Sankaran Krishna

Though the two nations are separated by a narrow strait, Indian and Ceylonese (the country officially became Sri Lanka in 1972) cricketers seemed to be cut from very different cloth. Back then, it seemed the Lankans, especially their batsmen, played with a flair that was more Caribbean than subcontinental. One of the hardest hitters of the ball I have ever seen is Duleep Mendis. Not even Gordon Greenidge or Ian Botham in their pomp smacked the cherry with more power than him. One of his square cuts in Chepauk was hit with such ferocity that the gully fielder simply let the ball go through rather than hurt himself trying to stop it. A stocky figure who looked a lot like India's GR Viswanath but on steroids, Mendis was quick to get on with the game once he got his eye in.

What followed was utter carnage as England rattled up over 650 runs for the loss of just four wickets at four runs an over - unheard of then - before declaring. Gooch made 333 and Allan Lamb and Robin Smith helped themselves to hundreds as well. Though much splendid batting followed throughout the Test, including an incandescent hundred by Azhar himself and Kapil Dev's four sixes off Eddie Hemmings to avert the follow-on, India lost by 247 runs.

Cowdrey duly went off on a multi-leg 72-hour journey to make it in time for the second Test, which began on a Perth trampoline on, appropriately enough, Friday the 13th. Cowdrey made 22 off 101 balls at one-down in the first innings, and even more impressively, 41 off 96 in the second as an opener. He was always behind the line of even the fastest balls and seemed to have plenty of time to play Lillee and Thomson, making it a bravura performance, one that had to leave the most cynical of fans impressed.

Cricket Fan (CF): It was Test cricket at its attritional best! The Saffers tried to play out ten hours of game time to draw the fourth Test, and their discipline was amazing.

Outsider Dude (OD): What do you mean, "draw the Test"?

Perched on the lower lip of the upper deck right behind the bowler's arm, I had about as good a vantage to watch the game as one can have. Anil Kumble was getting ready to bowl to Brian Lara. As the ball was about to be delivered, Lara made as if to come down the track, and Kumble pushed the ball in a bit quicker and shortened its length. Lara, already well out of his crease and realising he couldn't possibly reach the ball on the half-volley, stopped mid-stride and played a checked straight drive with almost no follow-through.

The ball rose from the bat in a gentle arc over the head of Kumble, who turned to see if either mid-on or mid-off might come into play to complete a simple catch. The ball kept soaring and landed not far from where I was sitting - a straight six as pure as anything the game has ever seen. At that moment, I discovered the sound of 25,000 people collectively gasping in astonishment.

With such an all-star cast, the show was stolen by a relatively unknown West Zone player: a strapping young fast bowler with a disarmingly toothy smile, called Pandurang Salgaoncar.

These images are embedded in a larger movie reel filled with aggressive Indian body language, mocking hand claps, animated appealing, and general in-your-face machismo. To someone accustomed to watching India play over the decades, there is a surreal air to all of this: it's as if someone had injected the gentle and calm Dr Jekyll with an overdose of testosterone and transformed him into a snarling Mr Hyde.

Another favourite, though this one is certainly apocryphal, involves two brothers-in-law who shall go unnamed but were the backbone of Indian batting. One of them, let's call him A - for Artist - was known to be partial to a drink or three, while the other (let's call him R for Rationalist) was very professional and stayed well clear during matches. Once, they were batting together and A was clearly having a rough time of it - no timing, no footwork, playing and missing constantly. A mid-wicket conference was called and A confessed to R that his problem was that having dined well but not wisely he was seeing two cricket balls and not one. After some thought, R suggested that A play the ball that was inside as chances were that the one outside was an illusion. A struggled on - but with barely any improvement at all. A second mid-wicket conference ensued and R inquired what the problem now was. A's reply: "I think I know which one is the real ball now, but I'm still having a problem deciding which of the two bats in my hand I should use." (Disclaimer: any resemblance to real-life individuals in this story is purely coincidental.)

Yet I remember a time in the 1970s when some of us used to fantasise about a joint Indo-Pak XI that could have taken on the best in the world and possibly triumphed. It was an era in which it was common to put our support behind Pakistan once India crashed out of international field hockey tournaments: let the gold medal stay in the region, we thought, rather than have it go to the Germans or Dutch or other rising hockey powers.

Here I would like to put my dream India-Pakistan XI down on paper. For starters, let us limit the period of selection to 1977-1983, as matters get too complicated with a longer time span. I would open with Majid Khan and Sunil Gavaskar. They were both tremendous players of the best fast bowlers of their time, and Majid's attacking instincts would be a perfect foil to Gavaskar's more solid approach. I flirted with the idea of a left-right opening combination, but the sole left-hand possibility from that era, Sadiq Mohammad, just doesn't have a record that displaces Gavaskar or Majid.