Twenty five years later, the Queens Park Oval triumph still lingers on
When Dinanath Ramnarine and Neil McGarell bowled in tandem against South Africa at Antigua last week, it was the first time in twenty five years that West Indies had the cheek to play two specialist spinners
Sankhya Krishnan
12-Apr-2001
When Dinanath Ramnarine and Neil McGarell bowled in tandem against
South Africa at Antigua last week, it was the first time in twenty
five years that West Indies had the cheek to play two specialist
spinners. On a humid afternoon at the Queens Park Oval in Port of
Spain, precisely 25 years to the day, India registered one of the
great victories in Test match history. Then, the West Indies played
not two, but three, specialist spinners on a wicket expected to take
turn as the match progressed. Having dropped veteran spinner Lance
Gibbs, pushing 42, the selectors reposed their faith on three
callow apprentices in left arm orthodox Raphick Jumadeen, off spinner
Albert Padmore and leg spinner Imtiaz Ali, the latter two making their
Test debuts.
It was the third Test of the 1975/76 series, scheduled originally to
be held at the Bourda in Georgetown, but forced by torrential rains to be shifted to Port of Spain. West Indies were lulled into
playing three spinners by the outcome of the second Test just over a
week earlier, also in Port of Spain, when India's own spin troika tied
the hosts in knots, taking 14 wickets between them and almost
snatching victory. But of course Jumadeen, Imtiaz and Padmore were
not exactly a patch on Bedi, Chandra and Venkat.
Lloyd won the toss and took first strike, hoping to catch India on a
wearing wicket in the end game. Viv Richards, then in the midst of a
prolific run, slammed his third century in three Tests,
surviving a searching examination from Chandra, his old nemesis, who
took all five wickets on the opening day. But the West Indies lost
their bottom half for 34 on the second morning, mostly to Bedi, and
settled for 359.
In reply the Indians could muster only 228, Madan Lal
top scoring with 42. Sunny Gavaskar, who had a lowest score of 65 in
five previous innings at the Queens Park Oval, failed for the first
time, falling leg before to Holding for 26.
Lloyd declared after lunch on the fourth day inviting the Indians to
chase down a target of 403 in a minimum of 595 minutes. The sheer
numerical value of the target had an intimidating ring; besides,
history was overwhelmingly on Lloyd's side. Only Bradman's Invincibles
had exceeded 400 in the fourth innings to win a Test match.
By stumps
on the same evening, India had moved to 134/1 with Gavaskar unbeaten
on 85, leaving another 269 to get in a full day's play although the
primary aim was still to save the game. Next morning Gavaskar
struggled almost an hour to make his fourth hundred in six innings on
the ground, even as the calypso composed in his honour on the last
tour was played to distraction by the large posse of fans of Indian
descent unabashedly cheering the country of their roots. Dancing down
the wicket to Jumadeen soon after he was adjudged caught at the wicket
although Murray whipped off the bails to make doubly sure. It was the
only wicket accruing to the bowlers in the whole day.
At the other end, Mohinder Amarnath was making excruciatingly slow
progress, quite unlike his usual impetuous self, but it served the
purpose under the circumstances. Now he played second fiddle to
Viswanath who took charge with a mix of deft footwork and stylish
strokeplay. Lloyd bowled his spinners into the ground, taking the
second new ball 29 overs after it was due, when it was too late. Runs
came fast and thick although five minutes before the 20 mandatory
overs in the last hour began, Vishy was run out.
There were 67 still
needed but Brijesh Patel, fresh from a century in the previous Test on
the same ground, carried on the baton, treating the spinners with
disdain. Amarnath, whose 85 came out of 323 runs made while he was at
the wicket, was also run out on the doorstep of victory before Patel
nonchalantly stroked Jumadeen for a boundary to close out the game
with seven overs to spare.
That was the moment when Clive Lloyd lost all respect for spin
bowling. His biographer, Trevor McDonald recalls that Lloyd summoned
his three spinners in the dressing room and inquired: "Gentlemen, I
gave you 400 runs to bowl at and you failed to bowl out the
opposition. How many runs must I give you in future to make sure that
you get the wickets?" The mental scars of the 5-1 thrashing in
Australia were fresh in Lloyd's mind and for the final Test at Sabina
Park, Lloyd fielded an all out pace assault consisting of Michael
Holding, Wayne Daniel, Bernard Julien and Vanburn Holder. Thus was
born the four pronged West Indies pace battery fielded by Lloyd in 26
of 27 consecutive Tests, including 18 in a row, from 1980-83.
The immediate outcome of that victory was anything but pleasant for the tourists. Bowling from around the wicket to target the body, Holding and co. let loose a barrage of bouncers and beamers at Kingston. Two men retired hurt in India's first innings; five were absent hurt in the second. All 17 members of the touring party were called in to field at various stages of the match. Wrote Dicky Rutnagur in Wisden, "As...the Indian team trudged along the
tarmac towards their home-bound aeroplane at Kingston's Norman Manley
Airport, they resembled Napoleon's troops on the retreat from Moscow.
They were battle-weary and a lot of them were enveloped in plasters
and bandages".
But that one victory also gave them a sense of self-belief, hitherto
lacking, that was to become evident over the next few years. Borne out
of the Port of Spain inspiration, India implausibly gave pursuit to
two other 400 plus targets at Adelaide and the Oval within the next
four years, although both were doomed to end in heroic failure.
Moreover it came flush in the middle of Indian cricket's glory days
when the team won consistently abroad. Nine away wins in 10 years from
1968-78 was a staggering achievement. Not the contrived sequence of
wins in the early 90s on designer wickets at home. Much has been made
of the recent triumph over Australia and deservingly so. But
deprecatory murmurs will continue to float unless the pathetic away
record since 1986 can be straightened out. The current Indian team may
have more superstars, but the spirit of teamwork was never expressed to
better effect than by the class of the 70s.