From Nayudu to Tendulkar

Seventy years of international cricket is neither a very long time nor a very short period but it is a duration for which some introspection can, and should, be made. On June 25, when Indian cricket completed seven decades in the international arena, reflections predictably were mixed. During this period, Indian cricket had seen it all - the ups and downs, the heady triumphs and the disastrous defeats, the glorious and seamy aspects of the game.

Interestingly enough, the Indian team is right now in England where it all started on a summer day in 1932. CK Nayudu led his men down the pavilion steps at Lord's to take on the might of England. The opposing captain was the redoubtable Douglas Jardine and, though, the thought of Bodyline had not yet entered his mind, he remained a shrewd and ruthlessly efficient leader. He was not going to take the babes of international cricket lightly and it is good that he didn't.

For, within an hour, England were 19 for three. In Neville Cardus' immortal prose, the sombre, yet thrilling, mood has been captured. Though India lost the inaugural Test match by 158 runs, they earned a lot of respect with Nayudu, Mohammad Nissar and Amar Singh coming in for special praise.

Soon players like Lala Amarnath, Vijay Merchant, Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare attracted worldwide attention and by the end of the 1946 tour of England, the great West Indian all-rounder Learie Constantine was predicting that "the time is not distant when India will not only beat England on English soil but will challenge and beat Australia, the West Indies and all countries."

Actually, that day was quite distant. Various factors on and off the field, led to Indian cricket enduring the unendurable in the fifties, surely the decade when the game touched its nadir in India. The astonishing aspect was that greats like Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar, Pankaj Roy, Dattu Phadkar, Vijay Manjrekar, Subhash Gupte and Ghulam Ahmed still graced the Indian side but the team itself made little headway while making the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On one unmemorable occasion at Leeds in 1952, India contrived to lose their first four wickets without a run on the board, an unwanted record that still stands, half a century later. A month later at Manchester, India were bowled out for 58 and 82 in one day, another unwanted record that stands to this day. Not very long afterwards, at the Oval, India lost their first five wickets with only six runs scored. In 1959, India were beaten by the West Indies at Calcutta by an innings and 336 runs, then the second highest losing margin in Test history.

Sure, Mankad and Roy shared a first wicket partnership of 413 runs against New Zealand in 1956, a world record that still stands as Indian cricket's proudest statistical achievement. But this was an exception.

Recovery, however, was round the corner. The sixties marked an upswing in the country's cricketing fortunes thanks principally to the leadership of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, the key figure in Indian cricket during the decade in more ways than one. Under his stewardship, there was greater solidity in the batting, vast improvement in the fielding and with the emergence of the spin quartet, a bowling attack that terrorised batsmen the world over in much the same manner that the fastest of bowlers did.

Defeats were still suffered - seven in a row at one stage during 1967-68 - but by the end of the decade, Indian cricket seemed poised for better things.

However, not even the most optimistic Indian cricket follower could have envisaged what was to follow. By any yardstick, the India Rubber Year of 1971 was a watershed in the cricketing fortunes of the country.

© CricInfo

The discovery of Sunil Gavaskar and the twin triumphs in West Indies and England followed by another victory over England at home in 1972-73, created an euphoric mood never seen before. Throughout the decade, with Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath as the batting kingpins and the spin quartet at the peak of their powers, the Indian team could challenge the best, win matches outside the country and perform feats that were straight out of fiction like scoring 406 for four to beat the West Indies at Port of Spain in 1976. Sure, they were aberrations like the notorious `Summer of 42' at Lord's in 1974 but these were the exceptions rather than the rule.

In keeping with the momentum, could we then hope for better things in the eighties? Why not? For, even as time finally caught up with the spin quartet, a tall, strong lad from Haryana appeared on the scene.

Indian cricket and fast bowling seemed to be two worlds apart but then Kapil Dev was a class apart. He became the pivotal figure of the eighties as captain and all-rounder. The World Cup triumph in 1983, surely something out of `Boys Own' magazine, followed by the victory in the World Championship of Cricket in Australia two years later meant that the popularity of the limited overs game reached an all-time high.

Batsmen like Mohinder Amarnath, Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohammad Azharuddin proved to be worthy successors to Gavaskar and Viswanath and the Indian flag was kept flying high symbolised by the 1986 Test triumph in England, some reverses notwithstanding.

What would the nineties bring? Sachin Tendulkar for one. Finally, an Indian was the best batsman in the world. Indian cricket revolved around him, on and off the field. Anil Kumble took over the spinning mantle and emulated Jim Laker by taking all ten wickets against Pakistan at the Kotla in 1999 while Tendulkar could count on support from the likes of Navjot Sidhu, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Venkatsai Laxman.

Despite the occasional setbacks, Indian cricket continued to attract worldwide attention and in the new millennium, as a host of newcomers make their presence felt, it is difficult not to visualise the first decade of the 21st century as possibly the greatest period in Indian cricket history.