographs of the day.
When interviewed later by The Times, Engineer explained: “India was a colony of England, and to beat your masters at their own game was a bit of a feather in the cap. Victory in a Test series was joyous, but to beat England in England was a phenomenal feat at the time for us Indians.”
According to Wisden: In Bombay, the birthplace of Indian cricket, unprecedented scenes were witnessed. There was dancing in the streets. Revellers stopped and boarded buses to convey the news to commuters. In the homes, children garlanded wireless sets over which the cheery voice of Brian Johnston had proclaimed the glad tidings of India’s first Test victory in England, a victory which also gave them the rubber.
After his triumphant tour of West Indies, this was the second overseas win for Wadekar in just over four months. Indian cricket was not used to such success stories.