Festive Thursday

Friends, with festive season on I thought of writing something light.

Few weeks back I had written about 1^st tied cricket test match between West I dies and Australia, today I am going to write about the only other tied test match. This match took place at Madras (now Chennai) 32 years back in Sept 1986 between India and Australia. It took 498 test matches to produce first tied test match and it was another 554 test matches before this test match delivered a tied verdict. These are the only 2 test matches in the history of cricket to end in tie.

The match took place at Chidambaram Stadium at Madras between Sept 18 to 22, 1986.Australian team was led by Allan Border and India by Kapil Dev. Australia won the toss and elected to bat. They batted for first 2 days and 37 minutes on 3^rd day and piled up a massive score of 574 for 7 (declared). The major contributors were David Boon- 122 runs, Dean Jones-210 runs and Allan Border- 102 runs. Only India bowler who was effective was Shivlal Yadav who took 4 wickets for 142 runs in 50 overs. 2 wickets were shared by Ravi Shastri and Chetan Sharma and one batsman was run out.

In their reply India made a good start when Srikanth made 50 runs, but after 1^st wicket fell at 62, India were 65/3 with first three batsman Gavaskar, Srikanth and Mohinder Amarnath back in Pavilion. Then Ravi Shastri played a brilliant knock of 62 runs and Kapil Dev scored 119 runs, and saved India from being asked to follow on. They totalled 397 runs in which Greg Mathews 5 wickets for 103 runs was outstanding with his off spin bowling.

In the 2^nd innings, Australia  made a quick dash for the runs and Allan Border declared at the end of 4^th day when the score was 170 for 5, 49 of these runs had come from the bat of David Boon. It was very generous and risky declaration and India went into the final day with 348 for a win, that had seemed beyond their reach with Australia in dominating position.

Sunil Gavaskar (scored 92) started in a very positive note and  took India to 95 for 1 at lunch with Srikanth contributing 39 before being out. Gavaskar and Amarnath( scored 51) continued the careful accumulations of the runs in the afternoon session and at tea interval they were at 193 for 2. In the last session India set out in search of 155 runs with minimum 30 overs. Azharuddin and Shastri started to score briskly, but Azharuddin was out for 42 runs, then 2 more wickets of Kapil Dev and Chandrakant Pandit fell, and India were 331 for 6 wickets still 17 runs were needed for victory. Then again there was slump and India lost 3 wickets of Kiran More, Chetan Sharma and Shivlal Yadav, all the 3 wickets were taken by Bright and score stood at 344 for 7, India still needed 4 runs for victory with last wicket remaining. Last batsman Maninder Singh joined Ravi Shastri and at that time there was only one over remaining.

Last over was to be bowled by Greg Mathews, who was going to bowl his 40^th consecutive over of the inning. First bowl bowled by Mathews produced no runs, in the next ball Shastri scored 2 runs, now 2 more runs for victory.  Next ball produced only 1 run , the scores were level now. So now Maninder Singh was on strike, he failed to score of the 4^th ball. On the penultimate ball of the match Maninder tried to play but he misses and ball hits on the pad. There was chorus of appeal from Australian fielders and Umpired declared him LBW. So for only 2^nd time in history test match had finished as tied match.

When after the match Shastri was asked by Press why he took single run on the 3^rd ball and exposed Maninder to  score the winning run under pressure. His answer was – “with Mathews bowling superbly I thought it was very important that we should not lose the match”. Had it happened , it would been very sweet victory for India, but fact was that Australia dominated  for first 4 days of the match and they sportingly declared in 2^nd innings, and India also took challenge and tried their best to win the match. So it was just right that match ended as tied test match.

After the match, Allan Border said “ As Mathews started the final over I told him to make sure he zeroed the ball in at the stumps. It was really a nerve racking, but in the end we got the perfect result. I was a kid when first tied test happened, and now I have had the pleasure of playing in one. It is almost better  than winning.”

Kapil Dev said  “ It got quite tense in the middle, and we did not take kindly to some of the Australian tactics. At the end of the day, though, the spectators got terrific value and we nearly pulled off a fantastic victory.”

There was also one co incidence, the coach of this Australian team was Bobby Simpson, and he was member of  Australian team  and his contribution was 92 runs in the first innings of the first tied test match in 1960.

There was a gap of 26 years between first and second tied test match. There had been no further tied test match, and second one happened 32 years back. No one knows when the next one will happen, till then these three teams West Indies, Australia and India will be part of this unique cricket record.

Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs.

Anil Malik

8^th Nov, 2018

Mumbai, India