Kit Harris looks back at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the BCCI. Dicky Rutnagur was at Mumbai for the Almanack.
England’s Test tour of India is off to an exhilarating start. England, powered by Ollie Pope and Tom Hartley, won the opening game, but India, driven by Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jasprit Bumrah, have drawn level. These great individual feats serve as a reminder of perhaps the greatest match performance in any Indian Test: Ian Botham’s century and 13 wickets in the Golden Jubilee Test of 1980.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India were established on December 1, 1928. Their first secretary, Anthony de Mello, stayed in post for ten years, and in 1951 was honoured by the creation of the Anthony de Mello Trophy, which is at stake when England tour India.
England won it outright for the first time in early 1977, when a team led by Tony Greig won all three Tests. But it was not at stake at Bombay in 1980, when England, led by Mike Brearley, made it four in a row by winning a one-off Test to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the BCCI (though, in fact, the 51st had already passed).
Botham had not been to India before. “I was in for a huge culture shock,” he wrote. “It may have been a shortish stay but I soon came to appreciate that this was a thrilling and magnificent country.” During the Test match, he was at his uproarious best, on and off the field. At the Wankhede, his all-round feats secured him the job of England captain for the summer. Back at the hotel, though, he was still the enfant terrible, challenging Derek Underwood to stand on a table while drinking brandy, eating tandoori chicken and reading from the Bible.
The India captain, Gundappa Viswanath, had a quiet match with the bat, but made a big impact with a sporting gesture during England’s first innings. Responding to India’s 242, England were 143 for five when Bob Taylor was adjudged caught behind. Judging from Taylor’s incredulity, Viswanath recalled him; the stand with Botham yielded another 86, and put England in a winning position. Viswanath wanted wickets – but only fair ones.
“It is easy to be generous and change an appeal when it won’t affect the outcome,” wrote Geoff Boycott, who opened for England in the match. “But nearly everyone I know would have just left the decision with the umpire and accepted it as the rub of the green. Not Vishy.”
INDIA v ENGLAND
The Golden Jubilee Test Match
DICKY RUTNAGUR
With the rival sides fatigued, both mentally and physically, at the end of an arduous season, the Test match to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India produced poor cricket. But it was redeemed by an extraordinary all-round performance by Botham, whose versatility was in full bloom. There was hardly a session on which he did not bring his influence to bear, performing the unprecedented feat of scoring a century and capturing thirteen wickets in a Test. Taylor, the England wicket-keeper, also established a new world Test record by taking ten catches in the match.
To England, after the Test series in Australia, this success, even if inspired by one man, brought welcome relief. But for India, the defeat ended an unbeaten run of fifteen Test matches, four of which they had won.
With the pitch uncharacteristically grassy, England were at no disadvantage from losing the toss; even less so as an overcast sky was a further aid to swing and cut on the opening morning. The Indians, jaded after playing sixteen Tests in the past seven months, could not summon the application and discipline needed to combat these conditions and were bowled out in less than a day for 242, Botham taking six for 58 and Taylor taking seven catches. India would have fared even worse but for gallant resistance from the lower order of their batting.
Batting as indifferently as they did in Australia, England at 58 for five looked most unlikely to match India’s score, let alone build on the advantage created by their bowlers. But they were only 13 runs behind when they lost their next wicket two hours twenty minutes later. Botham, batting for 206 minutes and hitting 17 fours, scored 114 in an innings which was responsible and yet not lacking in enterprise. His stand of 171 with Taylor was England’s best-ever sixth-wicket partnership against India. Taylor remained entrenched until the third day was more than an hour old and altogether scored 43 in a stay of four and a half hours. Yet their stand could have been cut short at only 85 when umpire Hanumantha Rao upheld an appeal against Taylor for a catch behind the wicket, off Kapil Dev. Taylor hesitated and protested at the decision. Viswanath, the Indian captain, who was fielding at first slip, was as certain as the batsman that there had been no contact and persuaded the umpire to rescind his verdict.
Even on the third day there was sufficient bounce and movement off the seam to trouble the Indian batsmen. Showing little spirit, India were only two runs ahead with half their second-innings wickets gone, and but for an innings of 45 not out by Kapil Dev, who batted in the forthright manner of Botham, the match might not have gone into the fourth day.
The recent history of Test pitches at the Wankhede Stadium – earlier in the season both Australia and Pakistan were beaten in four days, with spinners causing the havoc – prompted England to equip themselves with two specialist spinners in Underwood and Emburey. In the event Underwood bowled only seven overs and Emburey none at all. Of the ten wickets captured by the Indians, their opening bowlers, Ghavri and Kapil Dev, took five and three wickets, respectively.
At Bombay (Wankhede), February 15, 17, 18, 19. England won by ten wickets. ‡India 242 (S. M. Gavaskar 49, D. B. Vengsarkar 34, S. M. Patil 30, S. M. H. Kirmani 40*; I. T. Botham 6-58) and 149 (Kapil Dev 45*; J. K. Lever 3-65, I. T. Botham 7-48); England 296 (I. T. Botham 114, R. W. Taylor 43; Kapil Dev 3-64, K. D. Ghavri 5-52) and 98-0 (G. A. Gooch 49*, G. Boycott 43*).
Kit Harris is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. Dicky Rutnagur wrote for Wisden from 1963 to 2007. He died in 2013.
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