- Sunday, May 19, 2024
The English cricketers stayed back despite the stay making them nervous and went on to win both the Test and one-day series.
By: Shubham Ghosh
CRICKET rivalry between India and England has a long history that dates back to the time when India was yet to become independent from its colonial masters. While there have been several interesting stories centred around play in the 22 yards, there were also instances when England’s cricket tours of India had terribly nervous starts.
One such tour had happened in 1984-85.
The English cricket team was in India for a full-fledged tour, featuring five Tests and as many one-day internationals besides a number of first-class matches. But before the on-field rivalry gained momentum, two major incidents took place in India and put the entire tour in danger of getting scrapped. However, it did not happen and England had returned home as the happier side, having beaten their tough hosts in both the formats.
Peter Baxter, who was in India as a Test Match Special producer for the BBC to cover the tour, and got the news. The tour, which had started on October 31, 1984, and continued till February next year, had to progress with events such as the assassination of former Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and the sectarian riots targeting the Sikhs that followed and an industrial disaster in the central city of Bhopal, which is comparable to the deadly Chernobyl incident of 1986.
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The tour did not get called off even though there were possibilities and England played in 12 first-class matches, including the five Tests, and as many one-day internationals, across 16 venues in India and Sri Lanka where they had gone to play some practice games since the situation in India was too tense for cricket.
If Gandhi’s assassination and the riots that followed had already shocked the visiting cricketers, the gunning down of the newly appointed British deputy high commissioner to India, Percy Norris, on November 27, just a day after he gave a reception to England cricketers in Mumbai (then Bombay) had hit them harder.
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David Gower, who was the captain of the team said the fact that Norris was an Englishman made them feel even more threatened. The cricketers were keen to leave India in the first available flight but the manager, Tony Brown, was keen about continuing with the tour. Many of the members in the squad were not in a frame of mind to play in those conditions but there was no open dissent in the dressing room.
There were also logistical issues. The England team management’s efforts to find out the next step of action was hit by a major disruption in the telephone system, which made it virtually impossible for them to hold discussions with England board officials in London. Even Indian board officials found it challenging to fly to Delhi as air and railway connections were seriously hampered by the anti-Sikh violence.
But the tour was not cancelled and eventually England, who had come to India after getting crushed by the West Indies 0-5 at home, won both the Test and one-day series. The victory was sweeter as the England squad did not have some prominent names, such as Graham Gooch, John Lever and Bob Woolmer, who were still serving the ban for defying a sporting ban and joining a rebel tour of apartheid South Africa in 1982. Ian Botham, arguably England’s greatest all-rounder, did not go for the tour.
India those days were not in the same league of the Caribbeans but still were a good side to beat in their home conditions. They were the reigning world champions as well.
The England squad, featuring new faces, a few familiar ones and a not-much-inspiring leadership in captain Gower and vice captain Mike Gatting, reached India with not much expectation.
And before they were even prepared to face India, they were welcomed by the news that the prime minister of the host country was assassinated and the air was heavy with a sinister smell. They were in Delhi where the assassination took place and their hotel was not very far from where Gandhi was shot by her Sikh bodyguards. An uncertain panic started setting in.
The British high commission advised the touring party not to leave the hotel but after a few days, the players started getting restless. Brown, known to be a forceful individual, even had a heated discussion with batter Allan Lamb who wanted to return home.
Brown is said to have brandished Lamb’s passport and told him that he could leave if he wanted to. But with none coming forward to be the first to leave, the tour did not derail and England reaped the benefits of their patience at the end.
As India went into a 12-day national mourning which meant there was no possibility of any cricket, the England players went to Sri Lanka on the aircraft of its president who had gone to India to attend Gandhi’s funeral. In the island-nation, England played a quickly arranged first-class match and a one-day international.
The one-day match was washed out by rain and since even the changing room was flooded, Baxter had taken a post-match interview of Gower in the bathroom, which was ironically a little bit drier, he had told BBC.
England were back in India within a week and a new schedule saw three first-class matches accommodated inside 12 days, involving a lot of travelling between the cities of Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Rajkot.
The visitors then proceeded to Mumbai and then the Norris incident happened. An outfit which called itself the Revolutionary Organisation of Muslim Socialists claimed responsibility for the assassination, accusing Norris of being a British spy with close links with the US Central Intelligence Agency and alleging that India’s old colonial rulers were still interfering in the country’s politics.
Needless to say, the visiting cricketers were rattled again.
Perhaps the fact that the first Test was starting the very next day saved the tour. Gower, Gatting and Brown also played their part to ensure that the players did not lose their focus on the game completely.
The mental toll perhaps was too high for England in the first Test which they lost by eight wickets with mystery spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan taking 12 wickets in the game. But the visitors made a quick comeback to win the second Test in Delhi by eight wickets with opener Tim Robinson hitting 160.
The third match in Kolkata (then Calcutta) was drawn and England dominated the fourth in Chennai (then Madras) with the help of Gatting’s 207 and won it by nine wickets. The hosts failed to square the series in the final match in Kanpur despite scoring 550-plus in the first innings and Gower’s men won the series by coming from behind.
They also beat India 4-1 in the one-day series that followed.
The tour ended peacefully and while many gave credits to the security, Martin Williamson wrote in a piece for Cricinfo, “Some questioned quite how efficient it (security) was, however. The night before the match some of the media suspected that assurances about the levels of security might be slightly exaggerated. They decided to put it to the test. The next morning one of the photographers presented himself to a senior guard at the ground in a flak jacket (“wearing the most scrambled egg of anyone” he told Cricinfo). He had his camera bag over his shoulder and a camera lens “that could have been a bazooka”. When challenged he replied: “I’m from the IRA. Take me to the England dressing room.” “Certainly,” said the guard, “do come this way, sir.”
A similar situation was faced by a touring team of England in India in 2008-09 when a deadly terror attack struck Mumbai. It happened in the middle of a seven-match one-day international series and the England team decided to depart from India with two matches still to be played.
They later returned to India to play a two-match Test series.
