Partab Ramchand on India’s miserable tour of England in 1974
Partab Ramchand18-Jul-2007
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The abysmal showing and the humiliating experiences of the Indian
team in England in 1974 brought back hideous memories of the 1936
tour. On the field the visitors went down to heavy defeats; off
the field there were numerous seamy incidents making it arguably
the worst tour ever undertaken by an Indian team.Sunil Gavaskar put it all succinctly when he wrote in : “It was a totally disastrous series and the tour was
one of the worst I had made. There was no such thing as team
spirit. Instead there were a lot of petty squabbles that didn’t
do anybody any good. The many incidents that gave the team such a
bad name didn’t help. It was all extremely frustrating.”And yet when the team landed in England in April, there were no
indications that the tour would end in such an unmitigated
disaster. The nucleus of the 1971 side seemed very much intact.
The captain was still Ajit Wadekar, the spin quartet was at it
peak and the batting remained strong. Sure, the Indians would be
touring in the wetter first half and not in the drier second half
as was the case in 1971. This was one factor reckoned to be
against the visitors. But not even the most cynical Indian
cricket follower could have bargained for what really happened.England won the first Test at Manchester by 113 runs. But the end
came in the 13th of the 20 mandatory overs so it was after a game
fight that India went down. But in the second Test at Lord’s,
India touched an all time low. They conceded 629 runs, which was
the highest England total at the game’s headquarters and the
highest by them against India. On the third day, India replied
with 302. Following on, the Indian batting touched rock bottom.
In just 77 minutes, they were bowled out for 42, their lowestever Test score and the lowest-ever total at Lord’s. The margin
of defeat, an innings and 285 runs was the second biggest that
India have suffered. From one disaster the Indians stumbled on to
another.In the third Test at Birmingham, India went down by an innings
and 78 runs inside three days and after taking only two wickets.
This was only the third time that a team was winning a Test after
losing only two wickets, the earlier occasions being in 1924 and
1958. To cricket fans who had seen their team pull off two great
away triumphs in the West Indies and England in 1971 and then
follow it up by defeating England at home in 1972-73 it was too
much to swallow. The batting had crumbled, the fielding had
wilted and the famed spinners had been mastered.As if the heavy defeats were not bad enough, stories of rifts
between players and factions in the team made the rounds. There
were also unsavoury incidents concerning the team at a party
hosted by the Indian High Commissioner in London. And around this
time, shiplifting charges were made out against Sudhir Naik.In India, the mood was predictably ugly and there were stories of
Wadekar’s house being stoned and the 1971 Victory Bat, erected at
Indore to commemorate the triumph three years before, being
defaced. As it to symbolise the lack of team spirit and the
factionalism, the players came back in batches.Predictably enough, there were very few gains. Gavaskar, Gundappa
Viswanath and Farookh Engineer did reasonably well under the
circumstances. Gavaskar’s 101 in bowler-friendly conditions at
Old Trafford is considered to be among his greatest knocks.
Generally, however, the batsmen came a cropper against the
swinging ball, their technical limitations being exposed. Even
Eknath Solkar, the eternal fighter, found it difficult to get
runs, averaging less than 20 while Wadekar with 82 runs in six
innings, was a total failure.The bowling too was a disaster with the spin quartet anything but
menacing. Compared to the 37 wickets that Bishan Bedi, Bhagwat
Chandrasekhar and Sinivas Venkatraghavan took three years before,
this time the four of them shared just 15 and at enormous cost.The tour results also showed the team in poor light. Out of 18
matches, three were won, four lost and 11 drawn. The team also
lost both the one-day internationals at the end of the tour
incidentally the first two such games that India played. Gavaskar
lived up to his reputation by getting 993 runs at an average of
41.37. Naik, Wadekar, Viswanath and Solkar all topped the 700-run
mark. But for younger players like Brijesh Patel and Gopal Bose,
the tour was a disaster.Bedi emerged as the leading wicket-taker with 53 but Chandra’s
tally fell from 50 in 1971 to 26 this time and Venkat’s decline
was even sharper 63 to 18. And all of them including Prasanna,
were very expensive. Abid Ali’s all-round showing was a minor
silver lining.Against such weak-kneed opposition, England had a whale of a time
in the Tests. Mike Denness got hundreds in successive Tests, John
Edrich, Dennis Amiss, Keith Fletcher and Tony Greig also hit
centuries, David Lloyd hammered an unbeaten 214 in only his
second Test and Geoff Arnold (4 for 19) and Chris Old (5 for 21)
caused the debacle at Lord’s. The rout was total, complete and
absolute and there could not be any excuses for such a feeble
showing.
