By Ashis Ray, IANS
London : The 1960s commenced with Richie Benaud’s Australians wrapping up their visit to India with a 2-1 victory.
Utter boredom followed, however, in 1960-61 as all five Tests against Pakistan were drawn. Ramakant Desai, though, was quick enough to trouble the redoubtable Hanif Mohammed.
The following winter, Ted Dexter led out a second-string England side. The first three Tests were drawn. At lunch on the third day at Calcutta (now Kolkata), the new ball was due and the consensus was Indian captain Nari Contractor should take it.
Desai was marking out his run when the skipper asked him to stop and handed the ball to Chandu Borde. His “sixth sense” told Contractor he should persevere with spin.
Soon, Borde yorked Dexter, who was batting imperiously on 57, and with Salim Durrani proving a handful from the other end, the two spinners bundled out the Englishmen for 212. India maintained their grip and won by 187 runs.
In the next Test at Madras, India again batted first after winning the toss. Tiger Pataudi, playing his first series, constructed an attacking hundred and India compiled 428.
Durrani, then, took 10 wickets in the match to secure the series 2-0. But the batting star of the series was the slightly portly but polished Vijay Manjrekar.
The tour of the West Indies, thereafter, was an unmitigated disaster. Not only did the Indians lose all five Tests, Contractor suffered a life threatening injury when he was struck on the temple in the Barbados match. He never played for India again.
Pataudi, then only 21, took over as captain.
India took a step forward by drawing a series with Bobby Simpson’s Australians in 1964, but the West Indians under Garry Sobers were beyond India’s grasp, though Farokh Engineer, in the third and final Test of this series, was a mere six runs short of a hundred before lunch against an attack that comprised of Wesley Hall, Charlie Griffith, Sobers and Lance Gibbs!
India’s problems abroad persisted. They lost all three Tests in England in 1967 and all four in Australia the following winter. They showed some resilience in the first Test at Headingley, but caved in without a semblance of a fight in the next two.
In Australia, said Pataudi, they were “getting better” and “should have won the third Test at Brisbane”. India lost this by 39 runs. M.L. Jaisimha, within hours of flying in from India as a substitute, scored 74 and 101.
One man who stood out amidst the ruins was Pataudi himself. At Headingley, he valiantly resisted with 64 and 148. At Melbourne, where he played with a leg injury, he posted 75 and 85 – “with one eye and one leg”, the Australian press put it – he having a damaged right eye in a car accident in England in 1961. Others hailed him the “Nawab of Headingley and Melbourne”.
Crossing the Tasman Sea, India registered their maiden Test and series win overseas, defeating New Zealand 3-1.
The Indians “came into their own on the softer, spongier surfaces” in New Zealand as compared to the harder wickets in Australia, Pataudi remarked.
Erapalli Prasanna, a gifted off-spinner, finished the twin tour with 49 wickets in eight Tests. Pataudi recalled that he bowled “magnificently” throughout.
But before the end of the decade, the Indians were once more pegged back, as Bill Lawry’s Australians won 3-1 in India. Ashley Malett announced his arrival with some fine off-spin bowling.
The only match India won was at Delhi, where Prasanna and Bishan Bedi shared 18 wickets between them. The only one India drew was at Kanpur, where Gundappa Vswanath, making his debut, produced a classy 137 in the second innings.