Jasprit Bumrah’ in action. File photo
| Photo Credit: K.R. Deepak
The England dressing room at Chennai’s M.A. Chidambaram Stadium had a surprise visitor shortly after the first Test of the 2008 series ended. India had pulled off a stunning chase of 387 on a fifth-day pitch.
After Virender Sehwag blasted a 68-ball 83 and added 117 for the first wicket with Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, with an unbeaten hundred, and Yuvraj Singh took India home. Then Tendulkar walked up to England’s dressing room and thanked the players for coming back to India after the Mumbai terrorist attack.
Tendulkar’s gesture
Steve Harmison was one of the players who were bowled over by Tendulkar’s gesture. “Here was the greatest cricketer of our generation coming to our dressing room to thank us,” the former quick said during a talkSport show.
Coming as it did after the terrible tragedy in Mumbai, the win in Chennai meant much for India as a country, more so with its favourite son making a hundred and hitting the winning shot. And that remains the biggest successful chase in a Test in India.
England was presented with a chance to break that record at Visakhapatnam last week, but India did not let it, as the host paid back for the defeat in the first Test at Hyderabad in style. The series is tied 1-1, with three matches remaining.
The tradition
The series has already produced some outstanding Test cricket — among the finest this country has seen for years — and there could be more. We haven’t seen too many absorbing and even battles between bat and ball in recent times in India as we have at Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam.
Neither have we watched such exhibitions of pace bowling like the ones put up by Jasprit Bumrah and James Anderson in just the second Test alone. The series has already given us two epic, match-winning hundreds, by Ollie Pope (196) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (209).
The Tests between India and England have always produced some fascinating cricket, right from the first ever Test between the two countries. In 1932 at Lord’s, India, playing its maiden Test, had England in trouble at 19 for three, and it would take two fine innings from captain Douglas Jardine, who would, later that year, achieve infamy with the Bodyline series in Australia, to lead the host to a 158-run victory. India’s pace trio of Mohammed Nisar, Amar Singh and Jahangir Khan took 14 wickets among them.
India has gone on to play more Tests against England than it has against any other team — 133, of which it has won 32. Many of those Tests have given Indian cricket some of its most memorable moments, like Sunil Gavaskar’s 221 at the Oval in 1979, which took India so close to chasing down a target of 438, Dilip Vengsarkar’s three successive hundreds at Lord’s, Sachin Tendulkar’s maiden Test century at the age of 17, Mohammad Azharuddin’s three consecutive hundreds from his Test debut at home and then his two back-to-back hundreds of exquisite beauty in England, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid’s impressive debuts in the same Test at Lord’s, Kapil Dev hitting Eddie Hemmings for four sixes in a row when 24 were needed to avoid the follow-on and nine wickets were down.
You wonder what Rajkot, Ranchi and Dharamshala have in store.